[seeker5]

Thanks for the feedback.

LifeFirst, Yeah, I agree with the above posts. You're studying too much, and not focusing enough on those aspects that matters. I've heard that psychology is 80% of success. Doing well in school is more then how much time you put in it - if you put your time in the wrong thing, you're not going to do well. Seems to me you need two things: 1) Proper balance of studying with sleep, rest, and proper phychology. 2) Proper management of internal state for each exams so you remember what you need to remember.

Sleeping little and eating little is definitely not conducive to good performance. It'd be like an Olympic Athlete that trains all the time...training up and exercising up without sleeping and without eating until he gets to the Olympic track while getting no sleep and not eating. If he did that, he’d be in last place in the race. The winning Olympic athlete instead trains properly - balancing rest, exercise and proper nutrition. He also doesn't race and exhaust himself right before the race. All successful athletes also do a lot of visualization. I think doing well in school is similar to training for the Olympics in a way.

I believe everything we read and are exposed to is in the mind - the trick is to access it. That's why I'd spend 10 minutes before each exam walking fast all around the school building visualizing intensely every answer coming from inside of me and making sure that I didn't feel tired, or nervous, but instead would feel very alert, very relaxed, and very conscious and very confident in myself. (Walking very fast and breathing deeply before an exam definitely wakes me up on those days I was a little tired!) Even on those final exams where I didn't study much for (because in most cases I didn't need much of a grade to keep my A), I still made sure to visualize and energized myself 10 minutes before my exam so that I'd give the maximum performance possible. This is a very critical key – managing your internal state for peak performance. Tony Robbins has a lot of information on that.

By the way, I didn't mean to say I studied very little overall. I was comparing myself to two friends whom I personally saw study a lot for the exams. I'm sure I spent more time on each class then a number of other students. I did a lot of proactive stuff too during the semester so I wouldn't have to cram at all - I aimed to read chapters of the book the week before the class would cover it, and I'd aim to do my homework the week before it was due, etc. I wanted to avoid stress as much as possible - like Steve said he avoided. I also made sure I attended each class in top form - that is I was fully active and participative in each class period taking furious notes (so my mind would be more active in remembering all the info) instead of just slouched like a lot of students are taking little notes, and like I used to be. So I did spend considerable time for each class - but less then two of my friends I had helped and thus seen how much they studied, and less then I would have beforehand.

I hope this help. Your semester is about over, so there isn't much you can do to change your current grades except aim as high as possible within the current possibilities. Once it’s over I'd suggest you think deeply and do more research so you can plan your next semester better. I think you know within yourself what you're doing wrong - you outlined it in your post. You may need to get rid of the belief that you get rewarded for studying an extreme amount of time, and replace it with a proper belief about how you need to balance all of the important factors and that you get rewarded for performance, not for time to prepare.