r/uwaterloo
Full Guide On Strategies and Methods to Deal With Heavy Course Loads
I made a quick guide for strategies I used to get A's on most of my courses when taking five or more course per semester. Most of these methods and strategies are from different self help and learning books that I have extensively tried and tested again and again every semester.
( Due note this works for me, but may not apply to everyone )
Full Guide On Strategies and Methods to deal with heavy course loads
Learning from Textbooks and Slides:
Writing about it without looking at the textbook / slide after reading each section. This I found works the best especially when the material is hard to understand. However, this takes the longest time, so it may not be the best when there is not much time left for exams.
Explain the concept like your the instructor without looking at the material, this is the fastest way I found to get the concepts into your head and understand it to complete assignments and exams.
Practicing problems on exercises or homework's:
For practice exercises with posted solutions, don't immediately go to the solutions when your stuck or have no idea. You really want to practice thinking out the solution in your head if you want to build the muscles for problem solving in the long run. (Unless you really don't have much time left before the exams)
Getting unstuck on problems: this may sound odd, but writing about it or explaining it simply out loud to your pet dog or water bottle actually helps with getting a better understanding of the problem and actually helping you solve it.
Skip to the next problem, this is the best advice if your stuck and you spent good enough time thinking through it, skip to the next one and come back later.
For any assignments or homework your stuck on and is stressing out, check the course syllabus and see how much of it's worth for your total grades. That's right, that week 5 math written assignment that seems near impossible to solve and it's due tomorrow is only worth 1 or 2% or less of your final grade. The majority of your grades are on the finals and mid terms, don't stress out homework's or assignments that is only worth 1/40 compared to your finals, focus on learning and improving. Homework's and assignments are there for your learning and practice, focus on using it to improve rather than worrying about it.
Writing assignments and essays:
Write first, then edit. For some people (like me), you may get stuck on writing assignments and essays and spend hours to think of writing the right sentences and checking to see if your meeting the endless requirements. The way I approach this the fastest way is:
Come up with an idea for the writing and create a basic outline of how your going to structure your essay. This saves a lot of time and is worth investing in. This is where you want to decide in which order you want to convey your ideas.
Write, write ,write. I'm not exaggerating, just keep writing with zero perfectionist mentality following the outline until you reach enough word count for the writing the paper. You'll find that your able to keep on writing even when your head is empty. As a result the paper will be a mess with grammar errors, misspellings and etc, but that's the main goal here, getting the writing done as soon as possible without.
This is the most important part, you now want to edit the paper and fix all the mistakes, add or delete depending on your essays requirements, but this is going to be a lot less stressful and time consuming compared to trying to perfectly write the whole thing at once. The more you revise and rewrite, the better your paper gets (I hope).
Say out loud the entire essay, no seriously this really helps, every time I begin saying my essay out loud, I find various mistakes that I couldn't catch from simply reading it over.
Strategies dealing with heavy or complex course loads:
Plan in either paper or in device a list of tasks you want to complete that day and rank them by using numbers by which is the most important. After you have planned out a list of tasks you need to do, you want to start with the most important one which is 1 and fully focus on that most important task without multitasking or getting distracted. Then move on to 2nd most important task. This will ensure even with immense amount of assignments and homework's, you still get the most important one done every day. (I'm using Brian Tracy's ideas here)
You will get and remember various things you have to do throughout the day. Rather than letting it sit in your mind or getting distracted on your important priorities, write it down in a notepad or your phones notes and come back to deal with it later. If you get constantly distracted on your most important tasks by small stuff, it will cause you issues over time. (from Getting Thing's Done by David Allen)
Don't sacrifice sleep. For some rare individuals, they may be fine with little as 6 hours of sleep per night but for most of us, losing sleep to solve short term issues causes various long term ones. You mainly get the information and knowledge during sleep (REM / DEEP) and sacrificing it will cause you to not only lose most of the gains and practice you did the previous day, your focus and learning capability will be worse the next day as well causing further loss in knowledge and time. I'd recommend at least 7.5 hours at minimum per night. (Mainly from Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker)
Show up to class. I know, I know, you might have a instructor that just can't teach and your wasting your time just being there. But just the act of showing up every time even when 90% of the class isn't is what really makes the difference in the long run. Your training your mind to show up consistently like showing up to the gym every time and that small act of simply showing up makes a huge difference in the long run. (Some of you may not agree with this).
From my personal experience, I found focusing on only 1 or 2 class per day and only 3 or more when it's really crucial results in the fastest learning and assignment completion. If you have 4 or more classes, instead of jumping from class to class and stressing about the insane amount of assignments due, you want to focus on only 1 or 2 class your the most behind on or the ones your the worst at, and solely focus on practicing, reading and completing assignments for those classes only with full focus one class at a time. I find this much more effective in getting most out of 1 or two classes every day rather than switching from assignment to assignments.
Mid terms and Final Exams:
When your really nervous like I was during my first mid terms and finals in Uni, use the 4-4-4-4 box breathing method just like the Navy Seals use before they engage into very stressful situations. I'm being serious, this makes a huge differences as it helps you calm down and gain focus for the exam.
Invest around 3-5 minutes scanning through the entire exam. You just go through each page and briefly look at the problem, you don't even have to read it. This time investment is worth it, I do it every time because it gets all the problems you need to solve into your subconscious which you want to leverage as much as possible especially in exams.
If you can't solve it immediately or have spent 1-2 minutes on it and your completely stuck, mark it to remember which problem it is and skip to the next one. This is the most important advice for exams, don't waste your time stuck on one problem, skip it and let your subconscious work on it as you work on a different problem. With the short time and large amounts of problems you have to solve or remember in exams, most of the times, you can't only rely on your conscious mind, you need to work together with your subconscious, and you do this by following the above tip 2 and skipping difficult problems you can't remember how to solve. Once your not focused on it, your subconscious will be working on it behind, and once your done solving all the problem you can solve, come back to the marked questions you got stuck on and you'll notice you have some new insight on it. (If your still stuck on it, try thinking through it again and skip to a different question you were stuck on and let your subconscious work on it again)
That's it, my most important ideas I have accumulated from various books and personal experiences to take on heavy course complex courses without losing my mind. It works for me and I think it's the most important, but remember that everyone is different and not all tips and advice may work for some people.
submitted by /u/Beginning-Future7843[link] [comments]