How should one stop worrying about grades and focus on learning and gaining the most out of classes?

Stop teaching yourself to a test. And maybe even get a bad grade. I was a 4.0 student up til junior year. Got my first C. Realized how fucking little I actually knew about each class despite always getting As. Despite that C, that struggle and that class made me learn more about that topic than all my other math classes before. So I had to play catch up from all my past courses I took to better understand concepts instead of just teaching myself the test.

Learn to realize that whatever you're doing right now, if you are just "teaching yourself to the test" will not work later. It took me a bad grade to realize how little I was learning. Maybe you can start now without getting a bad grade.

Since I got that C I became a lot more relaxed about my grades as long as I understood what i was doing. Several times I was an A student and realized that I didn't feel smart or that I wasn't learning anything. And I wasn't. I'm not saying you can't be an all A student and learn well, I'm just saying my process in which I realized grades aren't necessarily a good determinant of my learning.

/r/AskProfessors Thread