Jeffrey Kaplan, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, flips the script on academic struggle by arguing that the difficulty of a college course is not an inherent trait of the curriculum, but a direct result of student strategy. He posits a provocative thesis: what students often dismiss as "self-care" is frequently just self-sabotage, while the rigorous habits of note-taking and office-hour attendance are the truest forms of academic wellness.
The "Cheating" Paradox
Kaplan begins with a hook designed to grab the attention of any student looking for an edge, framing his advice as a method to "cheat in all of your college courses" without ever getting caught. He quickly pivots, however, to reveal that this "cheating" is simply the disciplined application of available resources. He argues that students should categorize course material into "easy stuff" they understand and "hard stuff" they do not, then use office hours to have the professor explain the difficult concepts. "You take your list of questions and you go to the professor's office hours and you ask them all the questions on the list," Kaplan writes, noting that the professor will then explain the answers until the student understands. "If you don't understand why those are the right answers you ask them well why is that the right answer and they explain why and then you understand all the stuff on the hard list."
This framing is brilliant because it reframes the professor's role from a gatekeeper to a resource that students are often too intimidated or lazy to utilize. By treating the professor as the "ultimate student who's already taken the course," Kaplan strips away the mystique of the exam. The core of his argument is that the "cheating" is actually just doing the job of a student efficiently. Critics might note that this approach assumes a level of access and professor availability that isn't universal across all institutions or class sizes, but the principle remains sound: engagement reduces cognitive load.
It makes the course easier right? It's a method for taking the course that will result more easily in getting a good grade every semester.
The Calculator Analogy
To illustrate how student behavior dictates difficulty, Kaplan employs a vivid anecdote about a statistics exam where calculators were permitted but required. He describes a student who failed because they arrived without a calculator, forcing them to attempt a test designed for a specific tool without that tool. "The exam was built and designed to be taken with a calculator and so if you try to take that same exam without a calculator then you've just made it way harder impossibly hard in fact," he observes. He uses this to argue that students often replicate this error by failing to prepare their "tools"—notes, textbooks, and question banks—before the exam.
Kaplan details four specific scenarios where preparation turns a hard task into an easy one. In open-note exams, the student who has organized their notes can find answers in seconds, while the student who didn't take notes is lost. In open-book exams, reading the text beforehand allows for rapid navigation, whereas reading for the first time during the test is a disaster. He even highlights the absurdity of students ignoring exam question banks, noting that when a professor provides 100 potential questions and the exam contains 20 of them, "students are just given the questions in advance and many of them take the hard way and they don't use that it's a gift and they don't take it."
This evidence is compelling because it shifts the blame from the "difficulty" of the subject to the "inefficiency" of the student's approach. It suggests that the anxiety surrounding exams is often self-inflicted. A counterargument worth considering is that this model favors students with strong executive function skills and might overlook those who struggle with the initial organization of material, but Kaplan's point is that the struggle is solvable through method, not magic.
Redefining Self-Care
The piece culminates in a sharp critique of the modern concept of "self-care," which Kaplan argues has been co-opted to justify avoidance. He describes a scenario where a student, exhausted and stressed, decides to skip reading for class to watch television, labeling it self-care. "No that's not self-care that's self-sabotage," Kaplan asserts. "Actual self-care would be forcing to do the reading the night before class and then forcing yourself to go to class and take notes and then forcing yourself to review those notes after class."
This is the most distinctive and perhaps controversial part of Kaplan's commentary. He redefines wellness not as the absence of work, but as the reduction of future stress through present discipline. "If you do all of these things at the right time... you will make your courses easier," he concludes, arguing that this efficiency is the true path to mental well-being. While some might argue that this view is too rigid and ignores the need for genuine rest, Kaplan's logic holds up: the stress of cramming and the panic of being unprepared are far more damaging to a student's health than the temporary fatigue of doing the work.
Actual self-care would be forcing to do the reading the night before class and then forcing yourself to go to class and take notes.
Bottom Line
Jeffrey Kaplan's argument is a powerful corrective to the culture of academic avoidance, successfully reframing discipline as the ultimate form of self-preservation. While his definition of self-care may feel counterintuitive to those seeking immediate relief, the logic that preparation eliminates the panic of the unknown is undeniable. The strongest takeaway is that the "hardness" of a course is often a variable students control, not a fixed constant they must endure.