How to Become An Academic Weapon

New semester, new standards. We're back in school, baby. As someone who's been back to school in my late 30s, I'm going to teach you how to become an academic weapon using neuroscience because we're not settling for anything less than straight A's this semester. Let's do it. My father, a mathematician, used to say all the time growing up, if you're going to come home with a B, stay in school. Don't come home at all. Don't take that literally, of course not. But I want you to stop negotiating with your standards today, and especially your potential. Number one, master your time. Time is money. I want you to start thinking about your time like it's sitting in your bank account, quite literally. I want you to become punitive with yourself. Every time you doom scroll in lieu of studying, you do something else in lieu of studying, I want you to go to your account, take $60 out, put it somewhere else that you cannot touch and think of it like that money is gone. You will stop doom scrolling rather quickly. You will stop wasting time rather quickly. Time is a limited resource. Every time you constantly switch between TikTok, Instagram, text, doing whatever, Snapchat, okay, in lieu of studying, you're forcing your brain to switch attention back and forth. And remember, the brain cannot multitask. That's called task switching. It comes with a cognitive cost. The brain cannot do it. So, stop studying with your phone sitting next to you. Put it across the room. What I do, I lock it up. I lock the phone up when I'm studying and I don't touch it. Next, discipline your dopamine. I've said this ad nauseum and I will keep saying it. Now that we're back in school, we have to discipline our dopamine. Here's what everyone gets wrong. Dopamine isn't simply the pleasure chemical. It's heavily involved in motivation, learning, reward prediction, and directing behavior toward things your brain considers valuable. So use that system strategically. Don't make studying the punishment, make completion the reward. Finish a 60-minute study session and then reward yourself. What I do when I'm studying, I lock in for two hours and I don't get up once. Afterwards, I give myself a little candy. I love sugar. I give myself something nice. I said, okay, you deserve it. Or I'll take a warm bath. When I get straight A's, guess what I do? I'll go get a new purse. I'll go to Coach and get a new purse. That's how you discipline your dopamine. You should never let it run your life. And then the brain will start thinking, every time I do something hard, something good follows automatically. Okay? Next, become the professor. This one is the most powerful. Teach what you learn. After studying something, close the textbook and pretend you're teaching it to a class. Better yet, make a TikTok, record a video, teach your roommate, explain it to your dog. I don't care. Become the professor. You can never forget something you teach. It's impossible. I'm going to get straight A's this semester. I'm going to die trying, but I know it's going to be easy for me because I teach you guys. Everything I'm learning in my textbook, when I learn something, I come online, I teach it to you guys. It's stuck in my brain forever. Forever, okay? Because teaching forces your brain to retrieve and organize information. You can't teach something clearly if you don't understand the relationship between the concepts yourself. When you retrieve information, rather than simply rereading it, you're strengthening the neural networks involved in recalling that information. And when you explain a concept in your own words, you're doing something even more powerful. You're connecting new information to what you already know. Here's what I want you to realize. I actually want you to write it down. Get a pen and paper, write this down. Discipline is freedom. Discipline is freedom. Only the disciplined in this life are free. Because here's the part nobody wants to hear. You're going to have days where you don't feel motivated. Motivation is useless. It's a waste of time. It will never work in your favor. Discipline will always work in your favor. When your friends are going out, study anyway. All neuroplasticity is is telling yourself, when I say I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it. Period. So this semester, you and I, lock in. We're going to get straight A's or we're going to die trying. You don't have to be the smartest person in your classroom. I don't I don't actually believe in that. I know I'm not the smartest person in my classroom, but I'm going to be the valedictorian. Or I'm going to die trying. Lock in, straight A's. Let's get to work. I believe in you, and I pray you always believe in yourself. Stay fabulous.