How Ready For Learning Are You?

If there were marks for preparedness, you'd have a distinction every time! But be careful you don't get so caught up in the method that you neglect the content. What you write matters much more than how, when or what you write it in.

You may have a notebook for making notes about your other notebooks, and every shade of highlighter known to man or woman, a wallchart as big as your wall and eighteen different sorts of sticky notes - but have you tried posting in your welcome forum yet?

*Without* mentioning stationery...

Organisation isn't your strong suit. But because your life doesn't run to a schedule, trying to impose one on it would be doomed to failure anyway. You grab study time like everything else, where and when you can, and making sure you stay ahead of deadlines is what you need to watch out for. But your improvisational skills are amazing, as is your imagination. You always find a way around things. 

It's just finding things that's the issue.

You know you've got some highlighter pens, somewhere. Well, you've got a lid from one and a suspiciously pink stain on one of the sofa cushions. But you can underline stuff in biro just as well, and you know where your notes are, because they're all written in your textbook.

Yes, very cunning. 

Now, you just need to find your textbook...

Study from home, they said. You can just fit it around your daily life, they said. People do it whilst homeschooling triplets, working two jobs and dealing with rare and complex health issues, they said.

Then here you are, trying to do 30 credits of Beginners French, but the cat's been sick on the dry cleaning you picked up this morning, your eight year old has come home and told you it's Harvest Festival *and* World Book day and you breezily said "You too!" to the barista who told you to enjoy your coffee earlier; tho at least the wet patch on the kitchen floor isn't the cat's fault, since it turns out the freezer is defrosting itself today. 

Which is great. Of course.

Still. Taking the drycleaning back again is supporting a small local business, there'll be some random tins in the cupboard for Harvest and your child has a whole host of emotionally disturbed Jaqueline Wilson characters to dress up as for World Book Day with no effort at all. As for the freezer, it's a very good reason to have icecream for tea. And pizza. And chips. And something beige in a bag...? And everyone *should* enjoy coffee.

You're saving the day, one task at a time, just like we all are. We're all starting from different places, but we can all feel for each other's stresses and disasters. This isn't a race or a contest. It's a university. A school, where students learn *together*. Someone out here will have your back when the going gets tough - whether it's a broken nail, a broken heart or a broken bone.

What week is it? Week three? Yeah, that's the week you're on. Well, some of it. You skipped over a lot. It's not relevant to the TMA, is it? You thought you'd go to a tutorial and catch up with everything there, but they all get booked up so quickly...

No, you've not actually *tried* booking a tutorial yet.

You're Pacing Yourself...

Uh huh. I'd strongly recommend getting a couple of weeks ahead of the game, because you never know what life is going to throw at you. Bank some time if you can, whenever you can. There's no rule that says you can't go through cherry-picking which bits of the weekly tasks to complete, or doing prep for every TMA, if you like. Work however works for you.

Go at your own pace, and ignore what other people are doing. If you want to work alongside the scheduled times that's absolutely fine. If something untoward does happen to set you back, then you shouldn't have an issue getting an extension, either. There are always ways around problems, if they arise. Student Support are always there for you.

But try to avoid putting yourself in that situation if you can. Extensions eat into your next block, and may leave you with too little time for the next TMA, and you can end up with a domino effect that ultimately knocks into your EMA, and there's no extensions with EMAs...

Working a little bit ahead gives you a safety net, and doesn't stop you going back and working alongside your tutor and tutor group when you're discussing weekly tasks or in tutorials.

All that's best avoided is handing in your TMAs too soon. There's often some really useful advice covered in the weeks just before they're due that's worth waiting for.