Postgraduate study tips

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Always have some work with you

Get into the habit of carrying study resources around with you. Whether that means your laptop, a memory stick with relevant files, or printed assignment or lecture notes, make sure you always have something in your bag. That way, if you find yourself with some spare time, you can progress your studies – time often better spent than getting lost on social media!

Planning is your most effective study tool

At the beginning of each morning, take a few minutes to map out what you want to achieve. Break your day into time-allocated tasks to keep it manageable. Scheduling a break at every 60-90 minutes, where you leave your desk and do something different, will help keep your productivity levels up. Challenge yourself to keep mobile-phone time limited to these breaks only.

Get the right stationery for the job

Your second most effective study tool is having the right stationery, for example, coloured highlighters, sticky notes and a stapler. It may sound obvious, but it will help you organise your notes and make research for assignments much smoother. It might be useful to invest in a printer too – you’ll save time travelling to and from campus to print articles for research.

Back everything up, twice, three times!

There’s nothing worse than spending hours writing a well-thought out, well-researched assignment, for technology problems to ruin it all. Be sure to save a copy on your laptop and a cloud-based software such as Google Drive. You could even email yourself a copy at the end of each session. Embrace the feeling of success when you hand in a strong piece of work in, knowing that every minute working on it was well spent.

Read around your subject

Our Achievement and Success Centre (ASC) provides academic, learning and wellbeing support to help you achieve your best. Make the most of study skills workshops; ranging from academic writing to effective journal reading, online resources, 1-2-1 support sessions, and drop in services to talk about anything you need help with. If we can’t provide the support you need, we can refer you to someone who can.

Achievement and Success Centre

Sort out your finances

Planning ahead with your finances will give you one less thing to think about during your studies. Discover more about postgraduate fee and funding. Our Postgraduate Studentship Scheme and teaching/research assistant roles provide opportunities to gain valuable academic and industry qualifications and experience, complementing postgraduate study within a paid position at Hartpury.

Make time for your career

Don’t overlook the importance of planning for the future. Our Innovation, Careers and Enterprise (ICE) team can help you to create your own personalised career plan, or give you tips and advice to strengthen your CV, interview skills and more. They can also help you develop your entrepreneurial skills to develop and launch your own business, if that’s your career goal.

Innovation, Careers and Enterprise Centre