We’ve all been there, trying to achieve the best we can in our academic career without having to sacrifice our social or spiritual life. For an average student, it is very tough and very challenging to cope with many difficult and daunting challenges that seems to lack solution. Most challenges are not personal, as there are many people before you and many after you who have and will face similar challenges. It also goes without saying that most challenges have been overcome by people in the past and will still be, by some, in the future. You can as well. You need to know the do’s and don’ts in order to make things work your way.
Below are some of the common challenges students face during their academic years and how to overcome them

1. High level of Stress
Reading notes, attending 7am classes, doing assignments, taking tests and doing presentations. There is no doubt that academics is stressful. More stressful if you attend a Nigerian tertiary institution, due to the limited resources available.
Stress is one thing that you have to learn how to manage. One sure thing that causes stress is; doing things at the last minute. When you do things at the last minute, you will surely experience stress, a lot of it.
What you should do: cultivate the habit of doing things on time, far before deadline.
A good sleeping habit will also help you focus on important tasks during the day. At least 6 hours of rest a day. This does not necessarily mean at night, you can split this into smaller bit and take some nap whenever you have the opportunity.

2. Poor Time management
It is frustrating to see students complain about not having time to do certain things, when they have spent 70% of their time doing irrelevant things. According to the 80/20 rules (Pareto’s principle), 20% of your work will produce 80% of the results you get.
So find those 20% of work that result to 80% of your results, then focus your effort on them. Not identifying these tasks will cause you to dilly dally without a sense of direction.
What you should do: Take a week or two to identify the activities that are really important and those that are not (An activity is important if not doing it will have a bad consequence and vice versa). Write all your major and minor activities down and then rank them according to their priority, using 5 as the highest. Pick the top 4 of these activities and start committing your time to doing them. You will be amazed at how much free time you have and by the result you will get.
What should you do with the remaining activities? Stop doing them or do them ones in a while.
3. Financial challenges
The number one reason why most students lose money and get broke easily is because: they don’t have a budget. They spend blindly without having the knowledge of what they really need and what they don’t.
If you are a student like me, who receives monthly or weekly allowance, you have to and you need to have a budget to stop getting broke.
What you should do: get a BUDGET of everything you need, I mean your necessities. A little scale of preference will help you remove some item from this list and reduce your cost. Trust me this will solve your financial problems.
4. Peer pressure
When you are in tertiary institution, you get to meet lots of people. Some are social, some are arrogant, some are party geeks, and some are studious. For every class, you will always get a mixture of these characters. This means you will have to interact with students of good and bad character during your academic year. The good ones will have influence on you while the bad ones will also try to influence you. Remember, you are the average of the 5 people you walk with. If you are used to the good guys, probability is that you are good and the reverse is also true.
What you should do: walk and work with the good guys and limit your interaction with the bad ones. Knowing that you are here for a purpose.

5. High expectation but poor performance
One common thing among students is getting unexpected grades. You know what I mean by ‘unexpected’. I mean when you expect to get ‘A’ in a course but unfortunately, you got ‘D’. Don’t be discouraged, this happen to even the best of us. You can also have an ‘A’ in a course you were expecting to have a ‘C’ it happen at times. When this happen, let it be a source of encouragement. Don’t be discouraged and don’t relent in your effort.
What you should do: Figure out who scored the highest mark in this course (or at least a friend whose score is higher than yours) and try to ask them how they did it. How they presented the answer matter a lot. You might have gotten the answer right but your presentation might not be appealing to the lecturer. When you ask, you will have an insight into what a particular lecturer wants and what they don’t. This will help you at other time.
This is to your success
What academic challenges have you faced and how did you overcome them? Share in the comment box below
Source:http://blog.offkrent.com/?p=45