English is usually a required course in first year.  Going beyond the 100 level, to a BA, BA Honours, MA, or Ph.D., typically requires an overall average of 70% or higher.  Achieving excellence, in English or any other discipline, is far from easy, but it is easy to advise you on how to go about it. 

1. Care passionately about the quality of your writing.  Realize that Hemingway was right when he said, “The first draft is always rubbish.”  So is the second draft.  If you are a luke-warm, so-so writer, your grades will reflect that attitude.  Writing is damnable hard work; achieving clarity, economy, and precision means labour.
2. Care passionately about reading.  If reading is a tedious chore, your grades will reflect it.  Train yourself to read with pleasure, attention, and an open, critical mind.  Read far beyond the required texts.  Read everything you can lay your hands on, with your eyes hanging out.  
3. Learn to take notes.
4. Consider taking a speed reading course.  If you read more slowly than 500 words per minute, you are the intellectual equivalent of a couch potato.  250 wpm?  You are disabled.  2500 wpm or higher will liberate you and get you running again.
5. Discipline yourself to study regularly and hard.
6. Try this approach:  Every Friday, assign yourself a focused question based on the week’s work and write a one-paragraph “essay” on it.  Do this for every class you’re taking, every week.  Don’t spend more than two hours, in total, on all five classes.  By the time you reach the final exam, you will have dozens of papers, invaluable study guides.  By the time you have finished your Ph.D., you will have hundreds of one-page papers, an inspiring record of your academic progress.

Easily said.  Less easily done.  Well worth doing.

Ron Marken, Professor Emeritus, Department of English, University of Saskatchewan, and 3M National Teaching Fellow.

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