How avoiding the Freshman 15 will boost your GPA
Welcome to another personal story written by one of our Staff Writers at Homework Help Global. In this personal story, our Writer discusses the importance of exercising and how working out helped to boost her GPA when she was in university.
As the phrase “freshman 15” highlights, first-year university students tend to let their health slide. Late night study sessions typically take priority over trips to the gym. But research shows that the instinct to spend hours hunched over a computer in the library couldn’t be more misguided. Making time to exercise — even if it means cutting into study time — can make your GPA skyrocket.
The Three P’s
First things first: why do freshmen gain weight so consistently? The answer lies with the two closely interconnected Ps: pressure and partying. Students are under huge amounts of pressure: they’ve got tight deadlines, assignments that can be worth up to 100% of their final grades, and massive student loans or debts they know they’ll have to find a great job to pay off. It doesn’t help that many are living alone or away from their parents for the first time ever. To deal with all of these foreign pressures, lots of students party. They don’t know about all the healthy things they could do to cope with stress, and without their parents keeping them in check, they tend to let loose. Some consume excessive — even dangerous — amounts of calorie-dense beer and liquor. Others indulge in comfort food that makes them feel better in the short term, but makes them pack on the pounds over time.
Those students who are most vulnerable to the two Ps also tend to have questionable study habits, including a third P: procrastination. Rather than breaking their semester’s work down into bite-sized pieces they could more easily digest over a longer period of time, many first years try to power through all their final essays and studying at the last minute.
Knowing they only have six more hours to start and submit that paper before the deadline, they’ll stay up all night to get it done.
Or, they’ll sit in the library for days on end, trying to learn a semester’s worth of material in a single week.
How Academic Performance Is Affected
What these students don’t realize is that their instinct to do nothing but study is actually dragging their academic performance down. Endless research has been conducted on students’ study and exercise habits, and it all shows that those who find time to work out get better grades.
One study showed that students who hit the gym 16 times monthly received GPAs of 3.10 or higher.
The effects of exercise were still strong for those who went less frequently: students who worked out just seven times a month — once or twice a week — had GPAs of 3.06 or higher. Another study found that a one-hour increase in time spent exercising each week correlates with 0.06 more GPA points. Finally, a third study controlled for gender, study time, and area of study, noting that these variables might influence students’ GPA independently of their exercise habits. Even still, those who exercised every day had GPAs 0.4 points higher than students who didn’t.
My Personal Perspective
I know this to be true from personal experience. While I wasn’t a partier or procrastinator, my first year of university was full of pressure. Having made the mistake of signing up for more than a full course load, I quickly discovered there weren’t enough hours in the day to get all my reading, research, writing, and studying done — so I reasoned I would just sleep less. After finishing my first semester completely exhausted and with only satisfactory grades to show for my tireless efforts, I knew I needed to take a different approach. When classes started up again in January, I resolved to spend just two hours in the campus gym every week. On Mondays and Thursdays, no matter how far behind I was in course readings, and no matter how many essay deadlines I had coming up, I marched myself onto the treadmill. It felt so counterintuitive to spend even these short amounts of my precious time anywhere other than the library, but my grades spoke for themselves: having “lost” two hours of study time weekly, for a total of 32 “lost” hours of study time over the winter semester, the high Bs and low As I’d gotten in December had transformed into straight As by the end of April. Gym time turned out to be the furthest thing from “lost” time.
The next time any of the three Ps threaten to sabotage your grades, do yourself a favour and revisit your workout routine. A bi-weekly trip to the gym could be the key to bumping you up an entire letter grade. Still unsure how you’ll find the time? Check out our blog for some time management pro tips that will help you schedule your next sweat session.
References
Casey, J. (2017). The ‘Freshman 15’ Means More Than Weight Gain. WebMD. Retrieved from:http://teens.webmd.com/features/freshman-15-means-more-than-weight-gain#1
EAB. (2016). Gym time correlated with graduating, making better grades. Retrieved from: https://www.eab.com/daily-briefing/2016/05/05/gym-time-correlated-with-graduating-making-better-grades?WT.mc_id=Email%7CDaily+Briefing+Headline%7CDBA%7CDB%7CMay-05-2016%7C%7C%7C%7C%7C
Mihalopoulos, N. L., Auinger, P., & Klein, J. D. (2008). The Freshman 15: Is it Real? Journal of American College Health. Retrieved from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2532948/
Murphy, S. (2012). Drink, not fees, is the biggest problem at universities. The Guardian. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/education/mortarboard/2012/jan/18/drink-worse-than-fees
Parker-Pope, T. (2010). Vigorous Exercise Linked With Better Grades. The New York Times. Retrieved from: https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/vigorous-exercise-linked-with-better-grades/?_r=0
Purdue University. (2013). College students working out at campus gyms get better grades. Purdue Today. Retrieved from: http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2013/Q2/college-students-working-out-at-campus-gyms-get-better-grades.html
