University Paper Prep

Studying at university level

Studying at university level is relatively straight forward if you understand a few things first. These are:

You MUST stick to deadlines
Going to lectures (online or in person) leads to success
Reading widely is the key to your heightened success. Start with your course notes and then ALWAYS. FIND. MORE. 10 extra things on top of your course readings is a good rule of thumb for each essay assignment.
As you read, take good notes and enter EVERYTHING you read into your citation (bibliography) software.
PLAN, DRAFT and CRAFT your essays, making sure EVERYTHING IS IN YOUR OWN WORDS.
GIVE EVERYTHING TIME - there are no shortcuts to university. So give it time.

Start off with these general ideas before heading into your university AND subject specific websites to learn more. All of this information will continue to be available to you as you go through the year so be sure to keep checking back and rewatching stuff until you feel confident.

Notemaking

Great notemaking is the key to success at university. You should notemake during lectures and when you are reading. It is crucial that you record the time, date and speaker of a lecture and the publication details of anything you read. Check out these videos for a beginner's overview to taking notes in lectures and when you read articles and text books.

Lecture notes

Study notes

Journal notes

Citations

Citations are another word for bibliography. It's a bit of an involved process but basically it's job is to show that you've actually read stuff and not just making it up, as well as give credit to who actually did write it. Check out these 2 videos for a beginner's overview before heading to your university guides to see how they want you to set it out.

University Paper Prep

Studying at university level

Notemaking

Lecture notes

Study notes

Journal notes

Citations

What is a citation?

How to create citations using Google Docs

Massey University

Waikato University