Publisher's Synopsis
This book helps you become a 1st class student. It provides answers to the many questions you will face as a university student. It gives simple things you can do to improve your student life and boost your chance of graduating with the degree you deserve. Each one of the 101 tips has a little something that you can do, a way to behave or an easy to understand approach to boost your grades. Roll them all up together and the potential for your improved success is huge.I was stood in a book store at an airport, browsing the vast array of books all lined-up on the shelves, killing time as I waited for my connecting flight. I was returning home from a teaching mission in a university in China where I'd been in front of a group of 50 Chinese people for two weeks, all keen students and eager to learn. On that return trip, a flight of more than 12 hours, I had plenty of time to reflect upon how my classes had gone - what went well and what could be improved. I thought about how those Chinese students had reacted to my style of teaching and the sorts of challenges that they faced. I realized that just like the students I work with at home in the UK, the Chinese students had very similar challenges facing them as they moved from being high school students usually living in their parental home, to moving into university and living more independently. I realised that the challenges faced by all students come in stages: -A year before starting university - this is often the time when teachers, parents and students themselves start to seriously think about what they want to do next in their lives and start planning for university.-A few months before the course starts and you need to act to ensure you get the place on the course, and at the university, you want. The practical logistics of moving to a new student life also need to be considered.-A week before university life begins and you'll need to get organized, ready for the move.-The 1st week of the course and there's a lot to absorb to ensure you get off to a good start in your student journey.-Once the course begins and you start to settle into the rhythms of studying.Once the course has started, the initial challenges of getting to university and on the right course have been successfully overcome. But then new challenges present themselves. Some of these are focused upon the academic work: -Writing assignments given to you at university can be quite different to the work you may have written before.-Giving presentations is often a nerve-wracking and stressful experience, especially if you haven't had to do many such presentations before.-Exams at university may take different forms and could be a very different experience to those you've sat through already.-Doing research is something you may think that you have no experience of. Nonetheless it's often an important part of succeeding at university.If this is your first time living away from home, knowing how to keep healthy and happy whilst studying is critical so as to keep at your best level of learning.This is where this book comes in. Here are the answers to the questions that students have asked me during my decades of teaching in universities around the world. The 101 tips in this book are helpful to you wherever in the world you decide to study and whichever university you decide to attend.As this book shows, there are many things you can do to help yourself improve and get even better grades at university than you hoped for: you can do it!
