How To Approach University
After a few years in Uni I have worked out my own method in taking a science course in University.
First thing you need to know is that it’s going to be hard and you’re going to have to work. Be proactive. When you have a chore don’t procrastinate. Do it.
Before the Semester Starts:
The Big Cleansing: Organise, fix and clean everything that needs to in your house. You don’t need to be dealing with dirty or broken things before you turn in a report or in finals month. So take some time to fix or buy that electric heater or clean your room. Do it! Believe me you don’t want to be looking for your stapler under a pile of lost papers. And you won’t use your house as a procrastination escape. You will only do maintenance cleanings during the Semester.
Buy all the articles you require, with no validity date, in big amounts: Soaps, conditioners, pens, pencils, writing paper, deodorant, ear cleansers, facial or body lotions, lipstick, tooth brush, cleaning utensils, etc. Everything that doesn’t have a validity date buy in big amounts. Get a storage space, buy the items and keep them organized and in good conditions. You won’t have to go to the store for anything but food for several months. I usually buy this items in January for the hole year. This will save you time and effort.
Groom yourself: Take a shower, wash your teeth, put some lotion on your skin, dress nice practical clothes. If you want to, go to the hair salon and cut or pamper your hair. Don’t do something that needs a lot of maintenance. ▪Make a simple and practical hygiene plan and stick to it.
Put away all the papers from your last semester: Organise them and keep them at hand. You might need to re-read something you learnt.
Organise the new Semester: I use loose pages, so I have a main Dossier for all my subjects and then I have a set of papers for every one of them.
Get a Planer or Bullet Journal: If you already do, great keep it up. If you don’t I highly recommend it. Personally I use a planer. Bullet Journaling takes a lot of time. Even dough it's beautiful, time is something very precious in University.
I use a planer, a habit tracker with two parts and a monthly spread. I write in my planer every day but I set up the week every Saturday. Saturday is the last day of the week. The perfect day to plan the next week.
Right after you buy your planer put in monthly or yearly events. Birthdays and anything important. Don’t waist time in making it pretty. If you want, do some decorations when you first get it but keep it simple. Again time, time, time. My planer is big and has a lot of space for everyday so I use the end of the page as a “diary” or write my thoughts. My planer is heavy so I keep it at home but that’s up to you.
I keep my habit tracker with two pages in my planer. It helps me look at how many times I am doing things and when should I do them.
• Smile = basically if I had a good day or not
Things like Wake up by 9 am, I want to try and do the 30 days. But things like clean your house, I’m just checking how many times am I doing it and when should I do it next. I don’t want to do it for 30 days straight.
University Habit Tracker:
The monthly spred: I’ve to say this is one of my favourites. I don’t take my planer with me but I take my monthly spread. It’s just one piece of paper and it has an overview of all my past, present and future tasks. It’s essential to understanding how many days you have until a certain event.
Make good use of a colour coding system for different types of tasks. I will put my colour coding system that I wrote for a different post below. You will identify a type of task immediatly by it’s colour so make it in a way that make sense for you.
My colour coding system: My University has a colour for each Faculty. So Medicine is yellow, Law is red, Science is baby blue, Engineering is brik colour, Humanity’s is navy blue, Farmacy is purple, Physical and Motricional education is brown and so fourth.
I’m in science so I use baby blue for every task I have to do related to my studies.
I use yellow if I have a doctor’s appointment or a medical exam.
For national and international holidays or any official event I use navy blue. It’s related to history or literature so it makes sense. I also put birthdays in this category. You could say it’s personal history.
For gym, voleibol and any physical activity I use reddish brown. I think Brown is too strong so I like to use a version of this colour.
This is where I start to deviate from the previous system. For dancing activities I use Orange. This colour doesn’t correspond because Orange is the colour of the Psychology Faculty.
Honestly I don’t have events for psychology and Orange is kind of close to Brown so I use it for this physical activity.
For everyday events or personal events I use light green.
I usually mark vacation days with a continuous line of dark green.
For religious events I use purple. Purple is a colour associated with God and royalty dating far back as the Roman Empire. So it’s easy for me to do this association.
Once the Semester Starts:
Print your schedule and place it in your planer and work space: Make a table in a paper with the name of all your subjects and the respective passwords for the files if there is any, number of theorical and practical lesson you are in, special or extra lesson, dates of tests, dates of exams, minimal note to pass the subject, name of responsible teacher, e-mail and office. Make it on your computer and print it and place it in your planer and work space. Download the subjects information you just did and your semesters schedule to your phone.
Make a foulder in your phone with all important Uni information: Schedule, subjects info board you did, schedule of your university’s student office, library’s schedule, the cantines schedule and any other important info.
Don’t skip lessons: Never ever unless you’re sick. Go to it. No matter how tired you are. If you want to do anything in this list do this. I have answered exam questions because of things I’ve only heard in the classroom.
Pay attention in class, take notes and try to write everything down: Don’t waste lesson time on your phone or hoping it will end. If it’s unbearable to pay attention don’t skip the class. Study the subject on your own in class. Use the time while you are in there to study the topic the teacher is explaining. Don’t study something else. This is usefull if you don’t like the teachers teaching method.
Don’t get scared: Keep working steadily. Uni goes from 0 to 100 in a second and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. There will be good days and bad days but ten minutes is better than zero. Everything is going to be alright. So trust in your ability to learn.
Put off some of your extracurricular activities: During the semester diminish the time you spend doing other things. Tell your family and friends that you are sacrifing this five months but that you will be free after your finals.
Study with other committed students: Friends can have a different grasp of the subject and shine light over something you weren’t understanding. Study with others if you’re doing exercises but don’t if you’re still learning a topic. If you really don’t like studying with others then don’t push yourself to do something you’re not comfortable with.
Plan your study: Don’t wait until you have had a lesson to start studying the chapter featured. This takes commitment. Plan your own semester. Don’t go along the pre-planed schedule that the university made for you.
Look up the topics of the subject. You have two months to learnt this topics. If your semester starts in February, that means you have February and March to learn. It doesn’t matter if the teacher has started the topic or not. You will study it first and then you will try to understand the core point that the teacher wants you to learn. This is key. Teachers ask questions about the most important parts of the topics.
In April, the third month, you want to make exercises. Do them all if you can. Use this month to train and settle the information you have learnt the past two months.
For May, the fourth and final month, do exercises of past exams or finals. Do as many as you can. It’s also time to start making small resumes of the topics you already studied.
This will make you ready for July, the finals month. Sometimes you have two or three exams in a row. If you’re really unlucky you can have two finals in the same day. This is not the time to start learning the topics for the first time or even doing all the exercises. This is the time to review everything that you already did.
If you look at a semester you will realise how little time it actually is. It’s four months plus finals month. It’s five months of your life. That’s all you get. Sacrifice a little now and study and you will pass this subjects and be free. It’s little time so start studying now. Do what you have to do now. There will be good days and bad days but if you work a little bit every single one of them it will pay off.
