Resenhas - How to Become a Straight-A Student

Dani 15/09/2020

Se tivesse conhecido esse livro ainda durante o período da graduação, provavelmente meu desempenho teria sido melhor. Hoje, cursando uma pós de especialização, tive vários insights que serão com certeza colocados em prática muito em breve. Algumas dicas também me serviram para estudos pessoais, que tenho feito por conta própria e sem apoio ou cobrança de terceiros.

A ideia que de são realmente passos simples é verdadeira, e não apenas marketing para venda como outros livros que já li.

A expressão "work smarter, not harder" (trabalhe com mais inteligencia/esperteza, e não mais pesado) pra mim resume a intenção dos conselhos do autor. Recomendo a leitura pra quem busca uma vida acadêmica mais eficiente.

soso 22/01/2022

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Esse livro me ajudou muito a entender minha situação em relação a forma em que eu estudava antigamente, e agora que li esse livro, tenho certeza que muita coisa vai mudar quando minhas aulas começarem. Tem algumas partes que não se encaixam pra mim, e se você ler esse livro, provavelmente nem tudo que você ler vai realmente >te< ajudar.

Moitta 02/02/2017

How to Become a Straight-A Student: The Unconventional Strategies Real College Students Use to Score High While Studying Less (Cal Newport)
Why are these excuses necessary? Why don’t we simply think: “This is boring, and I’m lazy, so I’m not going to do it,” which is much closer to the truth? The answer is that your ego is a powerful force. We procrastinate, but we don’t want to admit to ourselves that we procrastinate. So we make excuses to ourselves to avoid the truth. A work progress journal is a simple tool that takes advantage of this reality to help you defeat procrastination.

The novelty of the location, plus its distance from campus, will help jump-start your motivation to tackle your horrible task once there. “I find the change of scenery puts your body in work mode, just as going to the office is supposed to,”

Unfortunately, these five hours a week are probably not enough to complete all of your work (if only that were true!). But they do represent five hours of productivity that didn’t exist before. And, more important, the first work of the day breaks the seal on your motivation.

Procrastination Battle Plan #1: Keep a work progress journal

Procrastination Battle Plan #2: Feed the Machine

Procrastination Battle Plan #3: Make an event out of the worst tasks

Procrastination Battle Plan #4: Build a routine

Procrastination Battle Plan #5: Choose your hard days


By proactively scheduling hard days on a regular basis, you reduce their negative impact. When you are forced into an all-day work marathon against your wishes, you feel drained and abused.

This strategy is more psychological than time saving, but the effect is powerful. Take ownership of your schedule and you are more likely to respect it.

You need multiple locations for two reasons. First, as you move through your day, squeezing in study sessions between classes, it’s nice to always know of a nearby study spot. Second, changing locations prevents you from burning out at any one place. This is the strategy followed by Doris from Harvard, who explains: “to keep my mind stimulated, I regularly rotate between different venues.” The isolation of these spots is important for the obvious reason: It shields you from distraction. That little procrastination devil on your shoulder is an incredible salesman. If you give him even a glimpse of an alternative to your work, then he will close the deal. To neutralize this devil, isolate him.

These mind games are not trite. Don’t underestimate the importance of psychology in becoming an effective student. Almost every straight-A student interviewed for this book followed some variant of this isolation strategy. Some went so far as to wear earplugs or travel great distances from campus to eliminate any chance of distraction. They understood the mental edge their surroundings provided—and you should, too.

Step #1. Manage Your Time in Five Minutes a Day
• Jot down to-dos and deadlines on a list whenever they arise.
• Transfer these to-dos and deadlines to your calendar every morning.
• Plan your day each morning by labeling your to-dos with realistic time frames and moving what you don’t have time for to different dates.

Step #2. Declare War on Procrastination
• Keep a work progress journal, and every day record what you wanted to accomplish and whether or not you succeeded.
• When working, eat healthy snacks to maximize your energy.
• Transform horrible tasks into a big event to help you gather the energy to start.
• Build work routines to make steady progress on your obligations without expending too much of your limited motivational resources.
• Choose your hard days in advance to minimize their impact.

Step #3. Choose When, Where, and How Long
• Try to fit as much work as possible into the morning and afternoon, between classes and obligations.
• Study in isolated locations.
• Take a break every hour.


The key to doing well in these courses is straightforward: Identify the big ideas. That’s what it all comes down to. Exams in nontechnical courses focus entirely on big ideas—they require you to explain them, contrast them, and reevaluate them in the light of new evidence. If you are aware of, and understand, all of the big ideas presented in the course, these tasks are not so difficult, and strong grades will follow.

Capture Big Ideas by Using the Question/Evidence/Conclusion Structure

Students who do well in technical courses are those who closely follow the problems being presented and then insist on asking questions when they don’t understand a specific step. Is this annoying? A little bit. Does it really improve your understanding of the techniques being presented? Absolutely. If you can’t ask a question, then at least clearly mark where you got confused.

If you get ahead of the professor on a given problem, and you have time to kill, annotate the steps with little explanations of what they accomplish or why they’re important. In the cases where you do have time for these annotations, they will prove immensely useful when you review.

Most college students depend on “day-before” assignment planning, meaning they never start an assignment until the day before it’s due. This might be the simplest scheduling decision, but it creates many problems.


When you feel confident in your understanding of the conclusion, record it carefully in your notes. Don’t worry if it takes several sentences to capture the point—err on the side of being thorough.

Don’t try to organize and study in the same day. This is a crucial tactic used by many straight-A students. When you review, you want your brain at full power. If you organize your materials the same day that you review them, your brain will be too tired to accomplish both effectively. So keep these two tasks separate and you’ll end up working more effectively, which reduces the total time spent and produces better results.

Whether it’s philosophy or calculus, the most effective way to imprint a concept is to first review it and then try to explain it, unaided, in your own words. If you can close your eyes and articulate an argument from scratch, or stare at a blank sheet of paper and reproduce a solution without a mistake, then you have fully imprinted that concept. It’s not going anywhere.

Here’s the important part: Don’t do this only in your head! If you’re in a private location, say your answers out loud using complete sentences. As Lydia from Dartmouth explains: “I find that walking around and saying things out loud commits them to memory in a spectacular way.”

No shortcuts. If you don’t say or write it, don’t consider it fully reviewed.

The quiz-and-recall method is powerful because it does not depend on multiple reviews of the same information. Once you’ve articulated an answer out loud in complete sentences, or recorded it clearly with pencil and paper, it will stick in your mind.

Eliminate your question marks.

A study system is only as useful as your ability to adapt it to your unique situation.

Let’s begin by taking a closer look at the paper-writing process itself, which can be broken down into three separate components:
1. Sifting through existing arguments.
2. Forming your own argument.
3. Communicating your argument clearly.

well-understood argument. As a result, we don’t spend much time here. The sooner you dispel the notion that writing is the most important part of paper writing, the easier it will become for you to reap the benefits of the straight-A approach.

Fortunately, straight-A students have figured out a way to walk the research tightrope—getting the information they need without becoming lost amid the endless available sources.
Their strategy can be summarized by a simple phrase: Research like a machine.
They follow a system—a mechanical process, the same for every paper—that produces consistent high-quality results. Feed them a thesis, watch their wheels turn, and then out pops a set of photocopied, organized, and annotated notes.

Their system is based on these four steps:
1. Find sources.
2. Make personal copies of all sources.
3. Annotate the material.
4. Decide if you’re done. (If the answer is “no,” then loop back to #1.)

Make a photocopy or printout of all relevant material. If you find a book that has two chapters related to your topic, photocopy those two chapters. If you find an important journal article, photocopy the entire article. If you find an article online, or a relevant Web site, print it out. The goal is to create your own personal hard copy of all sources.

In general, this approach maximizes the control you have over your information, ensuring that your sources work for you.

In general, proper source annotations should act as concise pointers, containing just enough information to show you where the relevant arguments are hiding.

1. List the topics (specific questions, facts, or accounts from your research) that are crucial to support your thesis.
2. List the topics that might help you support your thesis.

under-outlining. If your outline lacks enough detail, it’s not going to serve its purpose as a structure to guide your writing, and you will end up writing from scratch. You want to avoid this at all costs; it leads to argumentative dead ends and weak structure overall.

Remember, the goal of the straight-A approach is to separate the different components of paper construction. When it comes time to write, you don’t want to be flipping through your sources, hunting down the right support. This drains your energy, increases your pain, takes time, and reduces the quality of your writing. This is why it is crucial that you extract the information from your sources in advance.

Separate your research from your writing and your writing from your editing.

She has no intention of beginning serious researching or writing at this point—it’s too early for that; instead, she’s simply kicking off the nondemanding “thinking phase” of the paper process: choosing a topic, finding a thesis idea, and then getting a second opinion on the idea from her professor.
For her first step, Mindy spends a half hour Monday night flipping through her class notes, trying to find a topic that piques her interest.

Because he separated the reading from the thinking and the thinking from the writing. This leads to a well-thought-out argument, clearly articulated.

Step #1. Target a Titillating Topic
• Start looking for an interesting topic early.

Step #2. Conduct a Thesis-Hunting Expedition
• Start with general sources and then follow references to find the more targeted sources where good thesis ideas often hide.

Step #3. Seek a Second Opinion
• A thesis is not a thesis until a professor has approved it.

Step #4. Research like a Machine
• Find sources.
• Make personal copies of all sources.
• Annotate the material.
• Decide if you’re done. (If the answer is “no,” loop back to #1.)

Step #5. Craft a Powerful Story
• There is no shortcut to developing a well-balanced and easy-to-follow argument.
• Dedicate a good deal of thought over time to getting it right.
• Describe your argument in a topic-level outline.
• Type supporting quotes from sources directly into your outline.

Step #6. Consult Your Expert Panel
• Before starting to write, get some opinions on the organization of your argument and your support from classmates and friends who are familiar with the general area of study.
• The more important the paper, the more people who should review it.

Step #7. Write Without the Agony
• Follow your outline and articulate your points clearly.
• Write no more than three to five pages per weekday and five to eight pages per weekend day.

Step #8. Fix, Don’t Fixate
• Solid editing requires only three careful passes:
– The Argument Adjustment Pass: Read the paper carefully on your computer to make sure your argument is clear, fix obvious errors, and rewrite where the flow needs improvement.
– The Out Loud Pass: Carefully read out loud a printed copy of your paper, marking any awkward passages or unclear explanations.
– The Sanity Pass: A final pass over a printed version of the paper to check the overall flow and to root out any remaining errors.

“All the people I ever admired and respected led balanced lives—studying hard, partying hard, as well as being involved in activities and getting a decent amount of sleep each night. I really think this is the only logically defensible way of doing things.”


By mastering the skills in this book you are, in effect, taking control of your own young life. You are declaring to the world that you’re not at college just because it seemed like the thing to do; instead, you’re there to master new areas of knowledge, expand your mental abilities, and have some fun in the process. You’re also denying your major or the climate of the job market the right to dictate what you can or can’t do after graduation. By scoring exceptional grades, you are opening the door to many interesting and competitive opportunities that allow you, and not anyone else, to make the decision of what post-college pursuits will bring you the most fulfillment. In the end, therefore, this book is about so much more than just grades; it is about taking responsibility for your own journey through life. I wish you the best of luck in this adventure, and hope this advice helps you to launch an exciting future.

Ana 10/08/2020

Foge do comum
Livros que te ?ensinam a estudar? sempre parecem ter a mesma ladainha: corte tudo o que não for ?útil?, o que geralmente inclui sua alegria de viver. Esse livro me interessou por se propor a fugir dessa pegada. A melhor parte dele é que traz uma série de passos concretos que podem teoricamente ser aplicados com facilidade. Vou tentar usar essas estratégias ao longo do novo semestre.

thomas 08/12/2022

útil de verdade !!
eu leio muito livros para melhorar na escola e na vida em geral, alguns tem realmente dicas muito boas esse é um deles. anotei várias coisas, algumas já sabia. li esse livro logo após terminar hábitos atômicos e a diferença foi absurda. aqui não tem encheção de linguiça, cada parte é essencial para a compreensão dos "passos" a serem dados. a surra no james clear que levou trezentas páginas para falar nada.

Feh 30/07/2023

Bem legal
Admiti que dei um ignorada no final por não ser tão relacionado a minha área de estudo mas os insights no geral fizeram a leitura valer a pena!

LitteratureFan 16/01/2024

Bom. Algumas dicas são bem úteis, não tem páginas para encher linguiça, cada uma delas explica o seu propósito.