An Introduction to Art of Study: Being Organised is being Intelligent

In 2003 I was fortunate enough to go through the Central Queensland University (CQU) STEPS program. The STEPS program is essentially a tertiary preparation program, preparing the mature student for the academic expectations at a tertiary level. This includes essay writing skills, public speaking, mathematics, computer skills and so fourth. In addition, the STEPS program also included a portion of self awareness that has been invaluable to me. In a nutshell STEPS introduced an 'attitude' to my study that I had not had before. One of the most important attitude changes I adopted is the theme that will run through this journal site. This running theme is that of ORGANISATION.

There are many examples of organised students doing very well at university study, more importantly they do not get stressed out. Similarly, there many examples of very intelligent students who do very poorly at undergraduate level of study. The reason for this is that the undergraduate degree does not produce nobel prize winners, however it does produce students who are highly organized and proven capable of handling medium-term projects for a three month period (the length of the average semester).
Your job as undergraduate students is to prove to your lecturers that you understand the material presented to you and this is achieved almost entirely by; (1) produce essays that clearly and concisely show your lecturer that you can DESCRIBE the knowledge you have learned; (2) show your examiners that you can memorize and eventually retrieve your memorized knowledge in a exam setting. If you do this two things well you will be considered an outstanding student, therefore I will always be describing to you ways to improve this two things. Alot of what I will share with you is not neccessarily about nursing itself. I will focus on the art of learning. You could be studying any old subject and this information would be valuable to you, so please apply this knowledge to anything in life you have to learn.
Ok.......with that introduction finished let me remind you that in order for this to work you must have fun! It is simply easier to study if you can some how make it fun. I will talk about how to make three-month terms of hard study into fun a little later on, but for now I want you to know that study actually works better if you have some sort of enjoyment out of it so we will find ways to make it fun. Still cannot avoid the hard work but fun bits can be squeezed into the semester to balance the bland parts.
I hope this journal of my own experiences are of some help to you. You can customise your study to your own needs and habits. I just hope the journal offers a few new ideas and insights that you previously did not have regarding your undergraduate degree.
Cheers