You can make all the right academic moves in college, studying a week in advance for your midterms, always reading ahead, carrying the weight of group projects, but all it takes is one wrong step — whether it’s an obvious no-no like texting during a lecture, or a more subtle miscue like frequently looking bored during class discussions — and you could unwittingly slip into your professor’s bad graces.

Avoid these fall-from-academic-grace faux pas by following these seven tips from the very first day of the semester. Your professors will enjoy having you in class, you’re more likely to do well, and you’ll have a leg up on other college students when recommendation season rolls around — all without having to turn into the annoying teacher’s pet.

1) Sit at the front of the class

It’s an old standby, but it bears repeating. Why does it matter where you sit? In live theater, dance, and music, performers almost always form a special connection with the members of the audience seated closest to the stage. And professors are performers too: The best teachers can command the attention of an entire lecture hall full of students who hang on every word.

As your professors lecture from their own classroom stage, sitting at the front of the room will put you at an advantage: Your teachers will be more likely to make eye contact with you, and they’ll naturally remember your face and your contributions to class discussions by virtue of you being right in their line of sight.

2) Be an active participant in class discussions

Sure, you can show up late, slump in your back-row seat, and tune out the discussion with your earbuds blasting — you’ll probably still meet your attendance requirement. But most professors want to see you actively engaged, not just a couple degrees above comatose.

When you take part in a group discussion, you’re sending a message to your professors that you’re interested in what they’re teaching you and that you see value in it. It might sound obvious, but professors are people; it makes them feel good when other people take an interest in and respond to what they’re saying instead of zoning out, half-sleeping, or acting like class is the last place on campus they want to be. You don’t have to have something to say on every single point, just stand out from the crowd enough with occasional insightful comments, so your professors realize you’re paying attention and thinking critically, and they'll take notice of you in a positive way.

3) Take extra-credit assignments

You can never really tell ahead of time how tricky that final exam is going to be or how hard your prof might end up grading that end-of-semester project. We know it can be hard to get motivated to do non-required work on top of everything else you have going on. But an extra-credit assignment, besides giving you the boost you might need at the end of the semester when your grade is teetering on that borderline between a B+ and an A–, could also help you look good to your professor.

Taking on extra assignments can help you come across as a hardworking, ambitious student, which can mean high praise on that letter of recommendation you need when you're applying for an internship, for scholarships, or to grad school.

4) Offer to help other students out

When the material in a certain class just comes more easily to you, extending some help to your fellow students can be one of the best ways to earn positive feedback from your professor. The help you offer can be as simple as staying a few minutes after class to explain a confusing concept to the person sitting next to you, or as in-depth as volunteering to tutor other students, start a study group, or take notes for a classmate with disabilities. Your ready willingness to share your own time to help others could translate into a glowing letter of recommendation or even an invitation to become a research assistant.

The motivation behind your efforts to help your classmates, however, shouldn’t be entirely self-serving. Your professors may notice you taking the initiative and making a positive impact on the direction of the class, or they may not. You need to be okay with knowing that even though your professor may never be aware of the work you do with other students in your class, the time you put in is helping someone else do better.

5) Strike up after-class conversations

Another way to distance yourself from the unenthusiastic, blank-faced masses is to periodically stay after class or drop in during office hours to ask your professor for help on an assignment, for a further explanation of some key concepts, or even just to discuss something in the lecture or in the reading you genuinely found interesting.

Most professors are thrilled to talk with a student who cares enough to devote some outside-of-class time to what they’re trying to teach you. Plus, these one-on-one talks give your professors a chance to get to know you better — which means more personalized recommendations for you down the road instead of canned, generic letters that won’t differentiate you from anyone else in an applicant pool.

As an added bonus, you’ll usually find that these after-class discussions will deepen your understanding of the material and make it easier for you to retain the information come test time.

6) Strive for perfect attendance

Even those professors who don’t have a strict attendance policy still usually care whether or not you show up to class. Just put yourself in their shoes: You spend hours, if not days, selecting the reading, designing lab experiments, and preparing your lectures, only to have barely half your class show up. You’d probably feel ignored and underappreciated too, and you’d be likely, if even unconsciously, to think less of those students who routinely skip your class.

Avoid falling into that group, show your professors that you respect their time, and make an effort to attend as many classes as possible.

7) Don’t be “that guy”

In your school-going lifetime, you’ve probably been in at least one class with that one person who’s always trying to find the loophole, redefine the bare minimum, and skate by with doing the least amount of work possible. That individual who uses two-inch margins and Courier font, who owns no textbooks but has the entire library of SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, who asks questions like “Does my cover page count as one of my 10 pages?” and “Can you still pass if you don’t turn in the term paper?”

Believe it or not, these kinds of questions, besides completely painting you as someone who cares more about what’s quick and easy than about actually learning something or doing the job well, will usually not endear you to your professors.

Don’t give your professors a reason to question your work ethic. Instead of acquiring a reputation as someone who always tries to find a way around stuff, do the work that’s asked of you, go above and beyond when you can, and only ask for extensions, exceptions, or special consideration when you’re really, really stuck or having an emergency. If you avoid a track record as a slacker, your professors will be more likely to cut you some slack when you really need it.

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