Competition plays an important role in academic achievement because it will often spur you to pursue excellence. There are plenty of productive ways through which you can work harder on your studies and get excited about academic content.

The first step is to train yourself to develop organisational habits that will teach you to be a self-managing and organised student both of which have great contribution to a significant level of competition which will help you to achieve high and catch up with the rest of your classmates. Establishing strong lines of communication with teachers and high-achieving classmates and consulting them on any content that feels difficult is important.

The best way to get out of a failure is changing your mindset about the way you perceive learning and believe in your abilities as potential opportunities to improve your performance. Try to involve yourself in debating competitions, quizzes and standardized tests. Use team-based competitions to make academic material more interesting and engaging.

Academic competition has its downfalls when it leads to stress and anxiety, especially if you are not equipped with skills to handle the pressure. Secondly, it’s important to remember that, in academic competitions, not everyone wins. So if you don’t emerge the winner, you should learn to be gracious and don’t allow the loss to damage your self-esteem or hinder your enthusiasm to participate in future competitions. Small disappointments should train you to become more resilient and feel good about the experience as a whole.

Don’t give up with extracurricular activities like sports, musical, drama or community events to focus solely on academic challenges. Competition can be negative when it leads to unbalanced living. So pick courage and have a balanced approach to preparing and executing academic challenges, without sacrificing your other passions.

Try to focus on your personal academic goals and individualized progress to do your personal best, rather than entirely competing against peers. I would encourage you to put your career goals on the top of everything in order to arrive at a fulfilling and bright future.

Don’t give up with studies but rather, re-orient your ambitions and take advantage of your down time to open your mind to new knowledge and experiences through doing constant revision, taking notes in class and tell yourself that ‘yes’ you can perform as well as the others can.

That way, you will be on the way to greater academic success.