Road 2 Graduation

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You have probably started your second term at university with a bang, given that we’re clearly in 2009 now, and some of you will be in hectic research mode for your dissertation, it should be clear that you could be productive with your time during your university years.

With Easter on the horizon, it won’t be long before you’ve got a few weeks off to relax (or revise) and think about how things are going to develop, and at the end of this month having exams, more essays and papers to write.
When on campus your time is limited, there are only so many hours in the day and you’ve got to fit in daily lectures (if you get up in time ;-)), scramble for books in the library (before everyone else gets them), and get up to date with what happen over the last week.  You, therefore, want to use the time that you do have productively, because when you’re not there you probably won’t be thinking about it.

I’ve listed the top ten productivity tips that will help you as a university student in the rest of 2009.
Now, you’re probably saying to yourself  “here we go, another one of these lists!” and you’d be right, you probably have seen this type of list a thousand times over on a number of other boring and uninteresting sites and some of those mind numbing books that you’re advised to read.  Well, this is my take on things and to be honest I have a really short attention span when concentrating on things, so hopefully you’ll learn something new different.
1.    Cut out distractions - If you’re at home or at a friend’s, then you’re going to want to eliminate the distractions from around you.  Turn the TV off, your mobile and pop a ‘do not disturb’ sign on your door.  If you study better when you have some music on, then you should leave it on, just don’t turn on the radio for music as you’ll become distracted will the news, talking and adverts that crop up.  Cutting out any unwanted distractions will make sure that you can focus on studying and use your time effectively.

2.    Clear your mind - you’ll want to ensure that you’ve not got a hundred and one things on your mind that you have to remember for next week, or that your mind is full of worthless stuff that is happening in your life.  When this happens, you’ll want to take a couple of deep breaths and try to relax – you could also try going for a quick walk around the block or popping on facebook for some jucy gossip, but you only want to do this for 10 minutes or so; so, if you decide to do the latter then you should time yourself – spending all evening on facebook might be fun, but isn’t going to be productive to your university studies is it?

3.    Go set some goals – where do you expect to get to if you don’t know where you’re going?  That’s always one question that you should ask yourself and it doesn’t matter is you’re writing an essay or studying for an exam, you should have an end goal(s) in mind, don’t just mingle along for the sake of it.  These goals should set out an end game, where you want to be with a task or achievement.  If you were thinking about completing an essay then you could think about going to do some research, or reading a number of chapters in a book or a number of articles to help you understand the topic – not knowing where you’re heading to, and the steps that you have to take, can lead any university student to become confused and annoyed.
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When you’re writing your first university essay you’ll generally not really understand how you write and what you will need to add to your essay to make it award-winning great. I looked at an essay the other day, which I wrote at the start of my very first year at university, and I look back with shame questions – why was I so naive and why did I write so badly?

The main answers to these questions come from my lack of confidence and that I didn’t understand my own writing ability – I also didn’t understand that I needed to use my own perspective on theories and understanding, and not flood the paper with quote after quote. I didn’t know anything better and learnt a number of years later how to write great essays in a matter of no time, and these were all to a high standard and received high grades.

Learn to Develop Your Own Academic Writing

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When you’re at school, may teachers will encourage you to write in one style and format that suits them, they’ll also urge you not to have your own thoughts because ‘what the book says is correct’. This is true when you look at exams being taken by teenagers, I’d argue that they’re not learning as much as they should, and they’re negatively affecting their chances of succeeding at university.

It is going to take you time to build up your own way of writing and will probably take you the good part of one academic year, reading a number of university writing tips, books and internet resources for inspiration. You need to learn to write in a style that will allow your reader to understand all of the points you are making, but also be able to draw on the number of sources you’ve included. This is something that you will need to concentrate on though all of your undergraduate essays and fit in your strategy to meet with other university requirements within your institution.

Undergraduate Essays

An undergraduate essay will be something that you may consider strange at first, you’ve come from college and are writing in a style that you are comfortable with. You come to university to study towards a degree that you hope to graduate from in 3, 4, 5 or more years; this is obviously dependent on the time that is specified for completion of the degree and usually dependent on the subject of the course and possibly a year out.
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