
Here I am speaking to the Tri Delta sorority at UTA as a part of their Academic development program. This was not just about how you can make better grades; but why you would want to.
Everyone agrees, you make better grades in courses that are interesting to you. The place to start improving academic performance may not be study methods. Start by understanding what will cause any course to be interesting to YOU. To be interesting, the material has to have some personal meaning.
After an initial exercise, it was easy to demonstrate at the seminar that everyone is a unique mixture of useful, often unknown, attributes. Why is that? I believe it's because we all have a unique purpose. Reinvention is about rediscovering and re-centering on that unique purpose. The sorority is a wonderful place for students in one of life's biggest transitions to help each other identify their unique attributes and discover how these fit together to form a Purpose statement. For some of them, it was easy. For others, it will develop over time.
As statements of purpose become evident, it becomes easier to link Key Activities, in this case academic work, to what means something to YOU. Instead of being concerned about what you have to do for a class, consider what does this class have to teach you to help achieve your purpose? Knowing that is the game-changer.
I started thinking game-changing was all about working with business organizations. Wrong, it's a fundamental of life we all need to personally master.