Unlike school, no one is going to make you get up in the morning, no one is going to tell you to attend lectures, it is down to you as a student to motivate and discipline and organise yourself.

Failure to do this is the single biggest reason people fail their degree courses, it is essential that you get to grips with this aspect of your study early on.

Plan and manage your time effectively:

• Get a wall planner to give an overview of your commitments and deadlines. These are really useful tools, being able to visualise your deadlines in this way really helps you plan your time.
• Get a diary and list your day to day activities, appointments with lecturers etc.
• Keep a list of things to do, perhaps books you need to take out / return, questions you need to ask… anything at all. It is better to make a quick note of these things than risk forgetting to do something.

As far as possible set deadlines for yourself on tasks and stick to them.

It is important to work consistently from the beginning of your course to the end, do not laze around early in the semester and think you can do all your work in the last week… you will fail.

I once saw someone in the last weeks of my degree course come in for an exam having stayed up all night revising. They had been awake for over 20 hours when they went into the exam. They were talking about how they were going to get cracking on their dissertation in the afternoon, like they were really on top of their game. There were only a couple of weeks left to go before our dissertations were due in. I had already handed mine in with weeks to spare.

I do not know if that person passed their course, but why punish yourself by being an idiot!

It is EASIER to plan ahead and manage your work. You can actually do LESS work this way as you have time to ask for support as opposed to struggle through problems on your own.

Touch typing teaches you to:

• Make use of all digits on both hands, not just your index fingers!
• Look at the screen, or document you are copying from, not the keyboard.
• Type at least around twice as fast as finger and thumb methods

Learning to touch type allows you to work more fluidly, the fact that you are looking at the screen (your output) and not the keyboard means you are concentrating fully on the content of your document / degree assignment.

You can see instantly when you have made a mistake and correct it.

I used a CD Rom to learn to touch type which gets you looking at the screen (not the keyboard) immediately.

I used an old (pre 2000 I think) version of Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing from Mindscape, available used on Amazon for less than five pounds.

Advantages

• It is cheap
• You can sell it on to another student when once you’ve learned, you won’t need to use it again!
• It is very effective (I learned the keyboard in ten hours)
• You will save hundreds of hours on written work for your degree
• Your degree work will flow more easily
• It is a life long skill which surprisingly, only a minority of people posses

Disadvantages

• The commentary on Mavis Beacon is irritating, but you learn just as easily with the sound off.
  

• Academic Report writing
• Academic Essay writing
• Academic Referencing

There is more than one referencing system, Harvard seems to be the most popular, but try and find out for sure which one your University prefers.

You may also be able to acquire report templates from your University.

Referencing degree assignments is vital, failure to reference can result in degree students being penalised for plagiarism. A well referenced document creates the right impression for the assessor of your work.

If are taking the advice given in posts on learning to touch type, and learn to use your wordprocessor then you can make better use of your time by practicing your typing and word processing skills whilst writing in the style of an academic report or essay.

Note: the language expected for degree assignments is quite distinct. A journalistic writing style is not acceptable on a university degree course. Degree students need to develop an appropriate writing style as soon as possible if they are to achieve a first class degree.

You can find a lot of information on academic report writing and referencing using the search box below:

• Set the headers and footers
• Number pages
• Set different styles for headings etc
• Use the index and tables feature to automatically generate table of contents etc.
• Use the show/hide button

The index and tables feature is particularly useful. If you use headings properly in your document, it will automatically generate your table of contents.

Headings can be automatically numbered. If you cut and paste headings into different sections of the document, the numbering automatically adjusts.

If you re-generate the table of contents after cutting and pasting, the table of contents will automatically adjust.

Numbered headings and tables of contents can be problematic. A common problem occurs when you do not fully delete a line, leaving a blank space formatted as a header. These spaces are difficult to spot, and will throw out numbering / formatting of your table of contents.

Use the show/hide button to help find the offending space.

Tutorials are beyond the scope of this site, if you need tutorials try the search bar below:

The advice given here focuses on personal attributes, as opposed to cost of university courses, cost of living and reputation of institution which are also vitally important considerations.

Before looking at degree courses, spend a couple of hours properly considering and listing your strengths and weaknesses.

Perhaps get friends or family to add their comments too. Self perceptions are rarely as close to reality as we would like!

During this process you should consider:

• Areas of academic aptitude versus ineptitude
• General likes and dislikes
• Interests and hobbies
• Things that capture your imagination versus things you find boring
• Types of assessment: exams versus coursework

What you should end up with at the end of the process is thoroughly considered list of things to look for, and avoid in a degree.

This list can be used to help you select from the list of available courses. It will also help you prepare questions when you attend open days / interviews.

You may think I am stating the obvious here, and I am, but the obvious is often overlooked.

If you properly consider your strengths and weaknesses and use this analysis to correctly select a course that:

• Inspires you
• You enjoy
• Plays to your strengths

You will find it much easier to invest the thousands of hours in that it takes to get a first class university degree, you will be motivated to work hard, and will ultimately get better marks.