In every class, try to score as high as possible on the first assignment/exam. Since less material is covered at that point, less effort is required per unit of results.
Then later in the semester, you’re free to put your effort where it’s most needed, instead of needing to scramble across all your classes because you need good results on the final assignments just to pass.
Also, in subjects with group work, it lets you survive a bad group, rather than failing your course because you get stuck with some maladjusted dingus. Moreover, you can use your high grades on the first assignment to leverage your way into a good group. This kind of group-work metagaming is especially important in engineering subjects, and doubly so again if the course is bell-curved.
Finally, try to do one creative thing per year and put it in a public forum, especially on a platform you control (e.g. a blog). Even small things are OK. Literally having any body of work outside of class assignments will let you crush 90% of your peers when applying to grad school, a job, a scholarship, or really just about anything with a halfway sane selection process. It’s also fun (doing creative things, not crushing your peers).
I would say with the bad group thing there are two things that massively improve your chances: A) being group leader and B) sometimes being okay with doing a majority of the work and just asking people to do cleanup. I’ve had so many projects go faster from doing all of the hard parts of the project on the condition that they make it look polished.
I’m… more hostile about this one. If I’m going to do the lion’s share of the work anyway, I’ll often go the extra 10%, do it alone, and take full credit.
I’ve tried your strategy, only for the group to turn something practically publishable into a failing-grade undergraduate report. After that when I got a bad group, I just ask the prof if there’s a penalty to go solo (often there is none!). If I estimate the penalty is less bad than my grade with the group, I’ll just let them burn. If I get at least a mediocre group, then I try to make the group succeed.
This tactic has served me well in the workplace. If I’m part of an incompetent or lazy team, I move to a new team or do the work myself, and make sure they get no credit. I don’t carry these teams forward, neither I nor the company benefits, and them I’m stuck carrying them again on the next job (a quick path to burnout). Pretty quickly I end up working with better colleagues and we can really get stuff done (after all, most people are OK).
In every class, try to score as high as possible on the first assignment/exam. Since less material is covered at that point, less effort is required per unit of results.
Then later in the semester, you’re free to put your effort where it’s most needed, instead of needing to scramble across all your classes because you need good results on the final assignments just to pass.
Also, in subjects with group work, it lets you survive a bad group, rather than failing your course because you get stuck with some maladjusted dingus. Moreover, you can use your high grades on the first assignment to leverage your way into a good group. This kind of group-work metagaming is especially important in engineering subjects, and doubly so again if the course is bell-curved.
Finally, try to do one creative thing per year and put it in a public forum, especially on a platform you control (e.g. a blog). Even small things are OK. Literally having any body of work outside of class assignments will let you crush 90% of your peers when applying to grad school, a job, a scholarship, or really just about anything with a halfway sane selection process. It’s also fun (doing creative things, not crushing your peers).
I would say with the bad group thing there are two things that massively improve your chances: A) being group leader and B) sometimes being okay with doing a majority of the work and just asking people to do cleanup. I’ve had so many projects go faster from doing all of the hard parts of the project on the condition that they make it look polished.
I’m… more hostile about this one. If I’m going to do the lion’s share of the work anyway, I’ll often go the extra 10%, do it alone, and take full credit.
I’ve tried your strategy, only for the group to turn something practically publishable into a failing-grade undergraduate report. After that when I got a bad group, I just ask the prof if there’s a penalty to go solo (often there is none!). If I estimate the penalty is less bad than my grade with the group, I’ll just let them burn. If I get at least a mediocre group, then I try to make the group succeed.
This tactic has served me well in the workplace. If I’m part of an incompetent or lazy team, I move to a new team or do the work myself, and make sure they get no credit. I don’t carry these teams forward, neither I nor the company benefits, and them I’m stuck carrying them again on the next job (a quick path to burnout). Pretty quickly I end up working with better colleagues and we can really get stuff done (after all, most people are OK).
Yeah I totally get that. I’ve been fortunate enough to have teams where at least half the other people gave enough of a damn haha