Don’t Forget Your Friends

During secondary school you will have made friends.  When you leave for university your true friends will remain.  Remember to keep in contact with them (if they’re worth it this will seem effortless) and remember that one day you will need to know who to trust.  With all the facebook lark many people may have up to 100 “friends” or more!  These are contacts and very useful!  You may only have 2 or 3 really close friends that you might call brother or sister.  Don’t forget them.

Read

There is no substitute for reading.  You’ll need to read around your subject and its also incredibly useful to read the paper.  Knowing what’s going on is very useful when it comes to writing essays.  It’s a big world out there and there’s lots going on all the time.  I try and keep up on world affairs just by reading the Sunday Times each week – £2 instead of 65p a day.  It gives a good summary of the weeks news including the business side of things.  Don’t bury your head in the sand and keep up with the world.

Get up in the morning

Seriously, I know this may seem like a drag but it is soooo beneficial!  You need to be careful though as you need to make sure you get enough sleep.  This is particularly important in your second and third years. 

By getting up in the morning you get that little bit of time to yourself.  You don’t need to rush to a particular lecture, you won’t forget things.  what I mean is try and start a regime.  Say 7.30am – 8am in the week to perhaps 9 or 10 at the weekend.  I find that if I am not up and going by 10 o’clock the day jst dsappears and all of a sudden the stress and worry comes back as to whether I am going to meet deadlines.  It really helps to drag yourself out of bed!  After all, in the real world we’d have to be going to work anyway!  Least all we have to do is sit in lectures and pretend to listen (always best to listen properly though!).  Don’t be lazy – you’ll be back in that bed before you know it!  Time goes to quickly! 

Plan ahead

Make sure you take the time to plan the work out that needs doing.  Jot down the key deadlines in a program such as Outlook.  This helps a lot with knowing how many weeks you have left and also how many days (and plenty of time) you still have to do the work.  You shouldn’t worry about the work if you plan it well.  By planning I mean really thinking about the work before you even start.  This means looking at articles on the web or readin te odd clip in a book or magazine.  Jot these down though or at least where you can find them quickly again as this will help you a lot in the long run!!  Especially when referencing your work. 

Save yourself the stress and worry.  If you have any major worries always ask the lecturer concerned.  I find emails are best for this as you can store the email for reference later (or evidence!).  If you can, see if you can enjoy the work.  Imagine your working for your own company and it’s going to cost millions if its not done, or something like that.