ALOIS GRABER

Date: 14th february 2025

TOPPING SCHOOL

There can only be one topper, and I wasn't him. Nonetheless, I got pretty close while doing 18.18% more credits than what I was supposed to do. Additionally, in my whole life, and I mean this, I have never gotten as good grades as I got in the past semester. Not even in primary school. I want to look at what helped me achieve this in order to have something to come back to when I feel lost.

• Taking my iron: In my family we tend to have an iron deficiency and taking iron has helped me have enough energy.
• Taking Mirgos vitamins all in one when I got sick. I have no scientific proof but those vitamins have helped me not get sick, or only mildly.
• Meditating every morning for 5 to 15 minutes with the headspace app.
• Being older than the average due to having worked for one year in the swiss civil service. Being older means having a more developed brain which not always leads to good grades but it helps.
• Managing my motivation: At a certain point I had to quit YouTube and instagram for me to have enough energy for school. I also didn't force myself to do anything most of the time. Instead, when I didn't want to do school rather than loosing energy on school I did nothing. Literally. I stared at a wall. For hours sometimes. Then most of the time I started wanting to go back to my studies.
• Being aware that everything is uncertain: I can forget to give a piece of my exam back to my teacher. I can miss a page and only solve parts of the exam. I can become sick right before the exam and not be able to learn. These are all things that might happen and that do happen. Being aware of it when people tell "yeah you are going to do great" is really helpful to staying close to reality and prepared for possible missteps.
• Not saying I want to get good grades: Saying that you want something to someone can work as a substitute for actually wanting it if it isn't accompanied by saying something like: "I want to do this, but it's going to be very hard so kick me in the butt whenever I need it."
• Saying that it's going to be though. Which is true no matter what you, or I attempt to do.
• Getting around the right people. When I say this I mean Janis, whom I spent 90% of my time with in university. He tries to behave morally right and has gotten the best grades out of all the people I know. He's always been very good at school.
• Going to every class. Not allowing myself to fall back.
• Repeating one class of one week every morning during the semester. Memorizing everything from that week and or doing the exercises again.
• Focusing: Saying no to a lot of things. E.g. saying no to skiing in order to learn.
• No scoreboard: I couldn't get distracted looking and thinking about my grades because I had none. I only have exams twice a year. This left me with much focus for actually learning and feeling what I need to do better.
• Other unknown reasons.