Summer semester is over. Let the beer drinking commence.
Grades have not been posted yet, but I'm pretty sure I did well enough to keep my 4.0 GPA. I will now share my secrets to academic excellence.
1. It helps being 40 years old. When you get older you tend to be more responsible. Also related to being older is spending over twenty years working blue collar jobs. That will make you take school more seriously and have a greater appreciation for what a college education can do for you. Basically, you get to sit in an air conditioned office driving a computer while you tell all the blue collar grunts what to do. It looks like a sweet gig when you are one of the blue collar grunts.
2. Be a nerd. Really get into the books. Don't wait until the last minute to get things done. Turn your work in early. When it's Friday night and all of your friends are out partying, be the geek back in the dorm doing the extra credit assignment for your calculus class. You'll probably soon start running short on friends, but it will pay off when you are driving that computer in the air conditioned office telling them what to do.
3. Speaking of partying: don't. Alcohol is supposed to be a part of a fully appreciated college experience. If you're majoring in auto repair at the local community college that might be the case, but for anything more heady than English 093 you'll find you perform much better academically if you lay off the booze or only imbibe during the breaks.
4. I would advise 90% of people to major in something that they have an aptitude for and not to major in something because it sounds cool or because you think you'll make a million bucks at it. Take me, for example. I like to write poetry and I thought I was pretty good at it, so I took a poetry class a long time ago in an earlier incarnation at college. I quickly found out that I truly suck at writing poetry. The teacher for that class even asked me, "Why are you taking this class? What are you doing here?" Fortunately for me it was a pass/fail deal and I did all of the required work, sucky as it may have been.
It turns out that I have a natural talent for business. The aptitude tests have been telling me that for a long time, but it just didn't seem all that sexy to me. But I finally decided to go with it and I am excelling. So if your talent lies in mathematics but you think it would be really cool to be a writer, get the degree in math and write in your spare time.
5. And finally, don't try to take any short-cuts. In most college classes you will only truly understand the material if you really do all of the work. I've run across people who don't take notes, use triple line spacing on their papers, use calculators when they are supposed to work out the problems by hand, don't buy all of the required books for the class, skip classes, and just flat not turn in some of their work. You are paying a lot of money for that education. If you want to really be an intellectual, you'll have to do the work.
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Hang on a second, OK?
You are definitely onto something good here. And good for you!
I am so proud to know you...
You are so motivated and smart. I know you will do well out in the world, when you've finished your classwork.
I appreciate that response probably more than you know. 
You're welcome...
Enjoy your break.
When I was 32, I decided I really needed to get a degree so I went for it. What a great experience it was. Back when I was 18, I don't think it would have been the same. I was tired of school back then. But attending as an older person, I really appreciated it. It also made a huge difference in my income in later years.
At first I thought it would be awkward, being an older person. Instead, it made for some really great times.
