Academic Success

• What the best College Students Do
  by Ken Bain
  Combining academic research on learning and motivation with insights drawn from interviews with people who have won Nobel Prizes, Emmys, fame, or the admiration of people in their field, Ken Bain identifies the key attitudes that distinguished the best college students from their peers. These individuals started out with the belief that intelligence and ability are expandable, not fixed. This led them to make connections across disciplines, to develop a “meta-cognitive” understanding of their own ways of thinking, and to find ways to negotiate ill-structured problems rather than simply looking for right answers. Intrinsically motivated by their own sense of purpose, they were not demoralized by failure nor overly impressed with conventional notions of success. These movers and shakers didn’t achieve success by making success their goal. For them, it was a byproduct of following their intellectual curiosity, solving useful problems, and taking risks in order to learn and grow.
• How to Win at College
  by Cal Newport
  How can you graduate with honors, choose exciting activities, build a head-turning resume, gain access to the best post-college opportunities, and still have a life? Based on interviews with star students at universities nationwide, from Harvard to the University of Arizona, How to Win at College presents seventy-five simple rules that will rocket you to the top of your class. 
• The Attention Revolution: Unlocking the Power of the Focused Mind
  by B. Alan Wallace, Ph.D.
  Meditation offers, in addition to its many other benefits, a method for achieving previously inconceivable levels of concentration. Author B. Alan Wallace has nearly thirty years' practice in attention-enhancing meditation, including a retreat he performed under the guidance of the Dalai Lama. An active participant in the much-publicized dialogues between Buddhists and scientists, Alan is uniquely qualified to speak intelligently to both camps, and The Attention Revolution is the definitive presentation of his knowledge.
• Failing Forward: Turning Mistakes into Stepping Stones for Success
  by John C. Maxwell
  Are some people born to achieve anything they want while others struggle? Call them lucky, blessed, or possessors of the Midas touch. What is the real reason for their success? Is it family background, wealth, greater opportunities, high morals, an easy childhood? New York Times best-selling author John C. Maxwell has the answer: The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure. Most people are never prepared to deal with failure. Maxwell says that if you are like him, coming out of school, you feared it, misunderstood it, and ran away from it. But Maxwell has learned to make failure his friend, and he can teach you to do the same. "I want to help you learn how to confidently look the prospect of failure in the eye and move forward anyway," says Maxwell. "Because in life, the question is not if you will have problems, but how you are going to deal with them. Stop failing backward and start failing forward!"
• Air & Light & Time & Space: How Successful Academics Write
  by Helen Sword
  From the author of Stylish Academic Writing comes an essential new guide for writers aspiring to become more productive and take greater pleasure in their craft. Helen Sword interviewed one hundred academics worldwide about their writing background and practices. Relatively few were trained as writers, she found, and yet all have developed strategies to thrive in their publish-or-perish environment. 

Research shows that relaxation and mindfulness exercises can help to improve a person’s mental health, physical health, and overall well-being. Here are some practices that help you regulate negative emotions.

• Dialectal Behavior Therapy (DBT) Mindfulness Resources: Exercises M1 through M10 are often interconnected. While they can been done separately, it may be beneficial to try various exercises outside of the ones explicitly recommended here:
  • Mental Body Scan: M2
  • Mindful Breathing: M7
  • Mental Noting: M5
  • Thought Defusion: M6
  • Negative Judgments: M9
  • Letting Go of Judgments: M10
• 10 Free Guided Meditations for Peaceful Sleep

• How to Create Effective Sleep Hygiene (YouTube)
• 10 College Freshman Mistakes to Avoid!! Kennedy Simone (YouTube)
• 10 Things They Don't Tell You About Being a College Freshman + Storytimes Kennedy Simone (YouTube)

• Dealing With Competition
• Getting Involved
• Handling Failure In & Out Of The Classroom (login required)