Loretta is back today with her fourth installment of The University Project! Unfortunately her camera has broken so we have no photos, but she does a great job explaining her set up!
This past week in true student style I have spent most of the week in my pyjamas or if not planning when I can get into them. As I go to university in Wales, the weather has been very cold and wet this week and so I have opted for doing a lot of work in bed or on the sofa. Sadly this week my hamster that I showed you in the last post passed away and my room felt so weird without a furry companion so after visiting my local pet shop I adopted a hamster that nobody had wanted to buy because she had a bald patch on her nose! She’s called Jess (from New Girl) and she’s still settling in so I don’t have any pictures of her yet- but you’re not really interested in my hamster stories and so onto the planner related stuff!
I have been sticking to my system of using my A5 Burde as my desk planner and carrying my pocket organiser around in my bag to write down any deadlines or information about assignments that are mentioned in lecturers.
Unfortunately my phone camera has packed in on me and since that is the only camera I currently have with me at university there will be no pictures in this week’s post but I am assured it will be fixed within 3 days so hopefully there will be some pictures for next week!
The initial goal of this project was based upon time management and boy have I had to do that this week! I’ve had 2 pieces of coursework to do, an exam to revise for and all of that on top of 30 hours of lectures, an ever-growing reading list and a much welcome visit from my Nan. I pretty much lost a day of work when my hamster died but after a bout in the library today I am feeling very caught up and ready to tackle the work at the weekend and prepare myself for the next lecture week ahead!
I am not sure how familiar you all are with the UK education system but basically it seems that first year at university, they lull you into a false sense of security! It’s pretty easy to do well in your exams in the first year and at the end of the day you only need to get an average of 40 percent to pass. Today my conservation lecturer announced to the class that simply showing up to lectures and revising everything covered in them will get you 40 percent if you’re lucky and instead you have to do a lot of secondary reading in order to get a good mark. Now don’t get me wrong I am more than happy to do extra reading but I was under the illusion that this would be the sort of thing that would take you from a 2.2 (50 percent) to a 2.1 (60 percent)or perhaps if was really diligent and hardworking, a first class degree (70 percent). So I’ve had my wakeup call and now I have pencilled in (for now) a couple of hours every day or so to do this extra reading and hopefully arm myself as best as I can for upcoming exams and assessments; I will be trialling this system over the next week and if it is successful I am considering adding a sort of ‘reading record’ section to my A5 Filofax in order to keep track of which papers or textbook chapters I have read or any articles that I have book marked because they look interesting but I don’t have the time to read them right then. I’m also going to start trying to buy a scientific magazine at least once a month in order to keep on track of what is going on in the world of science and hopefully have the very latest up to date news. If any of you have any suggestions of good websites or blogs for this sort of thing then I would be incredibly grateful!
So next week will be my last post for this project and I will hopefully have a camera by this point and can show you how my new reading system (and possibly section) is going and I will try and reflect on how my set up has changed from what I initially created during my summer break compared with what is working for me now.
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