If like most of us, you don’t have the luxury to study when you whenever you want to and may also have competing demands of family, children, carving out time to study is a huge challenge.
Are you as disorganised as I was when I started studying the MAODE? (Masters in Online Distance Education) at the Open University in 2016. I was very busy in a new full-time role at work, a manager for the first time (and wanting to impress those that had the confidence to appoint me) and it was exhausting!
I found myself coming home after a full day at work, as you do, having dinner and tidying up and feeling really tired and uninspired to study… but the guilt and anxiety haunted me. I wanted also wanted to succeed.
Part of the problem is that in the UK, shockingly even in Oxford the libraries are only open until 5pm! I found only one is open until 7pm. Not the midnight I was used to at the UW Madison, USA.
Without a library found that if I stayed after work I could do 1-2 hours of preparation or light writing; never ending forum and blog posts (I would love to hear if you are a student and find this true on your course, possible research into topics or digital tools for a project.
Did you set up a blog site? It is really easy using WordPress or Blogger. At first I baulked at the task, the word blog is so…. ugly 😉 However I promised myself I would do my best to try everything asked of me and have learned to love it. WordPress makes it enjoyable; it has a free version, is in the cloud and even has an app so I can write anywhere, and the interface is easy to use.
Photo by Jessica Lewis on*Pexels.com
Did you take time to sort out your technology? If you have an old personal laptop or device organise your files and folders so you can find stuff quickly esp. when tired or stressed writing to deadline.
Have you chosen a cloud storage service? Google drive, iCloud and Dropbox are popular and Office365 has OneDrive
For more study tips check out my colleague’s brilliant blog at Psylina Psays
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The images added the attribution and are easy to find in WordPress from the Media icon in the editing ribbon. Then click the Picture icon on the left and drop down to the Free library
All views my own
denise mcdonough 