Taking the Initiative on your Degree Course

When studying for a degree no one is going to hold your hand.

Unlike school, no one is going to make you get up in the morning, no one is going to tell you to attend lectures, and it is down to you as a student to motivate and discipline and organize yourself.

Failure to do this is the single biggest reason people fail their degree courses, it is essential that you get to grips with this aspect of your study early on.

Plan and manage your time effectively:

Get a wall planner to give an overview of your commitments and deadlines. These are really useful tools, being able to visualize your deadlines in this way really helps you plan your time.

Get a diary and list your day to day activities, appointments with lecturers etc.

Keep a list of things to do, perhaps books you need to take out / return, questions you need to ask… anything at all. It is better to make a quick note of these things than risk forgetting to do something.

As far as possible set deadlines for yourself on tasks and stick to them.

It is important to work consistently from the beginning of your course to the end, do not laze around early in the semester and think you can do all your work in the last week… you will fail.

I once saw someone in the last weeks of my degree course come in for an exam having stayed up all night revising. They had been awake for over 20 hours when they went into the exam. They were talking about how they were going to get cracking on their dissertation in the afternoon, like they were really on top of their game. There were only a couple of weeks left to go before our dissertations were due in. I had already handed mine in with weeks to spare.

I do not know if that person passed their course, but why punish yourself by being an idiot!

It is EASIER to plan ahead and manage your work. You can actually do LESS work this way as you have time to ask for support as opposed to struggle through problems on your own.