End of term has come and gone and I’m still in a state of mild frenzy! I was blessed to have no exams, but I did have two long final papers and a dissertation proposal to put together in a relatively short amount of time. While I’m still working on the dissertation itself, I can look back and offer some insights on the end-of-term madness that all students will ultimately find ourselves in. These are my top tips on survival:
- Be organised. That elusive concept we all wish we were better at! I’m slowly learning it’s a skill just like any other that needs constant practice to improve. Setting yourself goals for when you want a certain number of words written by, or a minimum of papers studied, is the first step. Don’t be afraid to be both realistic and totally unrealistic with yourself. My planner is full of dates where I over-scheduled myself, or dates where I thought better than to set five tasks along with a full day of work or school. In the end, your ambitions tend to even out and what you missed one day can be made up on a day where you gave yourself leeway. The important thing is that you wrote it down, planned it out and dedicated yourself to finishing it…at some point!
- Start early. This goes along with organisation, but if you know you can finish a paper in a week, start three weeks early. Even if you only write one paragraph or an outline and then leave it to gather dust, you’ll still have something to come back to, to re-focus your thoughts and re-define your trajectory based on the nonsense you coughed up two weeks ago. I find the earlier I start, the more my thoughts develop into the paper I truly want to turn in, instead of the one I’m forced to submit because I’ve run up against a deadline.
- Reach out. While most of us think we are good enough on our own, the truth is we all have capacity for improvement. The tricky thing is that it’s tough to see how to improve by yourself. That’s where City comes in! They have an awesome array of resources to use. So far I have utilised:
- The librarian assigned to my course, who is my saving grace when it comes to odd referencing questions!
- The City Students’ Union, who hosted a Study Well campaign which featured a petting zoo on campus…how can you feel stressed while petting a mini horse?
- Workshops from the Learning Enhancement and Development (LEaD) department, which refreshed me on the nuances of academic writing – basically, write nothing like I’m doing now and you’ll sound incredibly smart.
- Relax. The brain is a tricky beast. It needs rest, even if we think it doesn’t. I’m sure you’ve realised this at some point, say when you’ve been writing or studying non-stop and then come back to your work after a nap or a night of sleep to wonder what lunatic was writing on your computer. Brains don’t function properly when they do one thing for too long. It’s finally dawned on me that there’s no use in forcing it; I might as well schedule in those breaks – a walk by the canal, a meal with friends, or Netflix for 12 hours. Your brain, your sanity and your grades will thank you.
Most of all, remember you had the ambition, confidence, and smarts to get into this school, you’ll have improved on all three and secured yourself a new degree by the time the frenzy ceases.
