Maybe try to figure out how to make the work fun? Or, try and instill a goal less of "getting the grade" and more "attain mastery of the subject"?
I would have been burnt in college, except I got to homeschool the last few years of high school. During that time I took CLEP tests. They were pretty easy for the most part, but they required I actually do the reading and prepare for them. That helped, since in school I just had to pay attention in class, and I'd be good. Then I went to a community college for most of my core classes. That helped too, because there the homeworks either were optional or counted for very little, but I got to see how not doing them hurt my grade. By the time I went to the actual university I wanted to for my major specific stuff, I had developed better study habits, and knew what it took to actually do well. I was helped at that point that, since it was the courses relevant to my major, it was all stuff I was interested in, and actually wanted to attain mastery in.
> Maybe try to figure out how to make the work fun?
I don't think this is the right approach, because you need the ability to focus on work even when it is not fun.
You do need something that makes the work rewarding in some way, but I wouldn't push to hard to try to make it fun.
> Or, try and instill a goal less of "getting the grade" and more "attain mastery of the subject"?
This was my approach in high school as well. It led to me being the one everyone wanted to study with because I picked up the material the best, but then I flunked classes because I never did the homework.
I would flunk classes that depended mostly on homework, and ace classes that depended mostly on tests. Since I had convinced myself that mastery was more important than grades, this reinforced my behavior.
Somehow, the acing the tests part allowed me to get into an Ivy League college. Which I then flunked out of because at that point, I couldn't get by without actually doing the homework and studying outside of class.
This pattern of behavior continues to be something I struggle with as an adult. I can be quite productive for short bursts of time, but have a hard time keeping on track with longer term projects that don't pay off immediately.
I think what you need is to learn the value of steady incremental work that only shows significant results after a long period of time. Basic reinforcement training techniques can be used for this; provide rewards for getting incremental work done, but better to provide them intermittently. Eventually work up from smaller rewards for smaller goals to larger rewards for larger goals.
I think that reinforcing consistency, habit, and small incremental progress rather than brilliance is a big part of what you need. The problem with brilliance is that you can easily get a lot of positive reinforcement for it; people are impressed at how well you understand something, at how much you know, at how quickly you pick it up. But even if you are better than average at picking things up and figuring things out, you will eventually hit the limits of what you can do through brilliance alone; there are some things that will just take long hard work no matter what, and then all of that reinforcement for brilliance comes back to bite you because you're not getting the same kind of reinforcement, and you can easily get stuck and lose faith in your self-image.
>> Maybe try to figure out how to make the work fun?
> I don't think this is the right approach, because you need the ability to focus on work even when it is not fun.
this is just coming from my personal experience, but i think it is very important for a kid to have a job sometime in the high school years. my parents are fairly well off and they "protected" me from this need by just giving me spending money (sometimes for a trivial amount of chores, but usually just free money), so that a menial job would not distract me from my studies. of course, i just spent that money on frivolous things and outings with friends that distracted me from school anyway, and i ended up doing quite poorly (though i made it most of the way through a fairly prestigious school before it caught up with me).
eventually i transferred to a regional (but still quite rigorous) university and had to get a restaurant job to pay my expenses. i learned a whole lot about the world real fast. it wasn't so much that i learned about the value of steady work, but rather that low wage jobs in low margin industries really slam home the point that you will never have anything unless you put in the work, and i worked real hard from that point on. i still have bouts of procrastination, but i never just let things slide now, and every time i spend a dollar i feel the amount of my own labor that i am letting go.
One way to control unnecessary spending is to put the price in terms of how many hours you had to work to get that money. Then it becomes easy to put the item back on the shelf.
i agree, and i often think things out explicitly that way. i actually take a step further though. some fraction of my expenses are fixed (rent, insurance, food to an extent) which leaves me with some percentage of disposable income, call it 25% for this example. so if i get paid $20/hr, a $20 item that isn't absolutely necessary doesn't cost me one hour of work, but rather four, because three quarters of that money is "already spent". suddenly it doesn't seem like i need the shiny new gadget that badly.
Making work fun is nice, but what really improved my effectiveness was cultivating the ability to do work that wasn't fun, but valuable. I think it depends on your strategy. I will always be able to accomplish what I need to now, but since I'm not passionate, I probably will never be brilliant.
We're talking about university here - if you need to rely on feeling passionate about every single course you take, and you actually do, then you're one in a million.
I would have been burnt in college, except I got to homeschool the last few years of high school. During that time I took CLEP tests. They were pretty easy for the most part, but they required I actually do the reading and prepare for them. That helped, since in school I just had to pay attention in class, and I'd be good. Then I went to a community college for most of my core classes. That helped too, because there the homeworks either were optional or counted for very little, but I got to see how not doing them hurt my grade. By the time I went to the actual university I wanted to for my major specific stuff, I had developed better study habits, and knew what it took to actually do well. I was helped at that point that, since it was the courses relevant to my major, it was all stuff I was interested in, and actually wanted to attain mastery in.