On this last day before the new year I am looking towards the difficulties of the next semester. I’ll be taking new courses, teaching another large course, and learning (hopefully) along the way. One of the things I’ll be starting to work on this next semester is studying. I’ve got to begin reviewing eight courses worth of material for a string of tests that I’ll take in the fall of 2010 while working towards my PhD. I often have trouble meeting deadlines if they are too far out in the future so I’ll hopefully begin an outline today that might serve to help both me, and perhaps even you (or your students) to look ahead, work ahead, and plan ahead.
Organization is the first step of this process as I see it. I’m not very organized so I’ll have to actually hunt down the syllabi’s for these courses before I can ever hope to review the material that I already read for them. So, if I haven’t said so before (I have!) the syllabus is IMPORTANT!
The second step to this process is planning. I have just over seven months to get through eight courses worth of material. I’ll need a schedule. My wife taught me something simple about how to get through a lot of material. All you do is take the time you have to work on the project and divide by the number of sections. A section could be a chapter, a book, or some larger or smaller unit. Then you can mathematically figure out how many pages, books or other unit you’ll have to review/read each day to complete your work by the due date in the future. (Did you see what happened there… you create mini due dates in order to reach the larger due date!)
These are the initial steps I need to take in order to complete this massive study project I’m undertaking. I’m normally not very good at planning but part of my new year’s resolution is to get better at it. I’d very much appreciate it if the readers here would, from time to time, ask me how I’m doing in the comments. If I’m doing well… I’ll appreciate the encouragement. If I’m doing poorly… you’ll probably motivate me to get my work done! What are you academic new year’s resolutions?