So, you teamed up with some of your friends and decided to establish a study group. Well done! Studying and revising in a group is wonderful – click here to find out why!

However, as soon as you establish your group, problems occur: someone has a football training, someone else needs to go to the doctor, someone has a society meeting and two others got hot dates for both Tuesday and Wednesday. Plus, some group members might have different timetables and you are together for only one subject.

So, how do you manage your study group?

It is an important question. The skills that you develop doing that are vital for both your life and your career.

1. At the first meeting, ask everyone about their timtables. Draw a blank table with all the ays of the week and all the hours in the day and fill in when everyone is busy.

2. Find the slots that are free and ask everyone to write them down in their diaries.

3. Set up meetings in those slots.

4. If you set up more than two meetings per week, separate them. For example, we meet on Monday to read the material together and on Wednesday to present to each other what we have read. On Friday we meet to quickly repeat the old material and to read/present more.

5. Allocate some time for individual study/reading/preparation

6. Agree that everyone comes prepared.

7. Split the topics between the members – thus you can exchange notes and would have less pressure than if you studied on your own.

8. Establish a secret Facebook group for your members, where you can post updates/ideas/meeting times.

9. Don’t forget to have fun! Celebrate your preparation and go out together – just make sure that you don’t spend more time on celebration than on the actual work!

10. When you’ve learnt to manage your study group, you can put “team management skills” on your CV.

Instructional terms and signposting

Probably the best kept, hidden in plane-sight type secrets in academics (possible slight exaggeration) but the great thing about them is that where you find one, you find the other.

Keeping it brief (so you can hurry back to those essays), instructional terms are words used by lecturers when constructing essay and exam questions, to signpost you to the answer(s) they want you to give. There are more than 30 possible instructional terms and there is not one question you’ll come up against that hasn’t been constructed in this manner.

Unfortunately, a list of instructional terms in its entirety isn’t too easy to come by. Fortunately, for you, we were gifted a sneak peak of one such list – so thought we’d share some of it.

Instructional terms and what they mean

Analyse - ‘Take apart’ an idea or statement; ‘unpack’; de-construct; examine in depth and consider how the parts interrelate. Give reasons and answers to questions, e.g. Who? What? Where? When? Which? Why? How?

Compare – Examine/judge two or more things/ideas in order to focus on their likeness/relationship and only mention/acknowledge differences.

Define – Explain precisely; state the meaning of; give details to show boundaries/distinguish it from others.

Forecast – Predict, estimate or calculate possible results linked to criteria, complete/incomplete facts/reasoning.

Illustrate – Make clear by using examples; use figures or diagrams to explain; show the meaning of something by giving related examples.

This article was compiled using principles and examples taken from How On Earth Do I Get A first? (eBook), by Nathan Ghann. 

If you want your house to stand firm against gale-force winds, you better build it properly. Your essay is the house, your lecturer is that b**** of a gale-force wind – Anon. 2012

The elements of a first class assignment are broken down into three groupings: knowledge and understanding, analysis and evaluation. Adhering to these three principles should keep you on track to achieving those first class grades.

To illustrate, we’ll be using this example question: “Discuss and critically analyse the legacy of Winston Churchill”

Knowledge and Understanding

This is your foundation. You must demonstrate that you aware of the core course content and provide enough evidence of your ability to place the knowledge within the correct context. The opening (introduction) to your essay is where you exercise this.

To summarise the legacy of Winston Churchill and give the reader a contextual background, you would write:

“The Legacy of Winston Churchill has been made evident in numerous articles over the last decade. Churchill’s legacy began in 1946 when he…”

Analysis

This requires you to explore all possible views on the subject – in this case the legacy of Winston Churchill. From your research, draw references that both support and oppose the legacy of Winston Churchill.

For example;

In support of Winston Churchill’s legacy: “Gardner (1991) found that 54% of Britain’s population not only knew of Winston Churchill but also found pride in him being a national figure for Britain.”

Opposing the legacy of Winston Churchill: “However, Winston Churchill’s legacy was non-existent in 1945, Howard et al (1986) suggest this is because the people of Britain were still unsure of what would be the full outcome of his leadership”

Evaluation

Put forward your final thoughts based on the evidence you have laid out prior. You might begin:

“While the research of Howard et al (1986) is valuable to the discussion as a whole, they do not take into account that  their research was conducted during the “baby boomer” period. Therefore, consideration should be given to the thought that a lot more people would have voted in favour of Winston Churchill rather than against him in the 1940s due to the increase of population.”

The most important thing here is to extract the value from all views put forward, then use this to justify your thought process.

This article was compiled using principles and examples taken from How On Earth Do I Get A first (eBook), by Nathan Ghann.

Jobs are scarce and the number of graduates is increasing exponentially. What’s more, the number of first-class graduates is also increasing.

Given these circumstances, how do you land the job you want? How do you get any job?

Everyone demands that you have work experience by the time you’re out of university – we’re talking beyond the usual bar staff/waitress/burger boy experience.

You may laugh but students are failing to understand that a degree alone will not get them where they want to be. The fact of the matter is you need relevant industry experience.

While you’re at university, this problem can be solved with relative ease – GET INVOLVED.

Nobody but YOU can change your situation.

Become active in your student clubs and societies

Become active! So what if you’re not a member of the executive committee. Offer your help to them in any position – believe me, you can make a difference in your society and the exec will certainly appreciate your time and effort.

There is so much to be gained from such experience. Here’s the list of things you can do for a student society:

• Marketing and communications (between other universities and external organisations)
• Social media
• Secretarial and administrative posts
• Events management (let your imagination soar!)
• Organising workshops relevant to your society objectives
• If it is an academic subject-based society, you can coach first year students
• Creative work; copywriting, blogging, graphic design, writing music, filming videos

Offer help. Obtain skills and experience. Learn and develop as a person. Meet new people. Enjoy!

Did this article inspire you? Please leave a comment and tell us what you are doing or want to do for your society.

This blog post is part of the new series: #WorkingWednesdays. Every Wednesday, an article related to job search, work experience, CV writing and interview techniques will appear on The Lecture Room website.

Please click here to subscribe to the series.

Richard St. John breaks down the elements of success, in an impressive 3:47! – Take note for presentation planning.

For more motivational videos and words of wisdom, check out the Will Smith award speech and Stephen Fry’s one-to-one: ‘Stephen Fry on Everything’ (a lot more beneficial than 30 minutes spent on Facebook). 

Today’s backpackers are sure to be some of tomorrow’s authors, founders and executives. – Laura Liszewski (2011)

If you feel like every other person is going travelling these days, then you may be right.

The UN World Tourism Organisation reported that international tourism is already up 5 percent since 2010 and, whether for volunteering, a working holiday or backpacking, the travelling trend amongst young people seems to be holding strong.

But (here’s a good one to tell mum and dad) just because you’re going off adventuring doesn’t mean you have to take a hiatus from building your career after graduation. You can create your own global network while you travel and kill two birds with one stone.

In the age of the global company, mobile technologies and where social media reigns supreme, most of us are already well-versed in the art of networking. For better or worse, online communities like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin have made networking relatively easy. While the word “networking” may make you yawn, understanding it is important nonetheless.

The vast majority of jobs never make it past word of mouth; who you know has everything to do with it.

Meeting people while travelling is already easy; they are more relaxed, more apt to start a conversation with a stranger and friendships are formed quickly. Seeing as nowadays almost everyone engages on some form of social media platform, a lot of the hard work has been done for you.

So once you’re out there, be your charming self and connect. Drum up conversation on the plane, on the beach and with the guests at your hotel, hostel or guest house. People of all ages and walks of life are out there; you really never know who you might meet.

Sure, not everyone is going to have the amazing luck of making friends with the CFO of their dream company on a beach in Koh Samui, but today’s backpackers are sure to be some of tomorrow’s authors, founders and executives.

A final word of caution: remember that your social image available to friends and followers on Facebook or Twitter may not be the same image you wish to project for educational or career-minded networking. It is probably in your best interest to create a limited or entirely separate profile for professional purposes. That way you can maintain more control over the information your contacts have access to.

Getting the best degree possible isn’t about being smart and getting the best job around isn’t just about how talented you are I have found it is only about two things:

1. How hard you are willing to work?

2. What you demand that work to deliver for you

I call this the Mike Tyson mindset simply because I was watching this video of Larry King interviewing Mike Tyson and Larry asked: “Do you ever think what if you lose?” (@1.50min). Mike’s reply: “I don’t even allow that thought to rise to my conciousness.”

This week make the decision that you are going to work hard and deliver more results.

• Decide you are going to find more references and deliver more citations
• Decide that you are going to read over more lecture notes and deliver more questions to your lecturer
• Decide that you are going to search for more jobs/work experience opportunities and deliver more emails, calls and LinkedIn requests

Don’t worry about your technique, don’t worry if you’re doing it right – just make sure you are doing it! Because ’hard work will always beat talent if talent don’t work hard’.

Get to work this week. No one will do it for you.

Carpe Diem. Make the most of today. Morning. #NoDaysOff” - By alexis_sbl

“Time waits for no man” is what “they” say. No one appreciates that saying more than a student with 3 assignment deadlines in the same week, revision classes, a part-time job and a buzzing social life. However one cannot finish something tomorrow that has not been started today and considering as this picture says, you have 86,400 seconds to play with, perhaps you should get started now?

Probably the most important element of any academic assignment is the title, particularly if you have to create one yourself.

When you have free reign over the topic for your university essay, research paper or dissertation, you can have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, you are excited, because you can do whatever you want. On the other, you’re thinking: “How do I figure out what to write about?”

Generally, there are three main rules for you to follow:

1. Choose a small, focused topic

Your assignment is not about 1000 things. It is about ONE. So, make your topic focused. Let’s take this example:

The rise of the Asian Tigers (economic power in the East)

When your reader sees this topic, if they are critical, they will inevitably ask: “What about the Asian Tigers?”

Which aspect of that phenomenon are you analysing? Reasons for their emergence? Consequences thereof? Anything else that I have no idea about?

How can we narrow it down? Let’s look at this one:

What were the reasons for the rise of South Korean high-tech industry in the 1950s?

Breaking it down, we can see much more focused and explanatory this question is:

• a) the reasons, and NOT the consequences
• b) South Korea and NOT China
• c) high-tech and NOT fishing or coal and steel, and
• d) the 1950s and NOT any other time.

This question is clearly more narrowed and focused.

Another example: if you are writing an essay in literature, and exploring ideas of love in the works of Ernest Hemingway, then you focus on love and not courage. You focus on Hemingway and not Jane Austen or Edgar Poe.

This is narrow. This is focused. This is specific.

Why is this good?

A well structured question is beneficial to two user groups; you and your reader. For you, it reduces the amount of work. When you’ve specified in your topic what you’re looking for, you have to look only for that and for nothing else.

For your reader, the content of your assignment (or dissertation) has now been given a context and signposted in brief.

2. Pick the subject you love

This is simple and straightforward: if you love something, you will be enthusiastic about it. If you love your subject, you will happily research and write about it.

Your grades will be better, too – because the more you learn about something, the better your analytical skills become.

3. Write about something you know

If you love your subject, you will be keen to learn about it. However, if you are not very enthusiastic about this essay and you just have to do it – then write about something you know.

Learning from scratch is hard. Trust me, I know. Unless you LOVE the subject (see point 2).

So, if you have rudimentary knowledge of any area, write about it. It will make things much easier.

Have you ever had an essay with a free topic? Or maybe you’re writing your dissertation now and your lecturer is telling you to narrow your scope? Tell us how you feel about it – leave a comment below.

This blog post is part of the new series: #StudySundays. Every Sunday, an article related to essay writing, revision skills and exam techniques will appear on The Lecture Room website.