So, you’ve gotten into a bad habit of skipping classes whenever you feel that it is in any way inconvenient to attend them, but still willing to mend your ways?
In general, the most important piece of advice for anyone who wants to stop skipping classes is, duh, to stop skipping classes. No matter how deeply this habit is ingrained into your brain, when all is said and done it all comes down to your conscious choice: whether to go to your classes or avoid doing that due to this or that pretext. There is no outside force that keeps you from doing what you must do – it’s all in your head, it’s all your own laziness.
However, old habits die hard, and if you have let this habit develop, it may become really hard to root out. Here are a few tips on how to do it.
First of all, don’t fall into “one last time” trap. When you say to yourself “I am going to skip my classes one last time, but tomorrow I will definitely change everything and solemnly promise not to play truant anymore” it means that you don’t have any reason not to go to your classes, but the idea of going disgusts you so much that you are ready to invent any kind of pretext in order to avoid it. Deep inside you know that you are not going to change anything tomorrow – tomorrow you will repeat everything once again and put off the beginning of new life to the day after tomorrow. You are cleverer and stronger than that – so don’t do it.
Think about an artificial motivation, encouragement to go to classes. If you don’t like studying and learning in itself isn’t an encouragement in itself, try to think about something more immediate – create a reward to give yourself every time you avoid skipping classes and honestly sit through all your classes of the day. The reward may be anything – your favorite food, an interesting movie to see, anything. Just make sure to create a clear connection in your mind between sitting through the classes and this reward, so that the two are inseparable and you are unable to think about one without thinking about the other.
Such things may look childish from outside, if not one little thing – they actually work. Conditioning is a powerful instrument, and if you want to improve your life (in other aspects, not just in academic career), you will do yourself a world of good if you learn to use the advantages it offers.
But remember – in the long run, the only person who decides what you will do is yourself. When you avoid taking responsibility, make sure you understand what you are doing.
