It's fall time...And classes are back in session!

It's been awhile since the blog has received some lovin'! Life can get crazy, especially with your academic, personal, and business lives are chaotic individually, however that's a story for a different day. This post is to shed some light on things that help me at the beginning of a semester or quarter, or even after we're a few weeks in for that course. Some of these tips or suggestions focus on organization, utilization of resources, and time management that I have found were for me when I completed my master's and progressing to complete my doctorate program. Feel free to provide any tips that worked for you in an academic setting!

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Finding References on a Specific Topic

In the early stages of my doctorate program, as well as my master's, I had difficulty locating relevant articles that were appropriate to the topic of interest. Of course, with the lack of references, it impacted my assignment grades and overall course grade in a negative manner (as one would expect). What I learned is to really look at the words authors of articles you've already located are using, and use them in your searches for literature. Now, it's not just any word, it will be a word that the authors are strongly emphasizing on.

Also, one day it clicked and I began reviewing the references listed in the articles I had already found to see if there were other articles or texts out there that I could use. And let me tell you, it worked. Using this method on finding references has been so helpful to me on my approved research topic, and as a graduate/teaching assistant, my students have told me that this method has been really helpful in their assignments for the course that I support.

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Time Management

I know all our schedules on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis are crazy! And shoutout to those who are juggling work, family, academia and more at the same time, you guys are some real MVPs because I don't know how I'd do it. But this leads to the next topic....time management.

While working full-time as an analyst, I've learned that time management is my friend versus my biggest enemy. I've learned to block time off around my full-time job shift for doing TA work, my actual courses or working on my dissertation research plan/proposal. Typically, those blocked off times I make sure to have very minimum interruptions from social media and calls/texts so I'm able to focus. An app that has been helpful is iStudiez Pro, which helps you keep track of deadlines for your courses, but can also sync to your calendar on your phone or tablet.

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Organization

So we all know when you become a graduate student, the level of expectation increases especially with quality of work and preparedness. So how do we organize in academia? Well, I like to use applications such as Mendeley to store any and all literature I come across that I feel is relevant to my studies. Other times, I use an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of the literature but break it down by themes, area of interest, etc. I use the Cloud with Apple to store my assignments and my DRP, but Dropbox is another application you are able to use to store and organize your work. I've learned to make folders for my different courses as well which keeps any historical information that I may need in the future.

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So here are my tips that I use to stay on top of my studies, I hope they help in some way! Again, if you have any additional tips or suggestions, please feel free to provide them!

Sincerely,

The Student For Life