Suggestions on motivation:

• Think through why you are going to college and try to develop some realistic and meaningful reasons for spending four years of your life doing the things required to obtain a college degree.
  
• Think through what you would like to be doing after college graduation and try to formulate some realistic and meaningful educational and occupational goals that are appropriate to your interests and abilities.
  
• Try to correlate your course work with your occupational goals. If possible include a course required by your major each semester.
  
• Try to get to know others who share your educational and vocational interests.
  
• Try to get experience that involves work that is closely related to your chosen occupation.
  
• Set short-term goals for yourself, for each class, each assignment, each study period.
  
• Prepare a visual record of your progress toward each goal.
  
• Determine the grade you want; record every quiz or test grade and keep a running grade point average so you are constantly aware of how far you need to go to reach that goal.
  If you tend to skip class, and want to change that, keep a visual record of how often you have skipped class, then you will know whether or not you can actually "afford" to skip another class. Make a sincere effort to improve your study habits.
  
• Stop thinking that you are unable to grasp an idea, for that assumption causes low motivation. You have all the brains you will ever need, the only thing keeping you from learning something is yourself.
  
• Learn to take criticism in the form of grades or in the form of dialogue with a professor. Do not be discouraged by criticism. Use it to grow by looking for the lesson in it.
  
• Watch getting caught between the constant striving for perfection and the simply get it done attitudes.
  
• Constantly striving for perfection may be good, but may set you up for failure or cause you to feel you can't be perfect so why try? Simply getting things done, which often implies a slipshod or imperfect manner, may well set the image the professor has of you.
  
• Remember that your college is your job. You are developing attitudes and habits which will carry over to your professional life. Look at yourself and see whether or not you as an employer would want to hire the you reflected at this point.