Tips to survive the first weeks of term
Everyone is back catching up, telling each other about their exciting summers, making new friends and joining societies etc. the first few weeks of the term can seem quite overwhelming so here are some tips on making the first few weeks productive and enjoyable.
Keep a diary– organise your time, most phones have calendars use them! I’ve ended up double booking my meetups with my friends with society commitments It just makes it easier to plan your life and see if you have enough time to actually do your work. For final year students, time is extremely precious for you so make sure that you are using it effectively.
Meet up with your tutors– outline some targets with your tutors so they can then monitor your progress. This ensures that you are keeping up to date with your work and academic development. What helps me is booking on the myadvantage workshops that assist you in referencing or academic writing, just so I know I have taken the time to actually focus on an aspect of my work that I am struggling with so when it actually comes to essay writing I’m confident enough that I can actually try my best and not regret building my skills beforehand. I recently have done with my head of department and my personal tutor where we spoke about my dissertation, the more you tell your tutors the more they will understand your journey and effectively help you achieve your goals, tutors have heaps of knowledge and experience, use it!
Careers meeting– Before the end of term rush, why not do it in the beginning? This seemed to me to be more useful because after having a chat with my careers advisor she then continued to email me with events that might spark my interest. Which is even more useful because then I can consolidate my ideas by attending talks and workshops. At the myadvantage events you get to ask questions to the right people, they will give you the answers you are searching for, so make sure you go and NETWORK!
Societies- Try everything that sparks your interest, but don’t worry if you miss a taster class because societies run for the whole year so you can attend something later on in the year if you wish to. Sometimes that’s better because it keeps the society running. Majority of societies are busy at the beginning of term naturally numbers tend to fall later on in the term as workload increases and students just get busy with other things, so why not take that opportunity to pop into that society you’ve always wanted to check out but never really had the time.
Work– I always choose my essay questions in the first week of term…why? Because every piece of reading I then do for seminar or lecture work I will have my head in tune for my essay and thus will help with my idea development. This have been proven to be very useful because my opinions always change over time so when it actually comes to sitting down and writing I have enough time to do so and my debate has been enriched with various arguments that I collated over time.
Enjoy your first few weeks everyone!!
