Stress isn’t good for any of us, especially when you wake up to it every day during your college years! It’s now October and you probably find yourself somewhat settled into where you need to go for which class. The start is the hardest, training every ounce of your body to settle into a new routine and waking up to your 7 AM alarm.
Here’s, the truth about your next journey, early mornings, and relying on technology to get you organized. If you attend classes, you’re already on your way to success, anyway – miss 20% and you can do major damage. Here are some other awesome tips to whip you into academic shape for the rest of the year.
1. Be Prepared
Your resources are your everything. And if you forget something, then running all the way back through campus and back up those dreaded stairways isn’t how you should start your day! Stationary, money, and tools should all be in that bag you packed the night before to whisk away for your first lecture. If you use any type of electronics, keyboards, or tablets, make sure you have them fully charged and at-the-ready – you can even try a backup battery pack if you want to really feel prepared for anything.
2. Get Involved
Educational establishments are always at-the-ready with valuable resources – other students being one of them. Getting to know people is one aspect of any educational experience that can often go overlooked. The more people you get to know and work well with, the easier things like study sessions, as well as key group presentations and projects become.
The more you are able to get involved with people one-on-one, the easier it will be to run through notes, catch up if you miss a lecture, and practice run-throughs of important presentations. Plus, you’ll have an army of reviewers to give you feedback on your work!
3. Get a Calendar
It is estimated that 90% of college students procrastinate. 25% of these become chronic procrastinators, many who end up dropping out of college. The takeaway here? Managing your time matters more than you might think.
Paper or digital, your calendar and time management tools are essential for academic life. There’s no space for excuses here, and you can easily use one for the perfect social/work life balance. Spread out time constraints and realistic goals for the month, and you might even have time to take on an extracurricular activity!
4. Record Start to Finish
Imagine a world where every single one of your lectures was perfectly accounted for? Even indexed for easy recall? By setting up a simple recorder during classes and presentations, you can do just that.
There’s only so much that your brain can take in on a daily basis – by recording it all, you can do so much more with that information. Plug in and re-listen to key parts on the train or while driving, share with friends who may have missed a class, and even convert audio to text using a transcription service to reap the benefits of digital text.
5. Take Valuable Notes
Now’s your time to really fuel information into your lectures. You’ve got the presentation online, you’re recording the lecturer’s notes, at this point, you have the opportunity to make your own sense out the information. If you have the opportunity to type your notes, then better, this can be really valuable for you. If not, then practice writing quickly and within the lines! Take a hint from Oxford Learning and their roundup of some of the best ways to take the most valuable notes you can, highlighting 5 techniques depending on what draws you in.
6. Review and Edit Your Notes
Reviewing your notes within 24 hours is proven to help the information stay in your mind. It also means wasting less time the during the following days and weeks when you need to remember something important.
This is the perfect time to rewrite your abbreviated notes or straighten up on the sentences you vigorously scribbled down – having your lectures recorded and converted into text using an academic transcription service is a perfect way to get this started. Stationary is also your match here, use the endless amounts of colors we’re spoilt with to match and code.
7. Challenge Yourself
Truly challenging yourself is something that college and graduate school are made for. Making an effort to push your own boundaries and comfort zones is proven help with a ton of things, like:
- Becoming a better, more effective leader
- Receiving more satisfying exam scores
- Doing more productive research
- Expanding your mind!
If you’re ready to take control of your educational career, then assemble your resources before you start slacking! We offer a low-cost First Draft Transcription Service with a guaranteed 24-hour turnaround. You can even download our free transcription app, so you can get your submissions in straight after the lecture. Time-saving doesn’t get easier than that!
