Philippa
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| Philippa Price |
Enrolling on a part-time course whilst working full-time was
certainly a daunting process, particularly as I know the lecturers who teach on
the course quite well and was keen not to ‘show myself up’ in front of them! As
it turns out, though, with some organisation and forward planning, the course
was hard work but manageable and very rewarding. I wondered why I hadn’t done
it years ago!
The most useful strategy I adopted along the way was to do
‘something’ every week. It didn’t have to be a big ‘something’, but I found
just reading and making notes from a chapter or a journal article each week
really helped me to keep on top of things without my studies taking over my
life.
In my undergraduate days, I was definitely a pen and paper
girl, handwriting notes and essays when I could. Since then, though, I’ve come
to see the benefit of keeping notes on a computer, even if it means typing them
up from my notebook. It makes it so much easier to move them around and group them
together into different arguments when preparing for an assignment! I find it helpful to write in full sentences
and paragraphs when writing notes from reading and to keep assignment questions
and topic areas in mind so I don’t go off on a tangent. Quite often, when it
came to gathering my notes together for an essay, a significant chunk of it
would already be practically written. That’s a good feeling!
My other top tip would be to keep up with your referencing
as you go along, especially if you start cutting and pasting notes to organise
them. You don’t want to forget where you came across that insightful comment or
useful quote, so cite as you make notes! Writing your reference list or
bibliography as you go along also saves so much time at the end of the
assignment.
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