If you are someone who has struggled with your studies in any way, I imagine you’ve heard, from teachers, parents, or both, that you need to take responsibility for your work. Maybe someone has actually accused you of being irresponsible- when work is missing or late, when you don’t contribute enough to a group project, or when you don’t prepare well enough for a test. Maybe it has even been a refrain, if one or more of these things has happened repeatedly. The more you have heard it, the harder it may be to believe you can change it, but as you work to improve your study skills, you will become more responsible, and over time, the opinion of those who have doubted you will change for the better, as will, if you let it, your opinion of yourself.
When you are struggling with your studies, you may find it difficult to give yourself the credit you deserve when you do something well. It might be easier to dwell on the negative – the bad test grade, the assignment you forgot to do, the subject you just can’t seem to get the hang of no matter how hard you try or how much help you receive – but that is the last thing you should do if you want to make progress on your study skills journey and see increased success over time. Whenever something gets you down, try to make a conscious effort to remind yourself of something that can bring you back up. A good grade in a favorite subject, a day or a week that goes by with little to no missing work, the subject you are finding less challenging than before because you are putting more effort into it and learning to understand it better – all of these are worthy of your notice. Giving yourself credit for anything you do that is positive is a good way to encourage yourself to keep striving to add more things to the list, because it gives you something to build on and helps put negative things into perspective.
Putting negative things into perspective is important, because it will keep you from dwelling on them, but that does not mean you don’t still need to take responsibility for them. When you make a mistake, admit it – not just to your parents, teachers, and peers (particularly when it comes to group projects), but to yourself as well. Apologize where appropriate and/or necessary, but also be sure to ask yourself what you can do differently next time. As important as apologizing for mistakes is to taking more responsibility for your work, planning to do better and following through with it is even more important. Promising to be more responsible and actually proving that you can do it are two very different things, and in this case, as in so many others when it comes to improving your study skills, actions really do speak louder than words.
Since actions speak louder than words when it comes to taking responsibility for your studies, one of the best ways to become more responsible is to strive to become more consistent with responsible behaviors. Even if you are someone who has struggled enough with your studies in general and your study skills in particular to have been called irresponsible, try to find examples of times when you acted responsibly, so you can repeat them. Even though acting irresponsibly may be easier, try to see it instead as taking the easy way out. Challenge yourself to become more responsible, even when doing so requires extra time and better planning, and even when it means spending less time on things you’d rather be doing. The more you challenge yourself to act responsibly, the more responsible you will become, and the more responsible you become, the easier it will be to choose responsible behaviors instead of irresponsible ones.
In order to improve your ability to take responsibility for your actions when things don’t go well with your studies, it is important to remember that you should also take responsibility for your actions when things do go well. Learning to make a more honest assessment of both your successes and your failures, while keeping both in the proper perspective, is a great way to make progress on your study skills journey, because it is a good reminder that no matter what happens and where your responsibility for it lies, you will always have another chance to correct your mistakes and build on your triumphs. Taking responsibility for your studies also means taking ownership of your choices, both good and bad, and the more ownership your take of your choices, the better off you’ll be.