HOW TO: The time for Atlantic Canadian students to get organized is now, before it’s crunch time
We are now a month into school, which means that the pressure is starting to mount for some students.
Students will soon face midterms and exams, while some high school students will have their first exams and maybe their first real homework to do.
Keeping track of work and staying organized is essential to academic success. Now is the time for youngsters to develop good habits. But where do you start?
Janet MacDonald has a few ideas. The Halifax woman is a former university admissions officer who helps Canadian high school students find and apply for university entry scholarships. She started her company, mycampusGPS, because many of the students she worked with didn’t know much about scholarships and were missing out on thousands of dollars in funding.
“The primary way that organization leads to academic success is that organization reduces stress and feelings of overwhelm,” MacDonald said.
When we’re stressed or overwhelmed, we can’t focus properly and it shakes our confidence, she explained. Also, we are more likely to give up completely in this state.
As an academic advisor, MacDonald has seen this often – students fall so behind in their work that they can’t see a way to get back on track and drop out. Many students left the university after the first semester of the freshman year, she remarked, which is so heartbreaking to hear.
“With a little more guidance on time management, some basic prioritization and study skills, they could have easily gotten back on track,” MacDonald said.
General organizational skills have always been an issue for many students, MacDonald continued, but this is one of those problem areas that has been exacerbated by the pandemic. Many students don’t have the same structures or support as in previous years, so what little they used to learn hasn’t learned as much in the last two to three years, she said.
Most universities offer study skills workshops that students can attend for free, covering topics such as note-taking, time management, or taking multiple-choice tests. MacDonald wishes all high schools had this kind of enrichment, as she believes they would see a big improvement in grades, along with student happiness and mental health.
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Find a system that works
The first thing that should be made clear to everyone, especially students, is that it is normal to be disorganized or needing to learn study skills. This fight is real, MacDonald stressed.
Young people’s brains are still developing until around age 25, and the part that deals with organization is the last part to develop, she explained. This isn’t an excuse for not learning organizational skills, but it does explain why it may not come naturally to most young people. So young people should not be blamed or shamed for not being better organised. They need to be understood and taught how to do it, MacDonald said.
“Above all, organization leads to academic success because organization reduces stress and feelings of being overwhelmed.”
— Janet MacDonald
However, this skill is now important for students to learn, especially if they intend to move on to post-secondary school, as time pressures will only intensify at the higher levels of education when they will have more and more varied responsibilities. In addition to major academic change, they will also deal with societal and financial changes and challenges.
“Preparing now is key,” MacDonald said.
Finding a system that works for the student is also important, she added. What might work for one may not be the best or most intuitive for others.
“I know people want to hear a magic formula, but there isn’t one,” MacDonald pointed out.
And these skills may not be taught in high school, so parents cannot assume that they will learn these organizing and study skills in school.
Best organizational practices
Based on her experience, not only as a former university admissions officer, but also through her current work as a scholarship coach and as the mother of a current high school student, MacDonald offers the following advice:
1. Learn how to use a calendar
This can be an online Google calendar or a printed agenda. Find one that the student will actually use and stick with it. Teach them how to add deadlines. If the deadline is for an exam or a project or work that requires advanced study or research, teach them how to break it up into parts and distribute the work before the deadline so they can finish it on time (work backwards from the deadline).
If students have multiple deadlines, MacDonald suggested they get a large desk calendar and write their deadlines on it. This way you can see the dates of the month at a glance and see where the bottlenecks are. Then they can work backwards, breaking the work into smaller chunks, and adding the chunks to their calendar in blocks.
2. Find an online course
MacDonald enrolled her teenage son in an online course on outschool that she thought was good and cheap. Oxford Learning also has a course on this, but MacDonald finds them more expensive and can’t comment on the quality as she hasn’t used them.
There are also all kinds of YouTube videos on how to get and stay organized. Many of these are from students, so they might appeal to them more than a parent teaching them, MacDonald noted.
3. Good notes are crucial
Most students can’t take good notes on a computer because they don’t have the discipline to stay focused on the task and avoid distractions like social media notifications, MacDonald said. It’s not all her fault, but it is. But if they are like that, they have to recognize that and choose another method like pen and paper.
There are many different methods of noting—again, according to MacDonald, the student needs to find what works for them. The key to getting the hang of it is recognizing the cues of what is important and what is less important.
MacDonald gave some tips for identifying key points in a lecture:
- Introductory remarks often contain summaries of overviews of main points.
- Look out for signal words/phrases like “There are four main…” or “To sum it up…” or “One big reason why…”
- Repeated words or concepts are often important.
- Non-verbal cues such as pointing, gestures, vocal emphasis on certain words, etc. can indicate important points.
- Closing remarks often summarize the main points of the lecture.
4. Read books on the subject
MacDonald recommended the book 7 Habits of Teenage Effectiveness by Sean Covey. Chapter 3 is all about prioritization. The author calls it “might and will not” — saying yes to some things and no to others, based on your goals.
“Students get it when I just say, ‘Every time you say yes to one thing, you’re saying no to another,'” MacDonald said.
5. Give up procrastination.
MacDonald connects it to the prioritization that Covey discusses in Chapter 3 of the book. Some students need the energy boost they get when they are under pressure to get things done. This leads to burnout, not to mention bad grades.
6. Forget perfectionism.
Students are afraid of doing something that won’t be perfect, so they don’t do everything. This could be at the root of the procrastination problem for some students, she suspected.
Ultimately, MacDonald said, students can be taught anything about organization, but it’s up to them to implement it.
“We need to support and understand that this is a learning process that some find easier than others,” she said.