Effective Strategies for MSc Academic Success While Working Full-Time
Develop essential skills for MSc academic excellence while managing a full-time job. Organize finances, master time management, enhance critical thinking, and establish effective study habits. Learn to communicate effectively with supervisors, create a peaceful study environment, and balance commitments. Utilize tools like RefWorks and audio apps for dyslexic learners. Embrace resilience, set achievable goals, and prioritize self-care to succeed in your academic journey.
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Skills and Abilities for MSc academic success whilst working full time. HOW TO SURVIVE AND REACH YOUR GOAL
Project Manage Yourself: be organised SKILLS and ABILITIES Finances Organise your finances to avoid financial stress, approx. 10,000. Excellent Time Management: Develop strategies to successfully manage your time, Organize everything, including family/shopping time. Plan ahead Create a regimented schedule to ensure steady progress. Set realistic/achievable goals. weekly goals, the smaller steps that make up the long-term goals. Make contingency plans, have a backup plan for when something goes wrong, as it will. E.g. build in time to make revisions. Resilience; Be motivated towards being a self-directed learner and problem solver; ability to deal with complex issues both systematically and creatively. Pro-active take control. Critical Thinking & Evaluation skills: necessary to engage with reading material and writing at this level. Understand the module Learning outcomes (saves time). Do read core study materials/resources (Course Handbook) and cover good ground around your topic. Reflect on own progress this will help you advance your knowledge and understanding, furthermore develop new personal and employability skills to a high level.
Know when to start and stop Effectiveness and Purpose Agree how best how to communicate with your supervisor, it s a lifeline, have face to face meetings if possible. Take on board and act on their feedback Managing your study time effectively is a core requirement. Check you are eating well. Move on to another task if your totally stuck. Capitalise on your good energy, by tackling the most difficult work when your concentration is best, for me it was early mornings. Personal study space: Arrange and maintain a peaceful learning environment. For me I liked everything within reach that I needed. Just do it: Start writing up from day one, take every opportunity to study. I would revise and edit my research on the train after a meeting with my supervisor.
Saying No Balance and Compromise You must find ways to balance your commitments to allow for effective study periods. I restricted my social time, and avoided people who did not support my decisions. Avoid taking on too many commitments learn to say no politely. Other people may not understand the time commitment required of you. Stay away from distractions: ask not to be disturbed, stay off email or social networking. Be prepared to make sacrifices, over and over, however do take time out to invest in significant relationships. I committed to a movie at home once a week. E.g., I studied during my honeymoon, I used my a/l to capitalise on study time.
Tools for the job Have a well-organized filing system to track your reading, I also used RefWorks. Ensure you save your work to the cloud, frequently as you go. Read the Study Guide, know the learning outcomes. Ensure you follow correct formatting for your school and course. I used RefWorks and create an annotated bibliography of my reading. Dyslexic or not!: I used audio apps to listen to pdfs in the car. Voice dreamer, Word Hippo Thesaurus. Simple mind maps app. I had my dissertation aims and objectives, as my screensaver, This served as a reminder not to go off on a tangent.
Summary in no particular order................................ Resilient: A tenacious personality to overcome the hurdles along the way. Self-directed learner, who embraces problem-solving. Reflective Learner Contemporary critical skills, awareness and ability to critically evaluate. Time-management skills, Set clear boundaries to manage all your commitments. Support from your family and network.
