I love the Sunday funnies, and one of my favorite strips is Lynn Johnston's For Better or For Worse. Unlike most comic strips where the characters are frozen in time, the people in Johnston's strip actually grow up and grow old, giving the artist a perfect canvas on which to paint her insightful commentaries on life.

Check out this recent Sunday strip: For Better or For Worse, Sep. 17, 2006. Teenager April charges home from school in an obvious state of agitation, railing against the utter injustice of her teachers who dare to give out impossible overlapping homework assignments. Her sister Elizabeth, a grade school teacher, offers this advice:

ELIZABETH: Take it easy! Just start something after dinner and dedicate one hour to it. Then, take a break and do another hour. You'll be surprised by how much you'll accomplish.

APRIL (eyeing her sister with thinly veiled contempt): You're a teacher, Elizabeth. You're one of THEM!

Autumn is the time for young people to hunker down after a leisurely summer and get serious about studying. Don't groan! Read on! The life you save may be your very own! Yeah, studying can be a pain. Heck, just getting up in the morning to go to school can be a pain. But it doesn't have to be that way.

First of all, accept that you are a STUDENT! Denial will get you nowhere. You've been a student since kindergarten, and a student you shall remain through high school, college, and maybe post-graduate school. That's anywhere between 12 to 20 years! Many adults these days don't even hold down a job for more than four years before moving on. If you are a student, your job right now is not to party hearty or goof off but to learn, to grow, to reach your fullest potential in the hopes of discovering what you want to do in life. Once you've accepted that you are a student then you've taken a good "first step into a larger world," as teacher Obi-Wan Kenobi once said to student Luke Skywalker. Chilling with friends is important, of course, but not the primary reason for being in school. It would be a shame to go through graduation with nothing to show for it except wild party memories.

Next, go on Google and enter "Studying Tips." You'll get a treasure trove of ideas. Here are three:

PLACE! Find or establish a regular studying place, free of distractions.

Okay, you have a couple of hours before dinner to get some serious studying done in your cluttered room. You plug in your iPod and, hey, check out that new Dashboard Confessional track! Your cell phone vibrates: "Yo! You're kidding! This I gotta see!" So you fire up your Xbox to join in a multiplayer Halo 2 rundown with a few other buds in the neighborhood. Suddenly, you're called down to dinner. Oops! Where did those two hours of studying go?

The operative word in this tip is distractions. That's why, when I was in college, I studied in the library. The enforced silence and lack of video games and stereos was just what this hyper kid needed.

PRIORITIZE! Break down your homework into smaller doable tasks.

Elizabeth knows what she's talking about. An impossible term paper project can become manageable if you break it down: Do research on the first day, productive reading a half-hour every day for a week, gathering of quotes and ideas another day, etc. You get a quicker sense of accomplishment when your work is broken down like this. Just don't start a big project the night before it's due!

PRAY! Prayer helps us to focus.

My mind is in a constant state of distraction, as if my brain were a TV remote control, surfing non-stop from channel to channel. Before studying or writing I find it helpful to pray — not to ask God to miraculously do the work for me, but to help settle my distracted mind and get me focused. Centering prayer (Google this), is a great way to begin studying: I simply sit in my quiet space at home, close my eyes and breathe, emptying my mind and focusing on the Spirit who lives within me. Sometimes music helps, and very often I will pray along with Jesse Manibusan's Open My Eyes, a beautiful and effective centering prayer. The song's simplicity is like a mantra:

Open my eyes, Lord . . .
Help me to see.

Open my ears, Lord . . .
Help me to hear.

Open my heart, Lord . . .
Help me to love.

Focused in PRAYER and settled in PLACE, I am now ready to PRIORITIZE my work and get it done. Get into a habit with the Three P's of Studying and you will be amazed at your progress. And these good study habits will serve you well in life, helping you accomplish your goals long after you receive your well-deserved diploma.