How to Make an Epic Academic Comeback

I Turned My Academic Struggles into Success in the Toughest Military Program

My academic journey has been a wild rollercoaster—causing my mom many sleepless nights. I went from being an excellent middle school student to needing a 'learning specialist' in high school. Ms. Anderson was great, but I didn't care enough to try. I could pass without doing any work, so why would I?

My nonchalant attitude finally caught up to me when I was 18. I was accepted into one of the top engineering schools in the country despite being a 2.5 GPA student with 0 study skills. It should go without saying that I promptly dropped out after one semester, $10,000 poorer. I learned that you can't exactly get an engineering degree without studying or doing homework.

I bought some tools a few months later and began work as a union carpenter. I loved woodshop as a kid, so it was a perfect fit. I enjoyed working in New York City's skyscrapers. I was good at my job and got paid handsomely for my age.

Nevertheless, a voice came creeping in that I was wasting my potential. A voice that emerged from a combination of coworkers telling me I'm "too smart to be humping drywall for the next 30 years" and my inflated self-image developed from years of being a "gifted" student.

After four years of construction, I was ready to move on—I gave my number to a recruiter. I was looking for something that challenged me, and I found it. I joined the most academically challenging program the military has to offer, the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program. You must be in the top 20% of ASVAB scores to make it into Nuke School. Over 10% of those top quartile sailors still don't make it through.

This week, I graduated from Nuke A-School 3rd in my class with a 3.62 GPA. Here's how I did it:

Step 1: Clarify Your Goals

The first step to achieving anything you want is carefully setting your aim. Research shows that the best professional athletes look at their target slightly longer than their competitors before taking a shot. Apply this to your studies.

If you focus on your goal longer than your competition, you will be more accurate in hitting your target.

Set SMART goals. This powerful mnemonic acronym ensures your goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. It's like having a roadmap to your success.

SPECIFIC goals have a desired outcome that is clearly understood and specific actions to get you there. Think about the habits that would have the best return on investment and prioritize those.

MEASURABLE goals involve numbers. You need a quantitative way to track your progress. I recommend tracking study hours and test scores.

ATTAINABLE goals maintain motivation and enthusiasm in your journey. Setting lofty goals is great, but setting the bar too high is dangerous. It can lead to lower self-confidence and abandonment of your goals altogether.

RELEVANT goals align with your higher-order goals. This is the most underrated criterion of SMART goals. Maybe you want to get into college (or be able to afford it through scholarships). Or you want to make your mother proud. Connect your goal to the broader picture. It will drive your actions and make doing the hard work easier and more rewarding.

TIME-BOUND goals are inevitable in school because courses have finals. Those of you studying outside of a classroom must create your own deadline to build a sense of urgency. Projects expand to the time allotted for them. If you allot 3 months when it could be done in 3 weeks, you'll half-ass your studies. Set time constraints that push you to your limit.

Step 2: Incentivize Learning

Incentives make the world go round. We all trade our time for resources. Companies financially incentivize us to help them make money. Colleges take our time and money with the promise of a good education—and a better salary because of it. I gave up my freedom to the Navy for a $75,000 incentive and the promise of a great career after I served. You, too, can incentivize yourself to do well in school. Set rewards for hitting your goals, and watch your motivation soar.

My reward for hitting my goal on exams was ordering UberEats. If I did exceptionally well, I'd get sushi and play video games that night. As a result, I was more motivated to memorize as much material as humanly possible. I also punished myself when I didn't do as well, taking away music or Netflix privileges as a result of my poor performance.

Level 3: Gamify Learning

There's a test in A-School commonly referred to as the widow maker—a test so difficult that the last seven classes before mine scored below 2.85/4 (less than 10% above a failing average). My class—a slightly below-average class—scored a 3.1 with only 2 failures! And I attribute it to the gamification of study. That week, we would race to see who could regurgitate a list of the fastest and incorrectly labeled valves to see if someone could spot the error. We even created a game of Jeopardy! for the whole class to play the day before our exam.

Personal rivalry can be a great source of motivation. I was the second in the class before my shipmate, Mickelson, snuck past me. I publicly vowed to pass him back. He was determined to hold his new spot as #2. We would study separately and compare scores after each exam. There was plenty of trash talk, and it made the work much more fun. I even passed him back after our second to last test, with a GPA just 0.005 higher than his. Unfortunately, on the final exam, he barely edged me out. Without our rivalry, I certainly wouldn't have tried as hard as I did.

Find ways to make learning fun for you. Make a game out of it and keep score.

Step 4: Optimize Studying

I found three techniques that are most effective when studying for an exam. The first is the use of mnemonics. Mnemonics are just systems used to aid memory. They are universally utilized when teaching young children. Still, we seem to focus on brute-force memorization as we grow older.

If I ask you to list the rainbow colors in order, you probably think of ROY G BIV even though you haven't had to think of them in years. That's the power of mnemonics. Remember, when creating your mnemonics, the funny, strange, and raunchy mnemonics tend to stick better in your mind.

Second, I'd recommend finding a way to incorporate group study into your habits. Before an exam, I would quiz a friend, and we would fill in gaps in each other's knowledge. Teaching others has been proven to help you learn better in what scientists call the protégé effect. They also found that the teacher benefits more than the pupil. It's often best to keep group sizes small—no more than 3 to a group. Large groups tend to be less productive because they are more easily distracted.

Finally (and most importantly), utilize active recall when studying. Active recall is pulling information from memory rather than inputting that information into your head.

We often study by scanning through our notes, highlighting important information, or writing it repeatedly. Think about how many times you've looked at and typed out your credit card number, yet you still don't have it memorized.

How can you expect to accurately remember anything if you don't practice calling it to memory? Instead of putting information into your brain, practice pulling it out because that's what you'll be doing on the exam. Active recall improves memory speed and reveals where you lack knowledge so you can prioritize those sections.

These four steps helped me go from being at the bottom of my high school class to being at the top of my class in the most demanding academic program in the US military. I hope they help you get to your goals, too.