how do you keep up academically?

Just a little farther to be academically safe. Pandemic messed up my semester 2 grades which led me to a 5....ಥ‿ಥ
Gradually picking that up & currently around 6.9 and if I do the normal job as usual, I'll be in safe zone or else.....

I recommend setting a goal first and work towards it. I initially thought about getting an above average grade but as I'm now, it's not possible, so I decided to atleast secure a safe zone. You can drive yourself to work hard as long as you have a clear goal in your mind.

Set goals for every major test or sem

I don't. I fall behind a bit because I overslept or forgot to do something, get discouraged by the extra work I have ahead of me, and then escape to games instead of doing the work, which makes me fall behind even more. Continue down that spiral of regret and existential dread, eventually deciding to give up after a few days/weeks of it.

Not the answer you were looking for, but hey, at least it's an example of what not to do. Setting a goal like R2R said is a good idea if you can figure one out.

simple answer. i dont xD

Like everyone is saying, have a goal in mind. What I do is that I always finish my homework as soon as it's assigned to me because I think to myself If I finish it now then I'll have more free time and I can do whatever I want later, and I won't be as stressed as I was when it was assigned to me

Last semester I don't really study but then I realized that I go here because I wanna study, so this semester, I've been studying at night, just give a lil time to study and rest myself. For homework, I ask my friend whenever I think it's hard or asks someone who knows that course. at least give yourself time to study and to rest, also to have fun so you won't feel burdened.. Manage your time and be disciplined at yourself! When it's time to study you have to study.

The best way to pracice is to do exercices. Try to do everything without looking at your book, and even if you know you are writing bullshit, do every single one without consulting anything. Afterwards, check the solutions and see what you missed and revise those themes. Don't waste time making pretty summaries/notes outside of class, just focus on exercises.
Some general tips are managing your time well, be organised, take notes during class and always ask what you don't know, your teachers are there to help, they probably won't be annoyed by it. Also, stop watching anime and be on your phone before studying, treat it as a reward for studying for a certain amount of time.
Also, rest and eat well, you don't know the difference that makes. If you just eat something sugary before a test, you will see better results. The same thing if you sleep at least eight hours before one. But hese are only minor increases, you need to do the above to improve, at least for me.

It depends how much free time you have. I often don't have much free time as I have other activities after school. So one thing that has always worked for me is actually listening during the lectures. I don't know how other countries or schools has it but... Here many students don't pay much attention, leading them to studying way more than that's necessary.

Taking notes, listening in class and asking questions = less studying outside of school. At least for me, everyone is different.

I also recommend going to those extra help/study lectures, our school has those during certain days and hours and I often try to go to them as much as possible, often with a friend. But if you don't have that then I always recommend libraries, there is always that one library that offers study sessions, with actual teachers.
And it's like, free tutoring, which can actually be good. Because the difference between those teachers in the libraries, and the teachers in schools is that one of those two is doing it voluntarily, meanwhile one is getting paid. I am not saying all teachers in schools are bad but, from my experience, if you do something out of your own free will, you actually care for that, teachers in schools may care as well, but again, it's rare they care as much as those teachers that do it voluntarily.

And hey, not all do it voluntarily, some do get money out of it, but where I am from, most do it voluntarily.

Sitting around the right people is also something to think about, not everyone takes lessons serious and it shows in the classrooms, sitting around those people who talk and giggle every 5 minutes isn't good for you if your trying to listen to the teacher. In most cases, the teacher is only mentioning things once, missing out on that information can mean a lot in the long run.

And well, these are just examples on how to study less, but still perform. But if you are honestly in such a deep hole that your on the brink of failing, work hard. Hard work pays off, let's just hope all the hard work you MIGHT put in from here on out, isn't put in to late :)

Good luck, I hope it all works out for you <3

I just crammed every test the day before in high school, i mean you are just listening to random people talking for years no need to give them much weight.

At university i didn't even go there just studied for the exams alone in the exam periods.

It depends fully on what you struggle on.
I struggle most with setting aside time to actually study (or work on the stuff that I don't find interesting), and I can't say much about that except to... not procastinate so that if I do find myself getting too distracted to finish my work I can do it tomorrow. Or the day after. Or the day after that. (It significantly reduces how stressful working on an assignment is.)

In highschool I just found it so easy there was nothing to keep up to - I could sleep in class and then finish the assignment in 20 minutes so there wasn't much point in doing anything.

I am really baaaaaaaad

study lol

You just gotta invest the required time, that's why I'm sitting like 10-12 hours per day on my desk doing Uni stuff

If u are still in school not Uni/College u don't rlly need to care too much ig tho

High school or college? Can't give any college advice but for high school, you just need to take time out of your day and commit to studying what you are struggling on

i dont, end up realising and thinking about how pathetic i am. wanting to do better but immediately get overwhelmed by the work load and fall back into depression.

I try not to do homework past 9pm and I for sure never do homework past midnight to make sure I get sleep.
Set aside times to take a break & don't study for too long of periods of time without it. I use methods like pomodoro (or animedoro lol)
Use tutoring services if available or find friends in the class to do homework with. Takes some of the stress off

I have some more specific stuff but these are my general tips and I typically do well in my classes

I don't really go out and my family doesn't expect much from me, as in they won't stress me out with my chores so I have more time to do my homework/study.

I form a study group if I'm really struggling, I'd go to my friend's house just for this. For homework, I always do it as early as I can but slowly just to distribute the workload day by day instead of procrastinating but then end up pulling an all-nighter. This means I still have time to game, have a call with my friends or even hang out without feeling too anxious since I know I've made some progress. But set some goals too, if your homework is quite big then do more sections of course compared to the smaller ones, have priorities, you have your choice to having to nail one but fail one or get decent in both in the worst case. Of course try to push yourself to finish everything.

In my opinion, the biggest obstacle is our environment about its toxicity, say if you get compared with your mates by your parents, if your family have unrealistic goals from you, that can be really demotivating. But if the struggle is caused from laziness then it's on you, you're the only one who can fix yourself. This will stress the importance of the being with the right people. Because things are not going to be easier so we need to adapt and improvise, since it's really challenging to score well in everything, I usually focus on studying units that I'm struggling at (say physics and maths), that means if I "mess" up the units that I'm good at I hope I would get a mediocre result, but if I pass the one that I'm struggling at then I'm still safe and would pass. This is for my worst case scenario.

Don't completely run away to games if you can't really do it, it feels nice indeed but if you get worse mark, it can become a cycle where you need to do something more intense to try to escape your situation. When this happen, I usually would seek for a study partner, learn their study habit. If you have the opportunity to have a sleepover, go ahead. I don't really talk with my parents about this, in my case they don't really give me good advice.

I have a benchmark with one or two students who are as good as or slightly better than me, not going for the smart one to have a more realistic target, this one is for my motivation and an indicator if I really mess up. Never set a benchmark to someone worse than you, you'll feel more relaxed and you will not improve yourself.

Check the marking criteria, look at the highest mark criteria and just aim for that, no need overdo it. No extra mark (at least for my case, maybe just a nice comment) but you'll stress yourself more, if you've tried but still get bad marks then you can ask for feedback from your teacher. Since you've focused on the highest mark criteria, if you mess up you should be getting decent marks at the very least.

I'm not the brightest student in high school but at least I'm not too stressed out with school while getting decent marks.
If you're planning to go to uni though, that's where the fun part begins, if you're in for STEM (Science, Tech, Engineering, Maths) then you need to live with the pain. In this case you might have to completely change your lifestyle, because trying to improve an existing lifestyle doesn't always work.

Additional notes...

The way I think about school and uni is this...
If I cannot manage this, what would happen to me? If I have to restart the course I'd waste more time and money, I'd be more stressed out. Certainly worse than if I just work harder.

Now things will be different when having a part-time job so adjust to try to balance out fun and academic results, if you have to kinda sacrifice one since it's too much, then yeah I cannot say much myself since we can have our hard times too. It can be really tiring, I prefer to live with my family/friends so I don't have to worry about monthly spending too much.

Keep note of due dates and prioritize. Stay in touch with your teachers/professors if and when you need help. I had some tutoring services when in high school and college.

i didn't, i was just lucky that i could barely lead a life without finishing highschool. should probably get back to it soon tho.
i was the typical kid who did well in the early years of school and fell off as the time passed. can't really say it was unfair bc at some point i stopped putting any work into it and failed a lot of subjects. i knew i'd be in deep shit later but still just wanted as few burdens as possible.
my mother left one month before i turned 18, and i dropped out a few months later. a year passed and i got a short course on catering and advanced cooking but still wasn't able to get a job. actually i should've been out in the street for a while, if it weren't for my dad that left me off money that i used up to buy a small house in some cheap neighborhood.
i'll just graduate from an adult school and see what's in store for me after that.

as for you, idk, if u have shitty relatives don't let them screw with u, get some decent friends to study with and incorporate learning anything by yourself as one of your rutines, make it a hobby. working out also helps focusing and being relaxed, as well as other benefits but that's optional. good luck :)

When you finish school a normal workday will be 9am to 5pm every week day. If I had one thing I could go back and do differently, I would treat school more like a job. Set 8 hours a day for school and studying. Even if you don't have homework or a imminent test - use the remaining time after classes to study/go over what you learned, work through upcoming assignments, or watch youtube videos covering the content.

I recently pivoted careers and took classes for a year to gain skills for the new job I wanted. I used this mindset and it helped me not get behind or cram stuff all into a few days. I will just say it worked for me.

i set some self-rules: for example, when i have to prepare an exam (which is what i've been doing for the past 2-3 months) i just watch 3 anime episodes a day and play video games for just 1 hour, just to keep my sanity in check, so that i can study the whole day. i don't know if you've watched naruto, and it might sound dumb to you, but guy might inspired me to do that

just set short term goals and keep studying/working

it's going to take a while to adjust but just keep a goal in mind

The best advice is:

Don't lose sleep to study. Try to balance study time and your other time. Thats if you can, ofc. Because if you're not getting sleep, that extra studying most likely wont help. It's easy to forget details when you're half asleep. Plus its very bad for your mental health.

But, in all seriousness, just try to not fall behind. And remember, a low grade is better than a 0. Thats something that I wish I understood when I was in 9th and 10th grade.

Luck and being naturally smart enough to not fail. No seriously I'm guessing like half the answers to the major tests because I didn't attend a lecture and still passing somehow. I have no idea how but hey, if it works.

I just don't

i balance anything i do with school 70/20/10 (70 for work, 20 for myself, 10 for online). for ex if i have a day, i’ll set 70% of my time for studying.. and yea