Planning Your Study

Like with many things in life it is important to go into study with a plan. Set your goals and work to achieve them. Set what your overall goal is but then break it down into easily achievable chunks, i.e. your overall goal is to complete your degree but we can break that down a number of times to: complete this year of study, complete this semester/study period of study, complete this unit of study, all the way down to complete this week of study! And this is what we are focusing on in this blog post.

Time management is an important part of success at university. At the start of the study period sit down with a calendar and mark in the due dates of your assignments and then stick this somewhere you are going to see it! (You can get an OUA Study Planner for Study Period 1 2011 from here or see the OUA site for more planners.) I tend to use a year planner for this as they are big and can be stuck to my desk or wall pretty easily. Once you have completed that we can start to break down you study to weeks! You might be asking why we need to break it down so much – I thought the same thing when it was suggested to me. If we break down our commitments into weeks we can readily see if we are going to be able to handle our study load. Unfortunately many people over commit themselves to study and might find that study in turn leads to stress and may be setting themselves up to fail. We don't want you to fail and this method I have found really useful to actually realise I was overcommitting myself and have since cut back on the number of units I study and hence have felt much better for it.

So now we start with a weekly planner. You can choose whatever medium you like for your weekly planner whether it is a spreadsheet, outlook calendar, or diary – one thing I recommend though is that you are able to either print it off or have it on display so you can see it every day. Here is a link to the document I used when I first started planning my study. In this weekly planner include everything that takes up your time, this includes meals, work, gym, shopping, sports, community commitments, everything that you know you have to do during the week BEFORE you even consider studying. Once you have that filled it all in you might find it looks pretty full already now need to find at least nine hours per week per unit for study (this is a minimum many units may recommend up to 12 and some even more). If you are struggling to find nine hours per unit per week you will need to cut back on something – the choice is yours: whether it is only doing one unit per study period or cutting back on other commitments for the duration of your study that is up to you. I found this to be a very valuable exercise and when I first did it I realised how much I was trying to over commit myself and setting myself up for major stress or failure.

Once you have your timetable set stick it up somewhere you will see it every day and keep to it. Discuss it with your family and let them know if Wednesday night is study night ask them to respect that time as your time to study, even try placing it on the fridge so they can see it too. Being able to manage your studies is a valuable lesson in time management and can help you achieve success.

I hope you have found this exercise as useful as I have, let me know your feedback on if you have used it or if you have another method.