Study Tips: How to Stay on top of your assignments and studying

Today’s post is a reply to a question posted by Shaun.

” Hi Shanna,

I have been reading your posts about UBC advice and I have been loving it! You seem to truly know your stuff. Currently, I am a first-year student (just started this month), so naturally, I am curious about all sorts of things.
How are Anki flashcards working for you?
How do you keep track of assignments from all of your classes?
and Do you find blogging to be helpful to your personal growth?

Sincerely,

Shaun”

Thanks so much for reading and commenting Shaun. First of all, congrats on starting at UBC! How exciting! I wish you a great year full of fun adventures, new friendships, and figuring out how to ace your classes!

Thank you for your kind words. I hope this is okay with you that I’ll split up my answer into several posts, so I can take some time to give you a quality reply!

MOST IMPORTANT TIP: Set multiple email alerts for your small weekly assignments. I find that getting an email is much more helpful than a phone notification. If an alert about an upcoming assignment comes in as the same idea as a text from your boss or your best friend, you might forget about it! This is the email system that  I use with automatic email alerts. Note that I get 3 alerts! So that if I’m lazy and ignore the first email, my alerts refuse to let me forgot about that assignment!

 

For midterms and big papers, set 4 alerts. The first alert will come should be set for 2 weeks in advance.

 

Regarding weekly biology and psychology Launchpad/physics and calculus and statistics problem sets, do your assignment as soon as it’s available. If it opens Friday afternoon at 4 pm, do it before you relax for the evening.

Batch them together. If the professor releases 2 weeks of assignments at a time, I would do both of them at the same time since I’m doing it anyway. Getting yourself started is harder than continuing so if you have time, utilizing your good momentum can save you time in the long run.

My opinion only: Paper planners are superior to a cellphone calendar. I have friends that are brilliant students such as Veena and Kelsey that keep track of their due dates and exams all on their cellphone so that might work for you too. I tried the app too but I find it too much of a hassle to type something in and repeatedly check. When you have a paper planner, you can take it out as soon as the professor mentions it and write it down. Part of this is that I feel rude pulling my phone during a lecture but that might be a personal opinion and maybe everyone will doing that in a couple years.

When needed, keep a blank notebook for long to do lists . In busy periods of your life, a planner may temporarily not have enough space. For example, I used a blank notebook to plan out my estimated timeline for writing and editing my application. When you have a ton of projects in different realms in your life, you can have a page just about “urgent school assignments”, “to-dos for Vision Health Volunteers Club”, “Home life to-dos”, “Finalizing your major/other school admin things”, “General finance to-dos”.. Having a multi-purpose notebook on you at all times proves very useful though when you have a meeting and need to write something down.

 

I do want to note that in first year,  you have the most weekly assignments that you need to keep track of it that you can forget about because your professor will not remind you! If you utilize automatic alerts, you won’t forget. Each year, my classes get less and less assignments and put more weight on exams. For instance, in third year, only 2 of my classes have assignments. My PATH class has only a midterm and final. My physiology class is literally only based on final exam marks . So the further you go along, the less you have to care about little assignments.

Best of luck!

Shanna

One thought on “Study Tips: How to Stay on top of your assignments and studying

Comments are closed.