Review: 10 Steps to Earning Awesome Grades (While Studying Less) by Thomas Frank

Genre: 160

Pages: nonfiction, productivity

My thoughts

Rating out of five: five

I’ve followed Thomas Frank and his youtube channel and podcast “college info geek” for a few years and picked this book up before the new schoolyear, my last year before university. You know that guilt you feel when you’re not prepared enough? I picked up this book wanting to get tips on a better school – life balance, but honestly I was not expecting a lot of new information. I’ve gone down the rabbit hole of productivity resources out there more than most my age. Even though I’ve seen a fair share of College Info Geek youtube videos, I think I’ve gotten A LOT out of this book! It’s obvious that there’s a lot of research behind it, this book is truly like a summary of ten main things you can improve, giving me valuable details. When the topic becomes too in-depth he refers to a couple videos of his or what you can further research or other books on the topic. I am definitely watching the videos on note taking in the next week, along with trying to figure out what’s the most effective way for spaced out repetition.

Some of the many steps that I found valuable to me: tips for organization, a more systematic way to resolving problems and asking for help, tips for actively reading text books, different ways to take notes, recipe on how to write essays. There were also some that were just comforting, like how to learn math and agreeing on how bad group projects are. I took notes while reading it, to have for later in the semester as well, and hope to implement some changes one after the other and see what works for me. I really how Thomas Frank gives different alternatives to do a thing and that it’s easy to focus on one or two steps and bettering your productivity and create habits in that area. Whether you’ve already been interested in productivity or just want to get better grades, reading this book is a good first step.

I paid one dollar on amazon, beut you can also get it for free here: https://collegeinfogeek.com/get-better-grades/