Weekly Planning

Planning at this level is more about developing a successful routine. Everyone has different habits here - different times when you're most wide awake, different times when you can get on with things undisturbed, different degrees of success at getting down to hard work even when you've only got a short time available. And the lesson to learn here too is to control things rather than be pushed around.

At the start of the week it seems like there is plenty of time to get everything done. But after lectures, seminars, sleeping, eating, traveling etc. there is frustratingly little time left. Here are some suggestions for how to get the most of the remaining hours.

• Use a diary to allocate exactly when and how much time you have available. You could perhaps use a copy of the timetable on which you have entered your contact hours - lectures and seminars - at the beginning of the semester. This will need to be adapted to include evenings and weekends in your plan.
• Compile lists of tasks to be completed during the week. Some of these (glancing over last week's lecture and class notes, for example) may be done in odd spare hours such as between lectures. Others (such as essays and seminar papers) will require longer stretches of time.
• Allocate these tasks to days and periods of time, depending on how big each is, and how urgent.
• Be flexible. Learn from your mistakes. (In estimating how long a task will take, for example). If your schedule isn't working, change it. Don't always work in the same place. Break up long study sessions into different tasks.
• Don't waste half of a study session sitting around waiting for inspiration. Do something to get your brain working:
• Jot down the tasks that need doing.
• Start with one of the smaller tasks
• Read through some lecture notes to get you thinking about what you are reading/writing.
• Draft a page of an essay (you can always change it later).
• Start in the middle of the essay, if this is more straightforward, then go back to the
  Introduction.
• Take responsibility for your working patterns. Work to the deadline you have set.

Material adapted with permission from Study Skills in Linguistics by Martin Barry and Study Skills in History Booklet 1 "Organising Study Time"