There are a multitude of online student tools available that can help you organize your university life. A very new website that is sure to become extremely popular amongst college students is NoteSake. Just some of its features include:

• Collaborate with Groups
• Pass Notes to People
• Access Notes from any Computer
• Organize Notes by Title, Date or any Custom Tag

This truly is a compilation of all your university work, and will definetly become many student’s homepages.

Having all of your information about your work in a single place is a very important, and will help when exams come along. No longer do you have to search through a tattered note pad or through a huge bunch of loose leaf paper. It is all there right in front of you. This can increase your productivity dramatically, but make sure you do not get distracted!

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College and Finance has created a quite extensive list of 18 Overlooked Things that Everyone Should Bring to College. As a current college student I can tell you that you of the 18 objects listed, there are only 4 that you will actually use. The list mentiones a huge number of things that are either irrelevant, or just so obscure that you may only use them once or twice. The 18 objects are:

1. Ear Plugs
2. Flip Flops (THONGS)
3. Toiletries
4. Powerboards
5. Cleaning Supplies
6. Duct Tape
7. Hammer
8. Screwdriver
9. Stapler
10. Door Hanger
11. Storage Containers
12. Bottle Opener
13. USB Drive
14. Pliers
15. Extra Sheets
16. Vitamins
17. Air Freshener
18. Microwave

Of these items, I can honestly say the only things I have needed are:

1. #2 Flip Flops (In Australia we call them thongs and wear them everywhere). I must admit that I have worn my thongs everyday that I have been at university. I wear them to the shower, to lectures, to shopping centres, to parties… everywhere. They are essential, and must be brought.
2. #4 Powerboards - Just in case your room does not have enough powerpoints. Remember, in this day and age there are a lot of things that need electricity - computers, phone chargers…
3. #9 Stapler - A stapler is kind of important for stapling assignments and notes together, just so everything is neat and tidy. People seem to prefer that assignments get stapled rather than binded or just loose.
4. #12 Bottle Opener - For obvious reasons

The rest of the items in the list may be useful, but they are definetly not essential. The thing to point out is that your room may be very small, so the less stuff you bring with you, the bigger it will feel. Filling it up with hammers, and screwdrivers, and microwaves is really not needed.

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As many of you may realize, one of my favourite blogs on this topic is Lifehack.org. This is because of the huge number of high quality posts they can continually produce each and every day. And once again they have done it. Thanks to Dustin Wax, we know have 11 more tips for having a great semester:

1. Get organized
2. Know your professor
3. Find a mentor
4. Visit the writing center
5. Join something
6. Speak up
7. Read for pleasure
8. Start something
9. Set goals
10. Fail
11. Find balance

Perhaps the most important one in my opinion is number #3. A mentor is just someone who is older and wiser than you in a particular field. This can be anything from an older student to a professor or even someone out in the field. I personally have a lot of older students who help me with problems or concepts whenever I get stuck. Most people are ready and willing to help you out, but you have ask.

A note on point 6 - although it is very beneficial to answer questions because it helps you and gives the lecturer feedback, do not constantly be the person to answer all the questions. Remember to allow others to provide feedback as well. It can be quite irritating for your fellow students if one person is always answering everything.

Setting goals is another very important facet of anyone’s life, not just for university. I have written a previous post about setting goals, and I recommend to everyone that they do it.

Following these tips can help you improve your GPA, but they will also make you feel less stressed, and more capable of continuing along the difficult path that you have chosen. Studying for several years at a time is never easy, but it does not have to be as hard as people make it out to be.

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Trying to stay focused and motizated about your study can often be difficult, but one of the easiest ways is to set some goals. Think of why you joined the course in the first place - career plans, your interest in the topic, and what you want to get our of your course.

Write down all of your goals and stick them to your wall. This can be very inspirational and motivating in your times of need. If you ever feel a bit discouraged, simply look at your goals, and remember how you felt at the time you wrote it.

Achieving these goals is another matter altogether, but you cannot even attempt to accomplish them if you do not know what they are.

There are several easy steps that you can follow if you are having problems with goal setting:

• Identify your hopes and dreams, but keep them possible
• Take 10 minutes every day to imagine how terrific it will feel when your goals are actually realized [LifeHack] 
• Set both short, medium and long term goals
• Commit yourself to reaching those goals

Focusing all your efforts on trying to accomplish a series of goals is very beneficial for your mindset, and is a great way to improve your grades through study. 

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Starting at a new university is a daunting time for any student, but there are ways to avoid any problems. eyeRblog has provided 9 (actually 8…) tips for this, but I could think of 3 more. There is only one way for these ideas to work, and that is to try them. University can be the best time of your life, but it can also be extremely difficult. If you thought High School was hard, then you will be shocked by the size and difficulty of university style assignments and exams.

The easiest way to settle in is to distract yourself from all of your worries and concerns. Make new friends, sort out your timetable and living conditions. The following tips are a great place to start, thanks to eyeRblog:

1. The first week defines the rest of the year

2. Organize study groups

3. Study for tests

4. Get involved

5. If you don’t like your roommate, switch

6. Go to sporting events

7. Figure out housing for next year

8. Don’t buy books until you need them

I agree with a lot of these points, especially number 4 and 6. The easiest way to feel at home is to get involved in everything around you - cultural events, sporting teams, study groups, and social gatherings. Simply watching these things does give you an opportunity to distract yourself from your concerns and it gives you something to talk about to your new friends, but imagine the additional benefits of actually being involved.

#8 is also another great idea that I have spoken about before. This can save you a lot of money.

There are some additional pointers to be considered though, which can make life even easier.

1. Go to the orientation events - Most universities have a lot of lectures and gatherings in the first few weeks to help you fit in. I admit that I did not go to all of mine, but I would’ve had an easier time starting my study if I had.

2. Take a walk around your campus - This is another thing I wish I had’ve done. On my way to a new class recently I found an entire art museum that I never new about. Quite a big find, but if you know where everything is from the beginning you will have a much easier time.

3. Choose easy subjects - The first semester is always the hardest. This is because you are not used to university exams and assignments, so having an easy first semester will seem hard at first just due to the nature of your course. This is hard to understand, but you will always improve from this point.

It is always hard to start a new life in a new place, but following these tips you can manage it with little trouble.

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 Rory Marinich from LifeHack has provided a great resource for all budding authors, and can be applied to nearly every assignment scenario. Sometimes the hardest part of any assignment can be the beginning. Even if you have already done a lot of research, the writing process is often very intimidating. The 6 tips provided by Rory can help:

• Decide what you actually want to write
• Make sure you’re interested in what you’re writing
• Outline the basics of what you’re trying to get done
• Stop everything else and concentrate on writing
• Lower your standards
• Take your time before revising

One of the best tips I was ever given about writing was by my high school english teacher, who said that the most important part of any writing is in the plan behind it. Most students start writing straight away, and just go from the start to the end. While this sounds logical, there are easier ways to improve your writing. To go along with the 6 tips above, I have created 4 more from my personal experience.

• Don’t start at the beginning - the introduction and the conclusion should be written last. This means that they will flow more easily into the body of the writing. It also allows you to summarize the whole article/assignment/story with ease.
• Write a Plan - creating a simple page long plan of what you are going to write can be one of the most powerful tools in any writer’s arsenal. Just create a list of dot points of all the topics that you want to cover, and in which paragraph they should fall.
• Edit, Edit and Edit Again - no matter how many times you read through something you have written, you will never remove all of the errors. Getting another person to help you edit is much more effective because they might pick up on things that you have missed. Editing should be the final thing that you do, but it could very well take the longest.
• Write by Hand - something that I have noticed, is that my work is almost always better when I write it by than when I use a computer. This is because you have the ability to change things much more easily. Entire paragraphs can be crossed out in an instant, and it seems to just give a different style of writing than anything computer based.

I think the one thing that we can all agree on is that the most difficult, and yet important part of writing is before you have even started to write. Creating a plan, focusing your attention on a specific topic, and writing about what you are interested in can help you in your writing difficulties.

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Having full and detailed notes that you can understand are one of the most valuable tools that a student can have, but it can be hard to create these yourself. Writing during classes and lectures can mean that you are distracted from what the lecturer is actually saying, but it is sometimes vital. There are 3 easy steps that you can use to create study notes that will get you better marks in your exams.

1. Write your own notes - a lot of students find the exams upon them and that they don’t have anything to base their study on, so they borrow the notes of their friends. Although they may have a lot of good information, because you did not write it yourself, there is no way that you can absorb all the information in such a short period of time. Writing your own notes from the beginning means that you are continually learning throughout the semester.

2. Write in your own words - simply copying your lecturers definitions and working from the board does not mean that you will understand it again 3 or 4 months later. Next to your notes I suggest that you write everything out again in your own words. These should explain everything out again in their basic, simplest terms. Try to think of these as what you would want to read if you were learning it the first time.

3. Draw Pictures - having diagrams and pictures in your work can be especially helpful for expanding on your written notes, particularly in maths based courses, but they do apply to most student’s topics. Having images can change your notes from being ‘good enough’ to being ‘more than enough.’

These tips do not take a lot more work than you should already be putting into your work, but they certainly pay off in the long run. In courses where you have anywhere up to 6 months of information to memorize, having a good set of notes can be extremely benficial, so I suggest you start now.

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Have a big list of tasks that you need to complete by a certain time can sometimes be intimidating for even the most dedicated student. But there is an easy way to make youself feel more productive and hopefully get more things done.

The simple, yet somehow contradictory answer is to make a bigger list.

Expand each of your tasks into several different, smaller points, where each can be easily achieved. For example, if you have an assignment that you need to complete:

• Maths Assignment

Then an easy way to cross that off your list, making yourself feel much more productive, and focusing your energy is to change it into:

• Research Differentials
• Question 1
• Question 2
• Hand it in

This means that you have turned one task into four much easier tasks. This is a secret that productive students use all the time to get more things done. Although you may say that this does not actually get anything else accomplished, it is very beneficial for your mind. You are constantly completing smaller tasks, and do not feel bombarded by the lack of accomplishment. This simple method can turn a long, hard day of study into a very productive day.

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Getting more work done in a shorter time frame is one of the most important things that any student should always be striving for. The most obvious way to do this is to try and remove all distractions from the room around you. TV’s, computer games, music, and friends can all be taken out of the picture for the short time that you need to work.

It is for this reason that people seem to get so much work done in a specialized workspace, like a library or cubicle. Sit down, and focus on completing a certain amount of tasks in a distraction free environment, and you will certainly get more work done.

If you work or study in the same place that you relax, than this can be a problem. Distractions will always creep into your work, and it will be harder to focus.

Hope is not lost however. There are ways to create a more ‘Work Friendly’ environment.

• Remove all distractions, eg. computers, TVs, music

• Establish uninterruptible periods [LifeHack/Steve Pavlina]

• Get everything you need within easy reach, eg. textbooks, calculators, blank paper

My personal favourite is to go to your local library. It is a quiet place, with huge amounts of information just around the corner.

The real reason this works is because of the change in your mindset. One place is to relax, the other is for work, and the two should never meet. The problem for most students is that these two places are the one room. Try this out for a few days, and you will certainly see an improvement.

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Brad Issac from Dumb Little Man said to “Get your Books early.” This may be a good thing to do if you want to get them out of the way and focus on your studies, but it is the complete opposite idea if you need to save money.

I have learnt from experience to wait as long as possible before buying textbooks. It is very often the case that lecturers are forced to issue textbooks for each of their classes, but then never even use them. Another possibility is that one of their collegues actually wrote the books, and they are trying to increase sales.

If you wait at least two weeks before you start buying textbooks, you will have a vague idea of what textbooks will be used, and which ones will not. Sometimes this can mean a saving of several hundred dollars, and in the long run this is a great financial success.

If you do decide that there are several textbooks you need to buy, then there are still several ways to save money.

1. Second Hand Stores

2. Buy from other Students

3. Buy an earlier edition

4. eBay

A lot of textbook publishes bring out a new edition every few years, and the only differences are the chapter or page numbers. Buying an earlier edition can be a significant saving, and there really isn’t that much difference at all.

Remember, the book stores will never run out of textbooks, and you can always order more in. You will not miss out.

Courses offered by University of Phoenix are usually too expansive that it’s difficult for an average person to purchase all the required text books at a time. That’s why most students go for the option of online education. Textbooks for online courses offered by Kaplan University are available on internet book stores and here you can buy books on comparatively cheap prices.

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