Tips for Starting University Study

Student experience:  ‘It took me until the end of second year to properly utilise office hours and one-to-ones. I used to just do all my assessments with no one-to-one support, thinking that’s what I was just expected to do. Now I use a one-to-one for every single assessment I do! I think you get so used to the school/college attitude of “the teacher won’t be in the exam hall with you” so it feels like you can’t ask anything at uni, but university actually feels like a much more collaborative environment with the people who teach you.’

Student experience: ‘Sometimes I have just had to skip the texts for one week in order to catch up for the next week. For example, it’s the Friday of Week 9 and you’ve got your seminar that afternoon but haven’t read the text and haven’t read the text for weeks 10, 11, 12 yet. It’s sometimes necessary to just move on. However, still attend the seminar etc so you have the notes in case you choose to read the text for assessment when your workload lightens.’

Student experience:  ‘Part of what I found stressful about the amount of reading was keeping on top of what I had to do and when. So at the start of every semester I made a table organised by week and module, then filled it in with a shorthand version of the reading list (primary and secondary) along with an indication of how long the reading was. This meant I could identify early on any weeks that looked heavy on the reading side, or weeks where I should start the reading early because it was a whole book. Having everything in one place made it easier to organise my time. Also coming up with a bit of a structured reading plan was useful for me. Planning work and reading around the lectures and seminars, then repeating this each week, definitely keeps you on track.'

'The other obvious answers to coping with reading is starting early and really making use of reading weeks to get a head start on any lengthy texts.’

‘Doing the reading a week in advance of the seminars is really helpful if you can maintain it for as long as possible. It gives you a bit of breathing space if something is taking longer than you’d anticipated, or if you get busy with an assessment.'

'Something I found really helpful for managing my workload was having an actual physical diary to write down everything I needed to do for each week. As well as this, writing handwritten lists helped to make all of my tasks seem much more manageable, as rather than floating around in my head they were written down. It also makes you feel really productive when you are able to cross something off your list;'

'I use to-do lists extensively as a student and often have multiple on the go simultaneously. Having multiple to-do lists means I can separate my uni work from housework and food shopping, and it feels a bit less overwhelming. I tend to have at least one list on a chrome extension called ‘Momentum’ and a second on a large whiteboard (which is absolutely one of the most useful things in my room at uni).'

'I sometimes found it difficult to follow what was being said if a word I was unfamiliar with was used. As I didn’t know how to spell some unfamiliar words, I struggled to look them up. As time progressed, I felt more confident asking seminar tutors to spell the word that I hadn’t understood so I could look it up in my own time'