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Knowing your strengths and weaknesses

Be a scientist and study yourself

You must learn your unique strengths and challenges if you want to improve your academic performance. The better you know yourself, the better you can create plans and use strategies that maximize your strengths and compensate for weaknesses.

Engage in regular reflection. Read the sections below and then choose one or two things to try to focus on improving. Any time you try a new strategy, make sure to take some time afterward to evaluate its success.

Areas that commonly impact academic performance

Planning

Planning involves many distinct components.

If you’re regularly blindsided by exams or deadlines, this would be an area to focus on right away.

Do you know what tasks you need to work on first? Do you know how to distribute your time when you can’t get it all done?

Do you have a planning system that works well for you?

Do you have trouble starting or finishing big projects on time?

How often are you able to execute your plan? Sometimes the problem is creating a realistic plan. Other times, it’s follow-through (see below). Being able to accurately estimate time is an important component of knowing if a plan is realistic. If you have ADHD, ASD, a learning disorder, or notice that you have difficulty tracking time, you may want to visit our page on time awareness where you can use our simple tool to assess your time estimation skill.

Follow-through

(AKA doing the things you have planned) 

It’s pretty common to be decent at planning and terrible at follow-through. We’ve listed some common factors that impact follow-through below. Take a moment to reflect on each one. Is it a strength? A challenge? If it’s a challenge for you, does it create problems occasionally, sometimes, frequently, or all the time?

Staying focused is crucial to getting work done. But so is changing focus. Many students who struggle with focus vacillate between not being able to stay focused and being hyper-focused. If you’ve been diagnosed with ASD or ADHD or if you struggle with perfectionism, you’ll want to check out our page on strategies for switching tasks.

Additionally, our motivation, alertness, and focus fluctuate throughout the day. Some of us do our best work at night while others focus best in the morning. The more you work with your natural rhythm, the easier it will be to use your time effectively. Check out our page on structuring your day for more information on how to optimize your schedule.

Perseverance

(AKA sticking with things when they are hard) 

We all get derailed from time to time. But some of us are more prone to getting thrown way off track when we encounter an obstacle. If you notice that you have a tendency to get overwhelmed and/or give up when the going gets tough, you may want to start with our page on What to do when things go wrong.

Symptom flare-ups

Many symptoms of physical and psychological disorders are inconsistent. Some days you may barely notice your symptoms and other days they significantly impact all aspects of your life. The better you understand your triggers and flare-up patterns, the easier it will be to manage them. We’ve got some suggestions for reflecting on your symptom patterns.

Test Taking

If your exam scores are lower than you want them to be, keep in mind that test taking is skill. When you’re trying to improve test scores, consider two things:

  • how you study
  • how you take your exams

We recommend reviewing our resources on studying and test taking strategies to reflect on your strengths and challenges in these areas. To gather more data on where you could improve in the actual taking of tests, you can perform a test autopsy. Many people who perform lower than desired on exams have test anxiety and benefit from using strategies to manage it.

Going to class

Going to class can have a huge positive impact on your grades. But some DRS students find it very challenging to attend classes consistently. Other students find it challenging to remember to bring all the things they need to each class. For that reason, we’ve got a whole page dedicated to troubleshooting getting to class, work, and other activities on time and with everything you need.

Note taking

We are not born knowing how to take good notes. Luckily, we can get better at taking notes with a little bit of practice. Many students find that they need to adjust their note taking strategies as their coursework gets more complicated. If you have an accommodation that relates to note taking, such as permission to audio record lectures, you also need to figure out how to use your accommodation effectively.

Academic strengths/weaknesses

We all have very different academic strengths and weaknesses. Reflect on what classes you’ve found easy and what have been difficult. When reflecting on your strengths and weaknesses, consider not only subject areas but also types of work required in different classes. Consult with your academic advisor to determine how you can maximize your strengths. Sometimes, it’s important to develop an area of weakness. Discuss the best time to take a hard class with your academic advisor.

  • Subjects: math, science, English, philosophy, economics, languages, etc.
  • Types of work:
    • Essays
    • Problem sets
    • Exams
    • Labs
    • Group work
    • Presentations
    • Research

Dealing with transitions

Transitions include major changes like starting college, moving homes, and changing degree programs as well as smaller changes like the beginning or end of a quarter. Transitions are cognitively and emotionally demanding, even when they are positive and we want them to happen. Psychological disorders tend to flare up during transitions.

Gather information about your diagnosis

Everyone experiences their diagnosis differently based on a number of internal and external factors. It helps to have some general information about the common symptoms and impacts of your diagnosis so you can monitor yourself to see if those apply to you. Spending time getting to know your individual impacts can help you tailor and prioritize strategies.

What could be interfering with using your self-knowledge effectively

Hoping a demanding academic course load will fix problems

You may think that you cannot feel good about yourself unless you can demonstrate that you can handle a difficult course load. Or maybe you think that you need to push yourself this quarter to compensate for other quarters that did not go well. This can feel particularly urgent if you’re worried about being able to graduate within a certain timeframe or if you’re worried about potential financial implications of taking more time.

It’s common for students to respond to experiencing failures in past quarters by making the next one even tougher. But this tends to backfire. Before you take on more work, you need to make sure you’ve addressed the underlying factors that contributed to the past failure. Sometimes, this means seeking a different kind of treatment (i.e. therapy or medication). Other times, this includes having more realistic expectations for yourself and addressing barriers to success.

Wishing you were someone else

We all compare ourselves to other people. Sometimes it’s helpful such as when it helps you visualize different ways to approach the same problem. However, it can also be incredibly unhelpful such as when your self-worth hinges on performing like others or when you choose people to compare yourself to that have very different life experiences, brains, or past and present resources. Sometimes it’s tough to accept your path when it’s different from those around you. But it’s rarely sustainable to be someone who you are not. Being more accepting and realistic in your self-assessment will free you up to maximize your own potential and focus on your strengths.

Decreased cognitive flexibility

Cognitive flexibility is the ability to take information that you’ve learned and apply it to a new situation. In planning, it helps you adjust your plans and goals as new information is gained. It helps you identify what’s not working and come up with solutions to the problems you are facing.

Decreased cognitive flexibility is a common component of many mental health issues. When you reflect on times of past struggle, do you notice a tendency to stick with the same plan even when the outcome is not what you want? Do you tend to dig in your heels in when others encourage you to consider alternatives? Do you find it challenging to compromise in any area of life (i.e. you want to keep taking the same or harder course load without letting go of extracurriculars, social obligations, grade expectations, etc.) If so, consider learning about growth mindset.

Coping with stigma

Stigma surrounding some disabilities may have decreased in the past decade, but it still exists. You may worry about how others view you and sometimes this can make it hard to be proactive about strategizing for disability-related issues. If you experience discrimination in other aspects of your identity, you may be particularly worried about managing the perceptions of others. Stigma can also impact how you relate to yourself. We all internalize messages from the dominant culture to some degree and this can show up in self-perceptions about being “lazy” or “not smart.”

It helps to have a person or two whom you can talk to about your experiences of stigma and discrimination so you can begin to separate these messages from how you relate to yourself. The D Center and Disability Advocacy Student Alliance at UW are also good resources. If you think you may be encountering disability-related discrimination in the academic environment, please reach out to your coordinator at DRS so we can help you figure out next steps.