Here is how to focus in a boring class as a student who probably faces a lot of taunting incidents which may either be from fellow students or lecturers. It might even be that there are things going up your mind which at the end of the day do not sit well with other physical encounters that happen in the class; there is no need to worry. This article is sharing some things to do in a boring class in order to light up your day again!
A boring class is like a graveyard where nothing seems to be communicating except some bad bad thoughts that may be running through one’s minds for reasons which are personal. Paying attention in class is hard work. Regardless of how interesting you find the subject, staying focused for an hour or more, in a room that might be too warm when you might not have slept enough, with a teacher who might not be as inspiring as you would like, is a challenge.
That’s especially the case in exam or test period, when revising content that you’ve already gone over once gets tedious even with the best of teachers.
Things to Do in a Boring Class
No to worry as here are some of the ways you can always go about conquering your fears of how to focus in a boring class.
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Drink and Eat Well (More of Water)
The best way to ensure that you can concentrate in class is nothing to do with what’s actually happening in the classroom; it’s about what you do before you head to school. Specifically, it’s about getting enough sleep so that you’re not feeling tired, and getting enough water that you’re not feeling hydrated. Keeping a bottle of water in your schoolbag so that you can have a drink whenever you feel thirsty can go a long way towards staying sufficiently hydrated.
Similarly, if you’re finding that being hungry ends up distracting you in lessons, having a healthy snack like nuts and seeds in your bag to eat quickly between lessons can make all the difference.
It can be surprising how much looking after our bodies’ needs can impact our ability to concentrate.
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Speak. Talk. Engage Mates
If you’re not naturally the sort of person who speaks up in class, now is the time to change that. Instead of sitting passively while other people are talking, making sure you participate in class discussion is a good way to keep concentrating, as you’ll need to think about the topic at hand, what other people are saying, and how you might respond to it.
You could even make use of some of the questions that you thought of above. That’s useful if you aren’t confident enough to answer questions yourself; providing a thought-provoking question of your own can be just as useful a contribution.
That’s not to say that you should spend the entire class asking incessant questions. Speaking up once or twice during the course of a discussion is plenty. If you have a particular point that you’d like to make, it’s a good idea to get it said early on, while the rest of the class is still getting warmed up and before someone else says it first.
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Embrace a Source for Motivation
Some of the hardest classes to concentrate in are the ones where you’ve already decided that the class doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s a subject that you’re dropping at the end of the year, that doesn’t have any impact on your final grade, or that you know won’t help you towards your chosen career.
It can be easy to slouch into the classroom, wondering why you’re even bothering, and switch off for an hour. But you (sensibly) don’t want to do that, or else you wouldn’t be reading this article. With subjects where you don’t see the point in trying, do your best to find a source of motivation. That might be having some faith that your education system wouldn’t be requiring you to take this subject if there wasn’t some value in it, even just for broadening your horizons.
Or it might be thinking about your planned future career, and seeing how the subject might have relevance. Or, if neither of those work, make up a scenario where the subject would be useful. Yes, you might think that everything you’re learning in comparative religion is dull, but if you make friends with people of different faiths at university, understanding their beliefs and the festivals they celebrate throughout the year will be invaluable.
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Ensure You Set it Right With Your Best Subject
It can be hard to do anything about the kind of thing that you are being taught, but where possible, do your best to ensure that what you’re being taught is at the right difficulty level for you. Work that’s too hard for you is tricky to concentrate on because you might not be able to understand what’s being said; work that’s too easy can be even more of a challenge because it’s liable to make you bored.
In either situation, if you have the option of choosing a set of problems or an essay title for yourself, take the time to assess the difficulty level that’s right for you. If you aren’t given those sorts of choices, then take the bull by the horns and arrange to speak to your teacher.
Chances are, they’ll have noticed you getting distracted and will welcome your attempt to remedy it. They can set you work that’s more appropriate to your level of understanding, or, if the difficulty level is completely wrong, perhaps even arrange for you to be moved into a different class that might suit you better.
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Don’t Be Ashamed: Ask Yourself Questions
If the work is at the wrong level for you and there’s nothing that can be done about it, one way that you can help yourself focus is by thinking of questions. You don’t necessarily need to ask them, just think of them and perhaps write them down.
If the work is too hard, try to work out what you’d need to know in order to understand it fully. If it’s too easy, have a think about what you would ask in order to advance to the next level. What questions would be asked of you if you were studying this in a more sophisticated way?
Even if difficulty isn’t a problem, thinking of questions can help you concentrate anyway, especially if you’re being taught in a lecture format. Just trying to take things in passively is inevitably tiring and can be dull; thinking of questions is a good way to keep your brain engaged with the topic at hand. If you don’t know where to start, try thinking like a toddler – interrogate the topic with questions like who, why, where, when and how.
