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.

• Mathematics
• Programming
• Report writing
• Proof reading

Of these the most valuable by far was the proof reading service (offered via the university library).

I do not know how common it is for universities to offer this service, but if your university does offer it, make sure you use it! Proof reading will help you with:

• Report Structure
• Referencing
• Appropriate use of language

If you are using such a service try to:

• Get every report read, not just your dissertation
• Take reports at an early stage, before you make too many mistakes
• Take reports back for a final review
• Incorporate what you learn into future writing

If you are able to use this service throughout your university degree, by the time you come to write your dissertation the style and standard expected will be second nature to you, and your work will require fewer changes after proof reading. A well written, structured and referenced degree assignment is a sign of quality, effort and time invested. It will encourage a favourable mark, even where no marks are directly awarded for these attributes.

In order for proof reading to be effective you need to complete degree assignments early, allowing time for review, modification and further review.

You may also find the post on Time Management useful.

As soon as you enroll, try and get hold of your module guides via a university lecturer or the university Intranet and:

1.Find the reading lists for your degree modules
2.Get key texts for your degree from the library

University libraries do not normally allow you to reserve books that are on the shelf, so you have to go and collect them immediately.

Getting hold of documentation before the start of a degree module was a problem at my University. Lecturers did not like people jumping ahead so released presentations and information in line with the teaching schedule.

To get around this I downloaded all course materials for the following year (as lecturers released the material).

This enabled me to do some prep over the summer, as well as get in first at the library with the reading list.

If you would like your own copy of a key text, try looking for a second hand copy on Amazon.

I found two projects / dissertations in particular that were relevant to my area of interest, one of which really stood out as a quality piece of work.

I was able to find out from one of the lecturers that this project had achieved a mark above 80%. I required 70% for a first class degree, and so set myself a target of 80% to give myself some leeway..

This gave me a clear guide as to the standard I needed to achieve with my own degree work.
I periodically went back to this project to benchmark my own university work against it.

When I was writing my dissertation at university I really analysed this document to see what I could learn from this students approach, structure, presentation, language and content.

In some areas I could not compete with the quality of this work, but in others I was able to surpass it.

By the time I handed in my dissertation I knew it was close to the standard of the other report in terms of quality and fully expected it to achieve a similar mark.

The final mark for my dissertation was 84%.

Past dissertations are an essential resource in understanding standards required at university, and benchmarking your own degree work.

You may not be able to find a good dissertation relevant to your university degree, in which case look for high scoring dissertations in other subjects. Remember, you are using this document to benchmark your own work, the content / subject is of less importance than the standard.

I found this an invaluable resource, providing electronic copies of:

• University Module guides
• University Course materials
• Presentations
• University Reading lists (and useful links)
• Past degree exam papers
• Past student projects / dissertations

And also guidelines on

• Academic Report writing
• Academic Referencing
• Presentation skills

It was also possible to search for, reserve and renew books online.

In addition the University had subscriptions to paid information services giving access to information that, as a private individual you would find very expensive.

Spend some time researching the online services available to you at university so you can benefit from them straight away. Never miss a trick!

I found the Intranet particularly useful for looking at the following years degree modules, as course materials and reading lists were posted online I was able to plan ahead.

You may also find the post Get in first for a first at the library useful.