By Sophia (Student Blogger: BA Hons Religious Studies)
Already feeling like Uni is getting the best of you? Don’t panic, lots of us feel the same way this time of year, so here’s some helpful tips to get you on your way to nailing second term.
Time management:
This is probably the area where students struggle most, it can often feel that one minute you have all the time in the world and the next minute you barely have chance for a break. To nail time management, try to factor into your budget this week purchasing a large wall-mounted academic year planner, a list book, and potentially a diary, unless you find using your phone calendar more useful.
A full term can feel like a long time when in reality the weeks fly by, and you can often be overly optimistic about how much time you have left until the deadlines hit. Mark each deadline on your wall-mounted planner as well as in your diary or phone calendar. This allows you to maintain a healthy-work life balance by scheduling activities in, such as having lunch with your parents, any society commitments such as netball games or socials, and even just nights in to relax on your own or with housemates.
Your list book is where the real magic happens, even when you’re fully aware of what you need to do, it’s often highly intimidating when you have a huge pile of seemingly never-ending reading, researching and writing to get done. Take a two page spread, mark the date in the top left hand corner and write each day of the upcoming week vertically down the first page. Under each day, write down what you have to have done by that day. For example, if you have a seminar on Tuesday for which you need to have read two articles. This allows you to plan your workload chronologically and clearly lays out exactly what needs to be done and by when.
On the second page write down any other tasks you need to do, these can be extracurricular or careers-related tasks, anywhere from updating your CV, to ordering a food shop. This ensures you don’t forget any of the niggling administrative things you need to get done, and makes sure everything else in your life is ticking along nicely. If you do this for every week, factoring in some time for deadline work alongside work for seminars, workshops or labs, you’ll certainly be busy, but hopefully not blindsided by what you need to get done.
Organisation:
Just like with your list book and diary, everything feels much easier when you have it planned out. If your notes from lectures and seminars are all over the place, it becomes a tremendous task at the end of Lent term to get them in order ready for revision. Take a leaf out of the book of Marie Kondo and get organised! Whether you take notes in paper of electronic form, if your filing system is a mess, you’ll thank yourself later for getting it sorted now.
Paper form: Organise your work into separate wallets for each module, and place them all in one larger folder. Having everything separated into modules will make studying during exam season a breeze. Make sure to put any essays or marked pieces of work for each module in there too, they can be a great revision resource.
Electronic form: Much the same as with paper notes, you need to organise your files into folders. It’s slightly more fun this way, as you can create folders for each module, and then create folders within these folders to separate notes from lectures, seminars and for essay preparation. Also make sure to save electronic versions of submitted coursework in each module folder too. Don’t forget to colour code for extra satisfaction!
Having everything in order, planning well, and keeping a good balance between work and play makes everything seem just that bit more manageable. Try using some of these tips to see how they improve your work ethic this term.