Project Materials

Difficult Courses in Higher Institution

There will always be courses that students find difficult in school. While there are courses you can easily study and pass, these difficult species of courses may demand some more creativity, effort, strategizing and planning in your approach to really nail them. Whether a course is a work over or a hard bone to crack, failure is not an option. When you are able to excel at difficult courses, your confidence level will be boosted, and you can go on to have more wins. How then can you handle difficult courses, especially when you are stuck with the course and can’t probably drop it from your course list. It may be a compulsory, required or elective that you think you need to do, how can you beat the hardness and come out in flying colours?

Adjust Your Mindset

The first thing to deal with in the situation of a difficult course is your mind set. Why do you think it’s difficult? Is it because your predecessors told you how hard the course can be? Or since you started attending the class, your fear has continued to increase because of how complex or abstract the course seem to be? Or is it that you have even written exam for the course before and have failed and now it’s a carry over which you still don’t know how to deal with? Or the course has a reputation of hardness probably because of the lecturer?  Regardless of whichever reason that accounts for your perception of the course as difficult, you should not be overwhelmed by fear to think you can’t pass it. In fact, it is very important for you to consciously and deliberately bring yourself to that point where you believe you can crush that course and not the other way around. The very mind set you have that you can pass the course no matter how hard will set you in motion to begin to work towards success.

Be Aware

It is important for you to know on time and quickly identify the courses that may likely prove difficult. This will help you to give such courses the necessary attention and you’ll be able to plan on tackling them.

Interact with and Understand the Lecturer’s Style

Another key thing when dealing with hard courses is to ensure you understand the lecturer’s style especially questioning style and marking style. What questions he is likely to ask, how he is likely to ask, what answers he expects and how he expects the answers to be presented. If the lecturer is not a new lecturer and has taught your predecessors, then you are better chanced as you can easily ask your seniors key and relevant secrets to handling the lecturer’s exams and tests. Also endeavour to interact with the course lecturer one on one to have a better grasp his/her personality, texture of the course and main things you need to know and do to pass. If you’re striving for success at all, you need to do it using the right information.

Take Advantage of YouTube Videos

Going online to see tutorials is a very smart way of helping yourself with difficult courses. The YouTube tutorials online can serve to break down complex concepts for you, after seeing one and you don’t well grasp, you can go on to another YouTube lecture on it. Try to see videos on all the difficult concepts in the difficult course and you’ll see yourself having a better understanding.

Do Not Miss A Class

Knowing already that a particular course is difficult and then missing classes for that course will be a very risky thing to do. Try as much as possible not to miss a single class. Ensure you start the class from the very beginning when the fundamental things there are being taught. Not having a good grasp of the foundational concepts of the course can further serve to make it more difficult. 

Join or Form a Discussion Group

Look around for some of your friends that belong to a discussion group and join them. If you can’t find one, then form one with some colleagues of yours. Group discussion will help the members to rub minds, study better and faster and enjoy studying process better. Try to belong to a group where a number of the students there are better than yourself. Don’t be the only intelligent or serious student in the group, make sure there are other brilliant and diligent students in your group. 

Attend Tutorials

Look out for excellent tutorials on campus where that difficult course is taught. Join the tutorial and make it part of your timetable or schedule to always attend the tutorial whenever it’s being held. There may be secrets that will be shared I tutorials on how to handle the course and this can help you to have an edge.

Meet Someone to Teach You

It’s right to ask for help when you need it. Having to deal with a difficult course and you have colleagues or seniors who can put you through without consulting them is not the best. Be humble and smart enough to ask for their help. If you’d need to offer some incentive to the person to make the tutoring possible, do so.

Dig into the Fundamentals of the Course

Anything you don’t understand will be difficult. Understanding the basics of a course will help you to handle the more difficult concepts easier. Trying to struggle with complex or advanced parts of the course without first understanding the basics might be unproductive. If you have to go back into textbooks and materials that explain the basics, do so for the sake of building on that to have a good grasp of the course.

Do Hard Work

This cannot be overemphasised. Even the easy courses so to say demand that you are diligent, how much more difficult courses? Be deliberate in putting more effort into those difficult courses. More time, more tutorials, more study, more strategizing, do all you can to ensure you crush the hard course. 

Take Advantage of Past Questions

Past questions are a very good way to set yourself up for success in any course, especially relevant past questions. Past questions are more relevant when you still have the same lecturer handling the course. Endeavour to practice as many as possible, if possible, go around all the topics in the course. You can use the past questions to study, you can also answer them after studying in a test or exam like mood, be sure to score yourself and evaluate your preparedness for the examination.

Correct Your Approach

In the instance that you’ve taken a course before, failed it and have to carry it over. You may want to check your approach in tackling the course and correct it if necessary. It’s not smart to use the same method that failed over again. Even when you have not failed the course, maybe you are just taking the course newly, if the initial approach in tackling or understanding the course doesn’t work, then strategize again and adjust your methods where necessary. You may check up on how other colleagues of yours are cracking the difficult course.