How is sticking to regular study times? 📅
Now I’ve got my timetable and booked in all my labs and tutorials, I can finally populate this in my planner (and my Outlook calendar) 🗓️. This has been a game changer for me. I add in my extracurriculars too, like sports 🏃♀️, meeting friends for drinks 🍻, societies, as well as work 💻. One final, and probably most academically helpful addition to my planner has been blocked-out study times 📚.
This looks like one-hour blocks where I know I don’t have anything else. In this time, I put ‘Library’ (as I can never seem to focus well at home) and take myself off to the library 📖 to do whatever that week has thrown at me. I find this incredibly useful as it structures my day and my work, and stops me feeling guilty when I am relaxing as I know that time is for myself. This is so important to help me maintain a healthy work-life balance and ensure I don’t miss any deadlines. Since adopting this method, I have consistently been able to finish my work ahead of the deadline and prevent the 2 am library cram.
You can use these sessions for whatever you feel fit; currently I’ve been using them to catch up on missed lectures or make my revision material for when exams get closer 📝. I know I have project deadlines approaching from my Excel deadline tracker (sorted by date), so I will likely use it for those. A helpful tip beyond simply blocking in study time is to work out before the session what you want to achieve/tackle in that time 🎯.
If you haven’t already looked over your timetable and created a weekly planner and blocked in weekly study sessions, I would highly recommend. Having the consistency of weekly times can really help structure your weeks and prevent last-minute cramming ⏳.
By Oleander (2nd year)