Andy's Guide to Not Sucking at University
(Stuff that everyone knows, but nobody does)
Revision
Revise what you learnt in the day, every night. Do it you lazy bastard. You know you're supposed to. Do it right now. You might learn something.
Re-write the notes you took in class neater and clarify anything you were unsure of. Highlight anything you think is important that you want yourself to notice when you come to revise. On the weekend, take half an hour to read everything you wrote during the week. This might take you fifteen minutes a night and half an hour on the weekend, but it will improve your marks drastically.
Tutorial Qs
Do all the tutorial questions before, during, or immediately after the tute. Try to check your answers with the tutor or answers on WebCT or BoB. Now file away all that stuff so you can do them again a few weeks before your exam. When you get stuck, look at your previous answers. Easy.
Assignments
Start assignments the day you get them. Serious. Work you do in week 4 is work you won't have to do in week 13. Energy is conserved. Leibniz is happy.
Try to figure out how long each assignment will take you (in hours), then double it and allow that much time.
Set yourself an absolute deadline to be finished two days before they're due. When you finish an assignment, leave it for a day and then read it back to yourself. I guarantee you will find something to change. Luckily you finished two days early, and now have a whole day to change it. If you trust your friends not to copy, get them to have a look through it.
Remember to save at least 15 copies of everything you do on the computer. One on the hard drive, one on a usb drive. Get a gmail account and email yourself everything you do.
Exam Time
Because you've done all your assignments early, you can start reading your notes in week 13 or 14. Read a week or two worth of notes per night, and try a couple of tute Qs. This will help identify anything you can't do. You've now got a week or two to work on those areas.
The week before your exam, do a practice paper if there is one, or a tute Q from every week if there isn't. Set yourself a time limit.
The night before your exam, do a bunch of Qs from the easy areas that you identified a few weeks ago, so you go to sleep thinking you're really smart.
Time Management
Doing this stuff shouldn't turn you into a zombie. It won't take long, you just have to get into the routine. Remember that higher education is a privilege, and there are starving kiddies in Africa, etc. Uni costs you a lot of money and you know you should be making the most of it, but you don't because you're lazy.
UNSW recommends 1.5 hours private study per contact hour.
Engo students:
26 uni hours per week = 37 study hours per week = 63 hoursper week total
Arts students:
5 uni hours per week = 7.5 study hours per week = 12.5 hours per week total
