tips – Canada India Education Council

Source: US News

One Sunday in late August 2007, my college swim coach sat down with me and six of my teammates. Our American peers had been dismissed and we were left, a group of international students representing Sweden, South Africa, Croatia, and France.

“This first week of classes, you have a special assignment,” he said. “After each class you must introduce yourself to your professors. Then you must come up with a question, go to their office hours and ask it. It can be a question you already know the answer to; it doesn’t matter, just go anyway.”

It was the evening before the first day of classes. I was a 19-year-old freshman at Limestone College, a small college in rural South Carolina, and was strongly considering not completing my coach’s seemingly pointless assignment.

Later I realized it was the most important piece of advice anyone gave me during my years in college.

Most college professors share a number of attributes. They enjoy learning, which is why they chose a profession allowing them to read and research. They enjoy being around young people, which is why they chose to work in a college environment. And they, too, have been young at some point.

As an international student you bring to the table knowledge and points of view that can differ widely from those of your American peers. For a professor, usually an expert in his or her given field, this is extremely intellectually stimulating. Professors also, like any teacher, love to share their expertise.

Being able to carry an intelligent conversation with your professor on the subject he or she teaches will therefore elevate you to a level far above that of the average student. Seeking help outside of class doesn’t show that you are unintelligent, but that you are a motivated student.

So when you eventually fall behind, miss a class or fail to hand in an assignment, the relationship you have established with your professor will become invaluable. Your occasional tardiness can always slip by, because you have already proved that you are a good student, right?

U.S. colleges often have dozens of scholarship programs funded by various earmarked endowments, and more often than not professors make up most of the committees selecting the recipients. The hours you spend getting to know your professor may end up being rather lucrative.

And although you probably won’t be thinking about graduate school during your first week of classes, one day you just may, and already knowing whom you can ask for a letter of recommendation will lift a significant weight off of your shoulders.

Last but not least, most professors are genuinely nice and interesting people, which itself is enough reason to reach out to them.

As for me, I ended up doing what my coach told me. It resulted in not only an additional academic scholarship, an academic award, solid grades and a number of grad school recommendations, but also friendships that have lasted to this day.

It all began with an outstretched hand and a “hello.”

Anders Melin, from Sweden, is a former collegiate swimmer for Limestone College and the University of Missouri, where he earned an undergraduate degree in finance. He is now pursuing a master’s degree in journalism at New York University.

Source: Chatelaine

By Stephen R. Covey, PhD, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

Feel overwhelmed by your ever-expanding to-do list? We went to world-renowned productivity guru Stephen R. Covey to find out how you can master your universe.

Important	Q1: NECESSITY Crises Emergency meetings Last-minute deadlines Pressing problems Unforeseen challenges	Q2: EXTRAORDINARY RESULTS Proactive work High-impact goals Creative thinking Planning Prevention Relationship building Learning and renewal
Not important	Q3: DISTRACTION Needless interruptions Unnecessary reports Irrelevant meetings Other people's minor issues Unimportant emails, tasks, phone calls, status posts, etc.	Q4: WASTE Trivial work Avoidance activities Excessive relaxation, television, gaming, internet Time-wasters Gossip
	Urgent	Not Urgent

DOES THIS DESCRIBE YOUR LIFE?

No time for exercise in the morning. Mainline coffee. Dive into your email and spend all day answering other people’s questions. This ‘work’ piles up, so you can’t take time for lunch. Work late and go home exhausted to an equally exhausted family. You’re so wired you can’t sleep, so you burn up the night surfing the internet or watching TV. The next day, it starts over. Although you’re incredibly tired and busy, you never feel like you’re accomplishing anything meaningful. Our lives are made up of activities that are more or less important and more or less urgent. That means everything we do falls into one of these four quadrants—and learning which one to occupy can make all the difference.

QUADRANT 1: Necessity
Quadrant 1 tasks are urgent and important. These are the things that come at you that you need to take care of now. That’s why it’s called the Quadrant of Necessity. An angry client is on the phone, a friend has a heart attack, the printer breaks down at the office.

People who live primarily in Q1 are urgency addicts. The gateway to the mind is cluttered with critical priorities that demand attention, now!

QUADRANT 3: Distraction

Quadrant 3 pursuits are urgent but not important. Many people spend a lot of time in Q3 thinking they’re in Q1. Really, they’re just reacting to other people’s little crises: phone calls, email, text messages, routine but empty meetings, people dropping by—all these can deceive them into thinking they’re getting things done, but really they’re just spinning their wheels. Meanwhile, truly important priorities fall off the agenda.

Q3 people are also urgency addicts. This space has always been the true enemy of productivity—and even more so now, thanks to the technological tsunami that swamps us daily.

QUADRANT 4: Waste

Quadrant 4 activities are neither urgent nor important. We call this the Quadrant of Waste because literally nothing gets productive gets done. People who live in Q4 watch too much TV, spend hours and hours playing video games, surf the internet into the early hours, or load trivial updates onto Facebook all day.

The human brain that hovers constantly over distractions on electronic screens is a Q4 brain. It does what prizewinning author William Powers, in his book Hamlet’s Blackberry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age, calls “the digital dance… zipping from email to email to text to Web page to buzzing mobile and back again.”

There’s everything right with relaxing and having fun as long as it’s not excessive and motivated by a desire to evade important priorities. There’s everything wrong with burning out and burning up your time with mindless entertainment.

QUADRANT 2: Extraordinary Results

Quadrant 2 tasks are important but not urgent. This is the Quadrant of Extraordinary Results because here you take charge of your own life and create your own great future. Q2 people do the thoughtful, creative, proactive work that changes the world. They plan, they prepare, they prevent crises. They learn, they create, they build relationships. They continually renew their energy levels so they don’t burn out. They do the things everyone knows are important but few seem to get to.

THE 10-MINUTE TRICK

The return on your investment in Q2 is always more than the time and energy you put into it. Ten minutes to plan your day can make the other 23 hours and 50 minutes much more productive. A quick read of the latest journal in your field can put you far ahead of others in a meeting. And an afternoon’s outing with your child can help build a lifelong bond.

How does it feel to live in Q2? Some of the words we’ve heard: “Fulfilled, at peace, energized, in control.” People who live in Q2 habitually put first things first in their lives. They do most of the truly productive work. They transcend the ordinary and live extraordinary lives. They don’t just get things done, they get the right things done.

HOW TO PUT FIRST THINGS FIRST

Get out of Q3 and Q4 entirely. No one should have to live a life of distraction or despair.

Visit Q1 only when you must. Too much time in Q1 burns you out because it’s mostly managing crises you could prevent if you spent more time in Q2. Move to Q2—permanently!

We started by describing a typical day in a life outside Q2. So what’s a Q2 day like?

You get a little exercise in the morning, maybe a refreshing walk. Eat a sensible breakfast. On the job, you tackle the most important things first, the things that will make the most difference over time, instead of getting buried in a pile of email. Lunch with real people instead of your laptop so you feed the relationships you value. After work you reconnect with your loved ones. Watch some fun TV or play a game. And all this time you’re working towards goals that have real meaning for you.

Think about the consequences of neglecting Q2, as so many are doing more and more in this distracted age. In the end, if you haven’t chosen to live in Q2, it won’t matter with other quadrants you choose to live in.

At the age of 26, within the space of what is called his “miracle year,” Albert Einstein published three scientific papers that transformed our understanding of the universe. Some of his ideas arose during long hours of what most people would call daydreaming, in which he did his “thought experiments.” He knew that riding up in an elevator makes you heavier—what would happen, he asked, if the elevator were to accelerate infinitely? Would you become infinitely heavy? He thought about traveling on a light ray. He wondered what matter really is and why there is energy in the universe. What would a 26-year-old Einstein be doing if he lived in our noisy, attention-deficit 21st century? Would he be dreaming about what it be like to ride on a beam of light? Or would he be updating his Facebook status for the 30th time today?

Stephen R. Covey is a leadership and organizational expert. For more great ideas, go to the5choices.com.

DOES THIS DESCRIBE YOUR LIFE?

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