I can tell you what worked for a friends daughter: Music. They steered her (somewhere around her sophmore year) into playing piano and eventually she found the

I can tell you what worked for a friends daughter: Music. They steered her (somewhere around her sophmore year) into playing piano and eventually she found the guitar. As she described it "I needed to rewire my brain and music was the way to do that". From her perspective learning to play music helped her begin to understand how things "fit" together in her head. Her ability to memorize things was incredibly helpful (so she was initially a step-up in confidence), but as she played more she began to see how chords build on each other to form songs. She went from rote memorization to actually building a mental model of music. In the end she became not only a fantastic musician but a MUCH better student.