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Student Advisor ‘A Day in the Life’: Part 3
Ivy Harris: Year 2 BSc. Biology
Exam season is a time of focus and long hours in the library. It’s essential to remember that maintaining a healthy personal life is just as important as acing exams. In this blog post, we’ll explore strategies for mastering the balance between academic success and personal wellbeing during the challenging exam period.
It is crucial to recognize that maintaining a healthy personal life is not a luxury but a necessity. Neglecting self-care and personal relationships can lead to burnout and compromised mental health. By prioritizing balance, students can optimize their performance while also nurturing their overall wellbeing.
Effective time management is key to balancing exam preparation with personal life. Creating a study schedule that allows for breaks, exercise, and outside activities can help maintain productivity. Additionally, adopting effective study habits, such as using active learning techniques and minimizing distractions can maximize study efficiency and free up time.
Amidst the long hours of study, self-care often takes a backseat to academia. However, prioritizing self-care is essential for maintaining your health and happiness. Simple practices such as getting enough sleep, eating nutritious meals, staying hydrated, and engaging in regular exercise can help alleviate stress and improve focus. Maintaining meaningful relationships and social connections is vital for combating feelings of isolation and maintaining a sense of balance. Whether it’s a study date with classmates or a coffee break with a friend, nurturing relationships can enhance overall happiness and academic performance.
It’s essential to celebrate progress and successes, no matter how small. Acknowledging achievements, whether it’s mastering a difficult concept, completing a challenging assignment, or maintaining a healthy work-life balance, can boost confidence, and morale. Finding balance between academic responsibilities and personal wellbeing can seem like a difficult goal to achieve. However, by prioritizing self-care, nurturing relationships, and setting reasonable goals, students can navigate the challenges of exam season successfully. Doing well in exams is not just about mastering content but also about nurturing the holistic well-being that fuels academic achievement and personal fulfilment.
Lawrence O’Shaughnessy: Year 3 BSc. Business and Management
Hi, I’m Lawrence, I’m a current Business and Management student and one of the Student Advisors within the UniSkills team. This blog is designed as a day in the life; but as a current third-year student, making the final push in the last few weeks of my course – most of my days currently revolve around studying. Writing a dissertation is no joke!
I’m a commuting student, so I typically head to campus for around 9am, after I’ve walked the dog and grabbed some breakfast, then it’s straight to the catalyst! Over the three years, I have tried a lot of different ways of studying, but working on campus is the most effective for me, making use of the Second, quiet floor in Catalyst or if it’s deadline day – the silent third floor!
Typically, I spend the first few hours of the morning proofreading what I have written the day before, it’s amazing how many mistakes you spot when you look at something with a fresh pair of eyes! After this I’ll move on to finding sources on Discover More and reading journal articles and textbooks I’ll need to reference later on.
However, when you’re studying it is so important to schedule in some study breaks: the longer you’re staring at a screen, the less productive you can become. Normally I like to take a mid-morning break around 11am and head to one of the various coffee shops on campus for a well-earned caramel latte and a brief change of scenery!
After a coffee break I’ll normally move onto the academic writing process either working on my dissertation or one of the other assignments that’s due soon. I’ll normally work through this for a few hours until around 2pm then head to one of the food outlets on campus for some lunch and if it’s sunny, have a walk around campus to clear my head and take in some of the fantastic views at Edge Hill – if you’re lucky you might even spot some of the campus wildlife!
After lunch is the perfect time to change up your workspace and pick somewhere different in Catalyst to work. Usually, I like to find a computer with two displays at this point so that I can work on referencing what I’d written before lunch – having two displays means I can have the Harvard Referencing Guide or Harvard Referencing toolkit open on one display and my work on the other!
Keeping on top of the referencing is so important in ensuring every source is added to your bibliography, accurately. I like to save this until the end of the day so I can work through something a little easier before heading home for the day around 4pm in between the school traffic and rush hour. I always like to play an uplifting playlist on the way home to help unwind after the day!
I find studying on campus helps achieve a good study-life balance, meaning I can switch off when I arrive home and stay away from the laptop for most of the weekend, making more time to spend with friends and unwind. Even when I have a full week of lectures, I prefer this way of working!
I’d recommend completing a revision timetable to help see your current study life balance, find any gaps to maximise keeping accountable to a schedule – it can seem daunting at first without one.
We hope this blog has been insightful into a day in the life of a second and third year student. Remember to check out the UniSkills website for your free revision timetable templates, advice and toolkits!
Good luck with your exams and assessments!
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How to Get the Most Out of Your Assignment Feedback
Many students (and tutors!) have a love/hate relationship with feedback. Whatever your thoughts and feelings about feedback are, remember that using it proactively can be a really valuable tool to help you build your skills and confidence. Focusing on gathering and evaluating past feedback before the next assessment period is a useful way to help you identify key strengths, and also to know what you need to work on to improve or maintain your grades. Here are some of my top tips to help you get started.
Gather your feedback
Whatever year of study you are in, by this point in the academic year you will have received some feedback on previous pieces of assessment. Take some time to look back at your submissions so far, and gather all the feedback from your previous assessments. If you are in year 2, 3 or 4 of your study, you should now have a good range of feedback to consider.
Highlight the positives
Work through your feedback, highlighting all the positive comments and notice what you have done well. Have you thoroughly met the Learning Outcomes? Did you do a good job of writing critically? Have you articulated your arguments well?
Remember that feedback is often focused on ways to improve, so if there are no explicit comments about what you have done well, you can still identify positives by concentrating on what has not been said! If there are no comments in the feedback about your referencing and in-text citations, this likely means that you have already done a good job.
Focussing on the positives is a great way to build confidence and to recognise the skills you already have. Another way to do this is to identify your progress.
This is easier to do the more feedback you have, so if you are in year 1 maybe think about how you can identify and track your progress as you move into your year 2.
Track your progress
Think about any initial comments you received on improving your work that are no longer being highlighted. Have you improved your understanding of the referencing system you use, so your tutor no longer needs to comment in their feedback? Perhaps you once received feedback about the lack of structure in your work, that you are no longer finding comes up in current feedback. Identifying the progress you have already made is a great way to see how far you have come, as well as increasing confidence in your ability to improve in any other areas that you still want to tackle.
Identify recurring themes
Work through each piece of feedback and pick out any overarching themes that still need work. For example, you might notice that referencing errors have been frequently highlighted in your work. Or you may find that there are several comments which stress the need for you to develop an idea or argument.
Any elements that are regularly being raised are ones that you should be working on, and identifying the main concerns gives you a focus. Keeping track of comments from all your assignments, will help you to develop targets to work towards.
Tackling feedback can sometimes be an emotional experience, especially if you did not do as well as you had anticipated, or had hoped. Find out more about developing your feedback resilience in our UniSkills Grow Your Academic Resilience Toolkit.
Make a plan
Once you have identified any key recurring themes from your feedback you can be proactive by deciding how to tackle them. Pick the most commonly occurring theme or themes to focus on (a maximum of 3, as any more can feel overwhelming!) and think about how you will tackle them. For each theme it is useful to think about the following elements:
- What do you need to tackle?
- When will you do this?
- What support might you need?
Breaking down the steps in this way can give you a clear plan, with actionable goals, and a timeframe in which to tackle each theme. Our UniSkills Feedback Plan offers an example of how this might look. Planning in this manner means that you are more likely to act upon your feedback. An even better way to ensure that you are being proactive with your feedback is to make yourself accountable. You can do this by making your feedback plan visible (e.g., stick it to your fridge or cupboard door), or by telling someone what you plan to do.
TOP TIP: It is always important to read your feedback, however the most effective way to develop your skills is to think about how you will then act upon your feedback!
Remember that feedback on your assignments is designed to help you improve your academic skills! Now is a great time think about using your feedback proactively to help build your skills and confidence. Identifying key strengths, and seeing how far you have come can be a great springboard into a successful summer assessment period.
Don’t forget that if you would like any further support in breaking down your feedback, and knowing how to approach tackling it, you can book on to a one-to-one with an Academic Skills Advisor.
Good luck!
Helen Briscoe
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Student Advisor ‘A Day in the Life’: Part 2
Hi, my name is Marrium and I am currently in my second year of my MBChB (Medicine) programme. Having been at university for a few years, I have gotten into a routine that I find supports me in achieving my academic goals as well as ensuring I am able to get the best out of my day as possible. This routine of daily activities is centred around the tenets of productivity, mindfulness and relaxation – I hope that this is a helpful insight into my daily life and a way that you can gain inspiration on how to base the structure of your day!
7:30am
The time that I usually wake up in order to feel well rested and prepared for the day ahead. Over time, I have learnt that developing a morning routine to delve into as soon as you wake up is critical as it sets the tone for the rest of the day. By ensuring that you have a morning routine, it allows you to start your day with intention as well as incorporating mindfulness practices to enhance productivity during the day. This can look like meditating, going to the gym, journaling etc. For me, I aim to do stretch exercises in my room to begin the day with physical activity to refresh myself. Another aspect to my morning that I enjoy is making a latte or cup of tea for myself. Whilst this is an ordinary aspect of most people’s mornings, I try to focus only on the process to slow my mind down before the busyness of the day ahead.
9am-5pm
During an average day for me as a medical student, I am usually in lectures for the majority of the day due to the content of my course being so heavy. Whilst I sit in lectures, I try to write up all of my notes for all the sessions by the end of the workday. This is primarily to ensure that I do not have a lot of work to complete by the end of the day as there are usually a lot of other assignments to hand in that are outside of lectures. This does not always get done, but it is more important to aim for consistency rather than perfection, which is much more attainable on a daily basis. My day can also consist of clinical skills sessions, placements or other activities if I am not in lectures, providing some variety every now and then.
5-6pm
With the bulk of the day being over, it is a habit of mine to allow myself time to recharge and relax. It can be very easy to fall into the tendency to overwork yourself, especially as the year comes to a close with deadlines approaching but it is important to make time to give yourself a break. I try to pepper these in during the day so that I am able to be more consistent with my workload by alternating work and breaks. During this break in particular, I focus on eating a meal and spending time with my flatmates to step away from work for a short while.
6-7:30pm
This time during my day is usually dedicated to revision or study time, as I am more than likely to have a backlog of tasks to complete as well as having lecture notes to type up and learn. I aim to learn the hardest topics during this time as it is when I am able to fully engage with the material to the best of my ability. If I am not spending time engaging with course material, I attend society meetings, go to the gym or attend my weekly Mandarin lessons.
8-11pm
This time is reserved to further study as well as being able to cook a good meal for myself. I enjoy cooking and baking very much, and love to spend time creating a delicious dinner for myself. Because it is enjoyable to me, I am likely to spend a decent amount of time in the kitchen – this is also the time that I am able to socialise with my flatmates who are usually in the kitchen as well. I would recommend that this time should be dedicated to study or the development of your own hobbies. With the way that university life can become increasingly busy throughout the year, the balance between self-care and development and your studies can be hard to manage. I find that slotting in specific times to pursue interests of your own means that you are less likely to burn out. It could also be a time to socialise – whether that be with friend or within the structures of a society to provide a healthy distraction from work.
11-12pm
Perhaps the most important time of the day as well as the time that I look forward to the most. During this time, my priority is to wind down from the likely busy day that I’ve had. Establishing a night routine is just as important as a morning routine, as it sets the tone for the night and allows you to relax. Being able to be relaxed right before sleeping means that you are more likely to get a full night of sleep, allowing you to be well-rested for the next day. My night routine consists of getting myself ready for bed, finding a series or movie to watch on Netflix and writing down my to-do list for the next day as I watch. This works best for me as I am able to reduce stress as well as being able to be prepared and plan for the next day that creates a sense of stability.
I hope that this has been helpful, or if not, at least a good insight into the daily life of a medical student. Bye for now!
