Get a head start

By Kay Kevlihan

First year at college is exciting but can be daunting, particularly for students from rural areas. Being independent, making friends and taking charge of your life are all part of the process, but the major difference between school and college is that teachers are no longer there to monitor and guide you.

Possibly for the first time in your life, you are now solely in charge of your own destiny, so avail of all the help you can get in college. Don't be shy about seeking out college services that are there to help you with any problems that arise. Don't worry if you feel isolated during the first few weeks. Everyone is in the same boat and you will make friends.

One area where you can help yourself right from the start is by developing a structure of study that will stand to you throughout your college life. Based on his own experience of college life, Brian Morrissey provides well-thought-out guidelines on how to optimise your study effort.

• STRUCTURE BEFORE STUDY: At the very beginning of a course or a module, look for structure. Do not simply start studying the first topics. Look for the overview.
• OVER-VIEW SOURCES: Check what the course outline says, what the lecturer says, what the textbook says in its table of contents. Also read any chapter summary or conclusion paragraphs. Using these sources, you should be able to draw up an outline of the course (a table of contents) before you start. This will help you see the sections in the course, how various topics relate to each other, how projects relate to coursework, and how exam questions will derive from the course.
• CONTINUALLY REFINE: You might not be able to get an overview before you start studying, but continually look for the structure, or continually update the structure you have developed.
• AIM FOR SYNTHESIS: The overview should enable you to synthesise all the information presented into easy-to-remember chunks. For example, just before your exams, you should be able to say what the entire course is about in a single sentence. Early in the process, you should be able to say what the major topics in the course are, then later you might be able to sketch the single diagram that goes with each of these topics.
• DISTRACTION: You can be confused or distracted by multiple course sources: lectures, required reading, recommended reading, photocopy or pdf papers, your own projects or group work. Be careful of similar but different sources - identify your principle source (for example, lecture notes) and decide how you will integrate all additional information into the structure presented by these notes.
• MAP: It is useful to visually represent structure in a map, perhaps a tree or a graphic.
• HINTS: Listen for hints from tutors - they will say in different ways what the course is about - pay attention to this and try to use it to derive your overview.
• FOLLOW: Make sure to follow your overview - don't argue with the course or disagree with tutors because you have different experiences. Remember, you will be examined on the course they present, not on your ideas about the course. Tutors are working to the overview, which you might not know yet.
• STRETCH IN PROJECTS: You can use your own experience and stretch your ideas in projects etc, but if you get marked down for this, take the lesson, and go back to the course as taught.