Study Tips for People With Dyspraxia!
Studying is hard if you have dyspraxia- organisation is just not our strong suit, and is basically vital for keeping on top of studying! So, I’ve put together a list of tips that I’ve found have really helped me study more effectively. I hope some of these help, and if you have any of your own tips then send them to me!
Record your lectures! Lets be honest here- trying to write quickly and legibly enough to keep up in lectures is just a losing battle. So, recording lectures is a great way to supplement your notes, and sometimes make sense of the confusing shorthand and illegible words that appear when you’re trying to write quickly!
Slides slides slides. Ask your lecturer to send you the slides beforehand, so you can print them off and bring them to the lectures. that way, you can just supplement the notes on the slides, and this can really help to break up your notes into sections, so it doesn’t become one long, unorganised chunk. Beware though- some lecturers may go off on a tangent and digress from the slides, which means you don’t know where to put the notes. This is easily fixed by attaching separate sheets of note paper.
Learn to live with your weird and wonderful spelling. Unless its a technical word or an essay to be handed in, it doesn’t matter if a couple words in your notes are a bit creatively spelt. As long as you know what they mean, then who cares if there’s a few extra letters?
Spellcheck is your friend, but so are people. Spellcheck may not recognise a weirdly placed word, or a strange sentence structure that you’re adamant makes sense but actually doesn’t, but a living, breathing human will be able to point out the mistakes your computer missed. Your friends won’t mind proofreading your work!
Soaking your hands in warm water is a brilliant way to help with those aching wrists. Keeping your handwriting neat is freaking hard, so treat your wrists!
Type your notes! Its quicker, spellcheck is automatic and you’ll save hours on trying to work out if that letter is an E or a G (Or is it an O?)
Hand write your notes! Theres so much freedom to organise your notes in a layout that makes sense to you, colour-coding is quicker, and diagrams are easier. Plus, who likes reading off screens? You do you, whatever makes sense is the right way to go.
Write everything down! All of your assignments, reminders and events should all go on a big whiteboard or noticeboard that is somewhere you look often- your fridge, bedroom door, above your desk. You can use a planner for more organised and detailed entries, but i find having constant reminders of assignments and due dates is so useful, otherwise they WILL get forgotten.
Back up everything. Twice. Invest in a printer-scanner to scan in paper notes- you don’t want to lose your beautiful colour coded class notes. Write your name, address, telephone number, landline number, mothers phone number, etc. in your binders, notebooks, textbooks, whatever. They are more likely to get returned when they are inevitably left on the bus or the library or on your class seat. Same with all those USB drives! Keep one in your desk drawer and one in your bag- two backups are VITAL.
Section up your work. Got an essay to write? Split it into research, then paragraph by paragraph, then proofreading, then editing, etc. Tick off each part as you go- a sense of progression lifts the haze of stress that makes all the words jumble up in your head, and it is also a good guideline for how often you should be taking breaks! Plus, planning ahead means that you won’t miss any important points.
Program your phone to send you reminders 20 minutes before appointments, or when you’re supposed to be leaving the house. This makes it a lot harder to forget about lectures, appointments, etc.
Morphine is an amazing chrome extension that blocks distracting websites. Procrastination is so much easier with all of that temptation right there!
Test yourself constantly. Practice makes perfect, and for me the only way I will remember a date is if I’ve repeated it eight million times, as a conservative guess.
Pictures, diagrams, flowcharts. Visual aids can help you remember when revising!
Keep all your supplies in the same place each time. Muscle memory is a wonderful thing, and if you know where you always keep your textbooks it stops you wandering round the house for twenty minutes only to find it somewhere really weird.
Mnemonics, memorable phrases, acronyms, anything to help your remember. Mnemonics help especially if the words are very weird (Or a little rude). For example, I can never keep the X and Y axis straight in maths, so I use the phrase Up Yours! to remember the Y axis goes upwards.
If you want to listen to music while studying, try to keep it instrumental or very very quiet, to make sure the lyrics don’t accidentally get mixed up into your notes. Try movie soundtracks- LotR makes me feel like an epic adventurer and keeps me motivated!
Experiment! A lot of people with dyspraxia find mindmaps useful as they’re very visual, but they’re too messy for me. Nobody studies the same way, so if your notes look completely different from the person next to you then don’t stress.
Do a little bit each day. Start your assignments early, don’t do too much at once, and never ever leave them to the last minute. Try the 20/10 rule- 20 minutes studying, 10 minutes break. Concentrating after 20 minutes work is very difficult! Also try to swap subjects around- If you’re finding something difficult, change to a different topic for a while and then come back to it fresh. A change of perspective may be all you need!
Drink so much water. Also a little bit of Omega 3 oil. Don’t get these two mixed up as that is gross.
Forget the introduction. When writing an essay, just get stuck straight in, then come back and do the introduction later. Its a lot easier to introduce something you’ve already written, and the hardest bit about writing an essay is just getting started.
Tell your teachers. They’re not always clued up on dyspraxia, and telling them what you need them to do (Send lecture slides, explain something in a different way, slow the fuck down) can really help you and them.
Rewards work well. If you do this problem set, you can watch an episode of TV. If you make that call you’ve been putting off, you can have a snack. Bribery is fine when you’re just bribing yourself.
INVEST in your planner. If you can afford it, get a really good one like a design love planner (esp good as they have a section for appointments and for to do lists) or a passion planner. This thing will be your lifeblood, so make sure you’ve got one that will work well for you. And put EVERYTHING in it. Need to call you mom? Planner. Got an appointment? Planner. Grocery shopping, going to the bank, texting that person back? planner. Tick off stuff you’ve done. If you’re on a budget, try bullet journaling- I find the system of migrating tasks, deciding which ones are no longer important, etc works brilliantly for to-do lists, but a lack of forward planning can be a little tricky.
Print our your schedule. Put it on your fridge, noticeboard, set it as your lockscreen. Make tiny ones to keep in your bag and coat and wallet. I would print off my class schedule twenty times at the beginning of term and lose every single one, so just for the love of god have backups of your schedule.
Stop comparing yourself! You don’t need to be the best in the class, you just need to be the best you can be. So long as you work hard and do your best, you should be proud
