How can I improve my grades?

The summer term turns into one of the most stressful for students across the globe. With exams and coursework deadlines, so many people are now debating what they could have differently to get better results.

The University of Central Lancashire run a program for those just starting at university called Flying Start. The program runs for about a week and is designed to help you prepare for starting you degree. There are sessions on time management, money management as well as an opportunity to experience living in student halls.

Advice that is heard from all tutors is to revise and prepare weeks before your deadline. But most students, even those with the best intentions, watch as their plans go out the window within days of promising to stick to their study plan. This is mainly due to loosing track of time. An easy way to realise how little time you have per project is to predict/record a week. It's a bit precise but it will help that the less preparation the else time you have.

It's easy to do and if you prefer looking and editing things on a screen it can be done in excel. Just write the days of the week in a row and the 24 hours in a day down in a column.

The next step is to plot out what you'd like to get done during the week. Remember to include 7-8 hours sleep as well as time to eat and shower. The table then starts to get more full.

Then If you include a 9-5 lecture/classes per day, making it a 40 hour week over 5 days, 1 hour per day for studying making it 5 hours per week.

It's starting to look even fuller, the final part to add in is a part time job. Which for this example the job will take up 12 hours from the week.

The plan is now looking very full and there isn't even any travelling time or any social time either.

So will time management help improve my grades?

Yes! But it's important to play as hard as you work, otherwise you'll never stick to your studies. This is useful to keep in mind for next term but what can i do now my work has been submitted? The best thing to do is look over the work you submitted and any notes to see how you can improve. See where you made any mistakes.

Use the time available now to read any text books you didn't have chance to before. Work on punctuation, spelling and grammar. Practice mental maths and any equations you've struggled with before.

The key thing to remember is that you can always learn more and there is no set way to study.

That's All For Now

Amy

@MissAJBurton