• Final Exam Schedule 
• Final Exam Time Schedule (week)
• Weekly Study planner
• Monthly Style Study planner
• Essay Planner
• Glossary (definitions & terms)
• Note

• Use recall. When you look at a passage and try to study it,  look away and recall the main ideas. Try recalling concepts when you are walking to class or in a different room from where you originally learned it. An ability to recall—to generate the ideas from inside yourself—is one of the key indicators of good learning.
• Test yourself. On everything. All the time. Flashcards are your best friend. Use quizlet if you don’t want to hand-make flashcards. Get somebody to test you on your notes.
• Space your repetition. Spread out your learning in any subject a little every day, just like an athlete. Don’t sit and study one subject for 2 hours, do half an hour every day.
• Take breaks. It is common to be unable to solve problems or figure out concepts in math or science the first time you encounter them. This is why a little study every day is much better than a lot of studying all at once. When you get frustrated, take a break so that another part of your mind can take over and work in the background. You need breaks in order for your brain to retain the information. Try the Pomodoro method if you have trouble timing breaks!
• Use simple analogies. Whenever you are struggling with a concept, think to yourself, How can I explain this so that a ten-year-old could understand it? Using an analogy really helps. Say it out loud, like you’re teaching it, whether it’s to an imaginary class or your sister who couldn’t care less.  The additional effort of teaching out loud allows you to more deeply encode.
• Focus. Turn off your phone / iPad / any distractions and clear your desk of everything you do not need. Use apps like Forest if you can’t stay off them!
• Do the hardest thing earliest in the day, when you’re wide awake and less likely to push it aside.

• Passive rereading—sitting passively and running your eyes back over a page. This is a waste of time, frankly, and doesn’t do anything to help information pass into your brain without recall.
• Over-highlighting. Colouring a passage of text in highlighter isn’t helpful at all. It’s good for flagging up key points to trigger concepts and information, but make sure what you highlight goes in.
• Waiting until the last minute to study. DON’T CRAM!!!
• Doing what you know. This isn’t studying! This is like learning how to juggle but only throwing one ball. 
• Neglecting the textbook. Would you dive into a pool before you knew how to swim? The textbook is your swimming instructor—it guides you toward the answers. 
• Not asking your teachers for help. They are used to lost students coming in for guidance—it’s their job to help you. 
• Not getting enough sleep. Your brain practices and repeats whatever you put in mind before you go to sleep, as well as retaining information and repairing itself. Prolonged fatigue allows toxins to build up in the brain that disrupts the neural connections you need to think quickly and well. 

• Create a study group and meet regularly (not just before exams!)
• “Teach” the material to someone – your pet works well!
• Keep a list in the front of your notebook/binder of topics or points that seem important enough to be on the exam, that confuse you, or that you’re interested in so you can go back and study them.
• Study a little over a long period when you can, instead of cramming for an entire exam in one night.
• Create a “cheat sheet” of important information for studying on the go.
• Try the Pomodoro method to keep from getting burnt out.
• Try creating a timetable for studying so you don’t spend too long on a certain subject and run out of time for the others.
• Knock out your least favorite subject first, so you can have the rest of the day to work on more enjoyable subjects and relax. 
• Create a study guide for the class using Google Docs that you can all contribute to.
• If you’re unclear about something, Google it. There’s more than likely a video that can explain it more clearly than your textbook.
• Keep a running list of questions to ask during office hours, & actually go!
• Study in a public place (the library, a coffee shop) so that you’re less likely to get distracted watching cat videos knowing people can see what you’re doing. 
• Get plenty of rest the night before an exam! Cramming is not worth it.

• Write everything down, even if you think you’ll remember it.
• Keep a planner and check it first thing in the morning.
• Do the work for your least favorite class first so that it’s out of the way.
• Start early. Way earlier than you have to. That way you have time for delays, to start over if you have to, or to take a night off to go to a party. 
• If it’s something quick, like a worksheet, do it as soon as it’s assigned.
• If you have a long break between classes, use it to work on small assignments that you can get out of the way.
• For big projects, like papers and presentations, break it up into smaller pieces. “Write thesis” is a lot less daunting than “write 8 page paper”.
• Do homework before you study, so you’ll know what you’re confused about and need to pay more attention to. 
• If there’s an option to buy an ebook rather than a physical copy of the textbook, do it. Not only is it usually cheaper, but it frees up space in your bag and you can search for specific terms easily.
• If you have a lot of work to catch up on, set aside a block of time to knock it all out at once (with breaks, of course).
• If all the homework for a class is due at the end of the semester, give yourself due dates for the individual assignments so you don’t put it off and have to do it all at once. 
• Install a site blocker so you don’t get distracted from your work.
• If you have an online class, schedule a regular time to work on it as if it were a traditional class.  
• Don’t just Google your way through the homework! It may save time now, but it’ll only make things harder when it’s time for exams.

• More Study Tips
• Time Management
• Intensive Revision (Cramming)
• Public Speaking
• Writing Papers Quickly
• Study Habits
• Final Exams

these are just some of the methods i want to share that work for me when i write my innumerable amount of essays! i’m definitely a huge planner so it’s no secret that i spend a lot of time on an essay. if you’re a deadline fighter, these tips might not necessarily be helpful (especially the handwriting one). but i hope this gives you an insight on how i write my essays! 🌈

1. Move the skills section up to the top!  You know what I give a fuck about the most when I’m reading a resume (at least for entry-level positions)?  WHAT YOU CAN DO.  I frankly don’t give a shit where you learned it.  Tell me what you’re capable of in concrete terms, organized in a bullet-points list or table that I can quickly scan to see if you even stand a chance of matching what we need, because that is all I’m doing in those critical first couple of seconds that decides whether I even bother looking at the rest of the resume.  (Which I get sounds kinda callous but when I have to get through a couple dozen resumes, meaning download, open, read, decide what to do, forward it to the appropriate person if it makes the cut with my comments/summary/recommendations, file it appropriately and go on to the next one, and get back to my other duties and responsibilities - which I don’t have enough hours in the day for as it is - I can’t afford to depth-read every single resume that hits my inbox.)
2. Include volunteer experience as work experience if you have any.  Running the concession stand at a high school club event of some kind counts as cash handling and customer service experience.  Making blog themes for your friends counts as web design experience.  Just because you weren’t getting paid doesn’t mean it wasn’t work experience you can potentially leverage to get actual paying work.
3. Rework that top statement - in its current form it’s looking like some odd hybrid of an executive summary (good!) and an objective statement (bad!), and I’m not sure how I feel about it tbh.  I think it’s the “leveraging…to positively contribute” bit that is pushing all my “ugh no fucking shit sherlock” buttons.  Like…what were you going to say, that you want to skate along doing the bare minimum amount of work and you don’t give a shit about the organization’s goals?  I see way too many regurgitated statements like that - “positively contribute” and “maximize success” and “utilize my skills to further goals” etc. - and they just make my eyes roll out of my head at this point because they’re so generically corporate.  I’d rather see a declarative statement about what you are and what you can do, than what you want.

• Choose something you like. Because by the end of it, you’re going to be sick of it. And, trust me, it’s better to be sick of something you’re actually interested in.
• Look at the stuff you’ve done in the past and think about what you liked about each module. Gender? Politics? Semantics? The great thing about a dissertation is that you can explore which ever topic you feel like.
• Research. Read everything you can on the topic. When you think you’ve read enough, read some more. The more you research, the better idea you’ll have as to whether your topic is viable. Google scholar is awesome, use it! And Jstor. And your university library. You have so much material at your fingertips, you just gotta find it.
• Look at which sources are available to you. I stupidly chose a question which was very difficult to research. This was okay, as I was passionate about the topic and willing to travel to archives. But if you can’t think of anything to write about, maybe see what primary material is available to you at your university/college.
• Originality is key for a huge piece of work like this. This is the most difficult part of choosing a topic, in my opinion. Think of something that hasn’t been done before, or come to a new conclusion. Trust yourself, your opinions are valid!
• Primary sources are the most important thing here. Read them before you read too much secondary material. This way, you can find your own opinions on the subject without just appropriating what has been already said.
• Talk to people who know what they’re talking about. Your university pays lots of professors whose job it is to advise you. Go and talk to them! They may be able to give you some new perspective.

How do you eat an elephant?

One bite at a time.

• Give yourself plenty of time to research. I spent 3 months just reading before I even thought about making a solid plan. Only after doing loads of reading and thinking can you come up with a way to tie together everything you’ve learned.
• When making a plan, decide how many words to devote to each “chapter.” This means you won’t go over the word limit. And editing is the worst.
• I made quite a long detailed plan in order to structure my thoughts. That plan became my bible. It might not work for you though.
• This is my favourite way of planning my essays. It’s such a useful guide, so simple, and so helpful. Give it a look! I’ve been using a similar technique since I started uni, but this is better tbh.
• When researching, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, write down where you found the information. Page numbers, author, publisher, date of publication, editions, chapter titles, chapter page numbers. I spent 4 days after I had written the whole thing just trying to find this one God damn article which I had read nearly a year ago. It was a nightmare.Please. Record the bibliographical information.
• Write all the important dates in your diary/phone. I also used “monthly reminders” so I was constantly aware of how long I had left.
• Give yourself a week to edit and create your bibliography. It’s nice to edit at your own pace, not at a rush.
• Give yourself lots of room for disasters! When I was planning my essay, I had no idea that I was going to break my arm, and be in cast for half of the year. I obviously did not predict that. But I had an adaptable schedule, which really helped me.
• And make sure to regularly back everything up! I lost a load of work and it sucked so bad. Don’t let that happen to you.

• Give yourself your own deadlines. Say that you need to have written the first chapter three months before the deadline, or something like that. This means that you won’t be rushing at the end, and you might be able to give drafts of chapters to your supervisor to read over.
• It’s alright if you don’t write perfectly on the first try. Splurge your ideasall over the paper! Freewrite everything you want to say. And then, after a cup of tea or a nap, come back to it. You’ll feel much better for it.
• You don’t have to start at the beginning. Maybe write the chapter that you have the most information for first, to give yourself some confidence. Or, maybe start with the worst first, to make the rest seem less daunting. It’s up to you, both strategies have merit.
• Daily word counts are great when you’re reaching the deadline. I knew I had to write 150 words every day in order to hit the deadline - I exceeded this every day, which made me feel awesome about myself and gave myself loads of confidence.
• Talk to people about it! I find that talking about my opinions out loud really help me formulate my ideas in my head.
• Do loads of proof reading. I discovered two days before the deadline that I had been spelling “amicitia” wrong consistently. It was pretty embarrassing.
• Ask your friends/family to read it through. Even if they don’t  understand everything, they should be able to help with grammatical errors and such like. When you’re sick of reading your own words (which is very quickly for me) you’ll be thankful for the second opinion.