Valhalla Island

It’s seven weeks until the final exam period of my last week of my last semester of my last year at university will officially end. While I don’t feel like I’ve learnt all that much academically, I’ve learnt a lot about getting through university. My degree is the technical kind, more computer-based practice rather than essay and report writing but there’s still plenty of that too. Not all advice will apply to everyone, all programs are vastly different and I only have experience with one. That said, much of this might also apply broadly to life outside of university. Here goes: The purpose of everything in this guide is to make your time at school as easy and therefore as enjoyable as possible.

Plan Your Entire Degree at the Beginning

Once you’ve chosen what you want to do and been accepted plan as much as you possibly can from the beginning. Choose majors, minors, core courses, electives and when you’re going to complete them semester-by-semester, year-by-year. Make sure you have pre-requisites in order. If you don’t know what you want to major in, think about it, as soon as you know, plan! Then check that what you’ve planned satisfies the requirements for graduation. Then check again. Then check with your program advisor.

Depending on your program structure this might be easy or it might be very difficult. The purpose is to save having to think about what you’re going to take at the beginning of each semester, a burden. It also saves a freak out when you get into your final semester, wondering and trying to work out whether you’ve completed everything required to graduate. Something you don’t need when you’re in final semester.

Plan to pass everything. If you fail something, re-plan, every course depends on every other course.

Register for Classes Early Always

Having your entire program structure planned helps here. The day class registration opens, you will be ready. Make sure you know how to use and are familiar the registration system. My university makes timetables available a week before registration opens, know which lectures and tutorials you want to enrol in and on what days. If your registration system server is getting destroyed the morning registration opens, don’t give up, stick with it.

If it takes you a whole day to register classes, it’s still worth it! It might mean having to only go to school two days a week instead of four, it might mean always getting to sleep in. Getting in early is worth it!

Many Classes Isn’t a Terrible Thing

When you have a lot of work to do, you have no choice but to do it. This semester I’m taking six courses yet I get my work done before and seem far less stressed about school than other students who only take two. If you have no time to fuck around, you won’t fuck around. As intense as the semester might feel, university students get a lot of holidays, you’re only at school around half the year.

If you’re working your way through school, just take whatever’s standard. Same goes if you have other kinds of heavy time commitments or stress in your life, don’t add to it. Only take more than is required if you’re in a position to do it. That includes other classes. If you can get distinctions in four classes but only credits if you take five, stick with the four.

Read Course Outlines

These might seem boring but again, it’s part of planning. Depending on your school course outlines should always be in a standard format. You’ll know what you’re going to learn week by week, exactly what assessment you’ll need to complete and maybe when it’s due. A half an hour with a course outline and you’ll have a great idea of how much time you’ll need to dedicate to a course.

Record Everything

Record every piece of information sent your way. Email addresses, assignment due dates, meeting dates, locations, professor consultation times, room changes, team member names, URLs: record them as soon as they are registered in your brain. When you make your brain try to remember a constant barrage of little pieces of information you’re burdening yourself and you’ll forget.

Free your mind the burden of remembering. It’ll save you time later. Record an assignment’s due date the moment you’re aware of it and you’ll never have to think about or look for it again. Never tell yourself you’ll just remember something, you won’t and it’s a burden on your brain.

Applications like YoJimbo and EverNote are your tools. Get so good at using them they become your second, better-at-remembering brain. More on those apps later.

Use a Calendar

Not a physical calendar, an electronic calendar like iCal or Google Calendar. Record every school week, class, lecture, meeting, event, public holiday, exam and assignment due date in the calendar. Make assignments and exams appear in red. Be diligent in the maintenance of your calendar, if a date, time or location changes, update it immediately. Check it often, look a week ahead often.

Again this is about taking the burden to remember off your brain. You’ll function better if you don’t have 100 dates, times and room numbers floating around your head. It also gives you a conceptual representation of what’s to come. Numbers and slashes on a piece of paper have meaning but being able to see a big, red block 3 columns from today gives you perspective and context. Very quickly you can generate a view of what’s due this week, next week or this month. You’ll always know where you need to be and you won’t be forced to remember.

Don’t Write Anything

Forget notebooks, pens, highlighters and all that bullshit. Use a computer. You can’t search, move, copy, format, easily add to or edit hand-written word. It’s difficult to organise or share with others, it’s messy, labour intensive and you have to look at the page while you’re recording.

Invest in a small, inexpensive laptop. It doesn’t need to be powerful. It needs to run a web browser, note taking app, mail and calendar. Buy a spare battery or two. As soon as one battery starts to permanently fade, replace it.

Don’t use Word to take notes, it’s complete overkill and you’re left with the job of having to organise and manage the files created. Use something that has organisation and features like syncing or a web interface built-in. Learn to love YoJimbo or EverNote. They’re both perfectly suited to note taking at school. Easily searchable, allow categories, are easy to export from, offer some basic formatting and sync.

Always Use the Most “Raw” File Type Feasible

Consider whether you really need the formatting power of Word or Pages. they’re proprietary, binary files which means they can’t be easily compared, require a copy of Word or Pages to open (often the right version) and are subject to corruption. Think about what you’re writing, does it need complex formatting or is the information alone of sole importance? It might be nice to bold headings but is it necessary? Consider using very simple, text-based markup instead like MarkDown and use a text editor that colour highlights MarkDown. You’ll have visual formatting but with the advantage of small, flexible, interoperable, plain text.

Create a Document Template

As nice as it’d be to replace all documents with simple plain text, there will always be situations where comprehensively formatted documents are required. For those situations, use the feature that word processors have over plain text editors: styles. In your first semester create a document template with a title page and create styles for the title, heading 1s, heading 2s, heading 3s, heading 4s, body text, captions, ordered lists, unordered lists, table headings, table bodies and footers.

Do it properly, use styles, the kind you can modify once and then reflect across the document, the kind you can easily apply over and over again. Turn on invisible characters, use before and after paragraph margins instead of empty paragraphs to add vertical space.

Formatting documents is a chore. Having a document template ready gives you a big head start on every report, article, document and essay you’ll ever write.

I’ve only recently discovered LaTeX, an advanced typesetting system with the advantages that come with plain text. I haven’t looked into it but I’m sure LaTeX has a very similar system of styles. It is a programming language and probably out of reach for most students. I haven’t used LaTeX myself but from what I’ve read and heard it sounds fantastic and you should try it if you have any programming experience. Word and Pages templates and styles are a fine alternative for the rest of us.

Version Control

If you’re writing code, learn to use version control. If you’re coding alone it’s very helpful, if you’re collaborating with others it’s absolutely vital. I won’t go into why it’s so important, other places have done it for me. I’ve got experience with Subversion and Git. Git has advantages like easy branching but Subversion has the advantage of fantastic GUIs like Versions on the Mac.

While it’s good for code, why not use it for documents? They have versions and often have multiple authors the same way code does. If you’re using plain text, revisions can be easily compared and merged. Again, version control is probably out of reach for the majority of students but if you’re a technical student already using it to manage code, you should also manage documents, it makes sense.

Use Project Management Software

My school is huge on group work. Managing a group assignment is more difficult than actually doing the work required. Using online, collaborative software like Basecamp will save you time and effort. Force your group members to use it. It’ll provide a central space for discussion, file uploads and revisions, sharing information, managing to-dos and milestone dates. If used properly it’ll eliminate the need for time-consuming and unproductive meetings, it’ll mean less email, less phone calls and greater organisation. The bigger the project, the more team members, the more helpful project management software is.

This software often costs money. It’s worth it.

Backup

There is no reason you should ever lose anything. Having to redo something you’ve already done once is painful and completely unnecessary if you backup properly. Don’t wait until it happens before deciding you need backup. External caddies and hard drives are cheap, pre-packaged external drives are almost on par. Buy one, set up automatic backup, forget about it. Don’t put anything else on that drive, dedicate it to backup. If you use a Mac, Time Machine is incredible.

I use a triple backup system. The one I just described as well as MobileMe’s iDisk for my school files and YoJimbo’s notes. It automatically syncs my school files to Apple’s server, keeps a copy on my iMac and syncs them to my PowerBook. My important files are stored on my primary desktop, my local backup drive, Apple’s iDisk server and my PowerBook. As complex as the system sounds, it’s completely automatic, it’s invisible to me.

The added advantage of using an online file storage and syncing service like MobileMe or Dropbox is that your files are available on any computer with an internet connection. It eliminates the need for carrying around a physical, easily-losable USB drive, the files are automatically sent back to your computer and are again backed up.

Rarely Buy Textbooks

Textbooks are very expensive and are more valuable to some classes than others. At the beginning of a new class ask your lecturer and tutor just how important the textbook is. Even if they tell you it’s vital, consider how much information on the subject is available outside of books. Remember that you’re attending lectures by experts and completing tutorials on the subject for a whole semester too. If you do decide you need it, consider alternate ways of getting it, Amazon, second-hand, book sharing or PDF books could all be cheaper.

Too many times (once) I’ve bought a textbook, only to never even open it. Many times I’ve not bought a prescribed textbook that a lecturer has described as vital and I’ve not been any worse off. The exception is books that you’d consider buying anyway, books with a reputation for being good or industry defining books like Information Architecture for the World Wide Web. If you’ve never heard of it or aren’t interested, forget it.

Buy a Printer

Having to transfer files to friend’s computers to print or trying to work out and use the university printers with a quota you have to refill sucks. Just buy one. Black and white, laser, with a cartridge big enough to print thousands of pages before it needs replacing.

Drafts

Your tutor or lecturer offering to look at a draft is like gold. Think of it as handing in an assignment but instead of being marked, you’re given it back and told exactly what you need to do to get a perfect grade, by the person that’s going to be marking it. There’s no guessing, no worrying about passing or failing and it’s not much more work to get a much better mark.

Drafts also force you to have a complete assignment finished before the day it’s due. This is very important for your stress levels. Even if you’re not getting a draft marked, set an artificial due date at least 5 days before it’s due. Things come up, it’s harder than you first thought it was, you don’t have to live through the stress of trying to push out an assignment in one night and your assignment doesn’t suffer because of it.

Go On Student Exchange

Depending on your university and your grades, student exchange may turn out to be completely free or at least cost nothing up front. When I went on student exchange I received a $3000 cash scholarship and a $5000 government loan added onto my existing student debt, no big deal. It almost covered the entire trip and I spent a month travelling. While there I met other exchange students getting paid to be on exchange in return for a report on the experience, others received grants from the host university. People aren’t aware how much money is available and just how little out of pocket expense there is to go overseas for what’s basically a long holiday.

Grades are usually only marked and transferred back on a pass/fail criteria and don’t affect your overall GPA, making a just-pass the equivalent of full marks as far as your home university is concerned. If you can match classes and get a scholarship, it costs nothing, time nor money. Even if you get nothing else out of university, the opportunity to go on student exchange makes it worthwhile.

Get a Girlfriend/Boyfriend

Far from taking all your time, they’ll help immensely. It’s a case of having no choice but to get things done when you have a lot to do. Make rules for yourself to get an assignment, some reading or a draft done before you’ll let yourself see them. Constantly this semester the promise of seeing Kristin has been sole motivation for finishing assignments ahead of time. They’re also great for venting your frustrations, stress and for just helping you get through things.

Don’t Drink Energy Drinks

They don’t do anything, they’re unhealthy and expensive.