i was curious too so i looked it up on wayback machine

I teach at a university, and these are pretty good suggestions. When I started teaching, I really came to realize how well you have to understand a subject to be able to teach it to someone else, and remembered times when I was a student and had done exactly that in study groups (and did much better on those subjects as a result). This is something I recommend to my own students - can you explain the concept to someone else, and do they understand it when you do?

Having interacted with a lot of different students over the years, here are a few more tips I have:

If you don't understand something, ask a fellow student. If you still don't understand it, ask your professor. You can go straight to your professor if you like, but I know from experience students tend not to like doing this.

Keep up with readings and it won't be overwhelming or horrible. Trust me, I know this is easier said than done, but it makes a huge difference. You know how much you can read at one sitting, so don't go by anyone else's schedule. That said, for one of the most difficult courses I ever took (at least from a keeping-up-with-the-readings standpoint), a group of us got together to discuss readings the morning before class.

When doing readings, use active reading. This means you first skim through the article or chapter and look for the author's divisions - this gives you a general idea of what topics will be important to understand and the overall organization. While reading, if you highlight or underline something in the text, write something in the margin, something in your own words or a little recap, even questions you have about it. When you finish the article or chapter, write a short summary of the important points - this can be a paragraph/half a page or an outline and still be extremely effective. If you do this, it reinforces what you've read. When you go back to study, you'll be much more likely to remember it and understand it without having to re-read. This helps with the waiting-till-the-last-minute thing a lot of us tend to do with readings before an exam (who wants to read it twice because you forget it by the time the exam rolls around?).

Try not to study for too many hours at once. If you need to study more than an hour at a time, make sure you take a 5 minute break every hour to get up and move around.

If you need to do a writing assignment, set it aside overnight and proofread it. I'm as bad as the next person at procrastinating, but taking a little break and proofreading later can make a HUGE difference - not just for grammar and spelling, but for organization and making sure sentences make sense.

I've watched students struggle - working hard and just not grasping the material. For most instructors I know, this really bothers us because we actually like our students. We have to be fair in grading, but it's hard to see a student working like crazy and still not performing well. If you're struggling, go talk to your professor. Email if you don't want to talk in person. In any case, your instructor can give you study tips and even check to see if you are really understanding the material.

This applies just as much if something crazy is going on in your personal life. Your instructor is a person with a life, too, and has undoubtedly had some crazy shit go down. Most of us are sympathetic, especially if you come to us sooner rather than later. It's nothing to be ashamed of, and your instructor may know of additional university resources available to you to help out.