Month: October 2021

1. Ask yourself why you’re not understanding the reading.

Is the content difficult to understand with your current knowledge? Are you bored and falling asleep while reading? Are you reading in a loud/quiet or distracting environment where you can’t focus on your readings? Are you disinterested in the topic? Pinpoint these issues and try to solve them one problem at a time.

2. Go to office hours and ask your professor how you can best approach your readings.

The easiest way to be successful in a class is to ask your professor what makes a successful student in their class. If you are struggling with the readings in particular, or anything else, ask your professor for help. It is their job to help you learn.

3. Try to understand the purpose of the reading. 

What is your learning goal? What does your professor want you to take away from the reading? If you have to write essays in the class, what information can you take from this reading and apply to your essay? If you take exams and quizzes in the class, what information do you think you’ll be tested on? 

4. Try a change in environment.

If your study space is too quiet, and you work best with chatter around you, try reading on FFB or in another collaborative study space. If you need quiet and the accountability of being around others, try somewhere like 3FB, 4FB, or Rauner. If you find being around others distracting, find somewhere you can be alone, like a study room or your dorm. 

5. What to look for in your readings.

If your reading has headings or subheadings, read them and turn them into a question. For example, “Ways to Fix Internal Validity” could turn into “What are the ways to fix internal validity?” After you read or skim the section, answer yourself. 

In addition to headings and subheadings, it’s important to define bolded words and topical words that you don’t know. This will help you understand the reading and future readings better, and if you know what something means, it’s a lot easier to talk about it in class. 

Lastly, take a look at any figures, diagrams, illustrations, or tables in your reading. Visualizing a concept is useful for applying it to different situations. Tables that provide definitions and applications can also help you differentiate between two similar concepts. 

If you would like more reading tips, please visit our website!

Goals

What do you want out of your Dartmouth experience? Make a list, then number the list items in order of importance, and rewrite the list in that order. For example:

Lifelong friends 3 Lifelong friends To get into med school

To get into med school 1 To get into med school To learn time management

To learn time management 2 To learn time management Lifelong friends

Hiking experiences 4 Hiking experiences Hiking experiences

Now that you have your goals in order, organize your time such that you’re spending the most time on your most important goal. If you have a goal that is urgent but not time consuming, such as learning time management skills, make time for it as soon as possible, but don’t spend more time than necessary on it. 

Budgeting your time based on your goals will help you feel satisfied with your time spent. You can make a list of long-term goals and weekly short-term goals to help you allocate time for specific projects or studying for an exam. Revise your long-term goals monthly and your short-term goals as needed (daily/weekly). 

Planners

The most basic time management tool is a planner. As some meetings might still occur via zoom, I recommend using Google Calendar. With Google Calendar, you can put the zoom link in your calendar and easily access it. We also offer a Dartmouth weekly planner with the start time of courses built in. You can print it out and highlight the time blocks of your commitments, or you can fill it in using text boxes in Microsoft Word. 

Now that you have your goals established, you should plan your recurring time blocks according to your long-term goals. Be sure to include rest time. Using the free space, you should add in time for accomplishing your short-term goals.

Other Tips

The Foco lines are long. If you want to be productive while you wait for your omelette, you can pull up a pdf of an assigned reading, (for psychology students: you can do your InQuisitive assignment on your phone), you can review pictures of your notes, or do whatever you can do for your classes and extracurricular commitments. If you have an audio version of readings, you can listen to them while you walk around campus!

Use your goals as a guideline for your priorities, but trust yourself as you determine your priorities throughout the day, and stick to them. 

Only concentrate on one thing at a time. This will help you get your work done faster, and you’ll find that you have more time this way.
For more information and time management tips, check out our website!