Note Taking
How to capture a two hour lecture without transcribing it word for word. Cornell, outline, mapping and plain linear notes, compared on the coursework they were used for.
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The dividers
Six sections, one binder
Each section answers a different part of the same week: the lecture you are sitting in, the revision you owe it, the exam that closes it, and the life that has to fit around all three.
Revision Methods
Spacing, retrieval and interleaving, described as things you do on a Tuesday rather than as theory. Includes the timetables that survive contact with a real term.
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Exam Preparation
Past papers under the clock, mark schemes read before the answer is written, and the routine for the last days. What to do when the plan slips, which it does.
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Campus Life
The parts of the term nobody schedules: arriving, sharing a kitchen, sleeping enough to sit a nine in the morning class, choosing what to join and what to drop.
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Money
Budgeting on an income that arrives in lumps and leaves in trickles. Rent, bills, food, transport and the part time hours that pay for them without eating the term.
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First Job
Turning coursework, a summer job and a society role into a readable first CV. Then the placement interview, the reference request and the first month at a desk.
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The latest sheets
Browse Note Taking
Recently added to the bench
New guides are filed under the section they belong to and dated, so you can tell what was written for this year's timetable and what is older ground.
Seven hours in term time: the case for sleep as a health number
Sleep treated as a number you keep rather than a leftover. What seven hours protects, and how to defend it when the exam timetable presses.
A portfolio that argues: editing student work for applications
A portfolio for an application is a short argument, not an archive. What to leave out and the order that carries the point.
Reading your own drinking before someone else does
A written tally beats a social circle for reading a habit, and the vocabulary of help is worth learning before it is needed.
A placement somewhere remote: the questions to ask before you go
A field course or a rural placement changes the questions that matter. Access, internet, water and the weekly shop, asked before you sign.
Your first unpaid invoice: a calm routine for getting paid
A late payment is usually process, not malice. The evidence file, the reminder ladder and the point where chasing stops working.
The first signature: reading the contracts nobody explained
Tenancy, employment and hire forms use the same machinery. Scope, money, exit and liability, read in that order before the pen comes out.
A warehouse shift between lectures: what the first week teaches you
Picking, packing and a rota that moves. What the first week of warehouse work teaches, and how to keep it from eating the term.
The fishing society: a cheap hobby that teaches you to read water
Borrow the rod, buy the boots, read the water before you cast. A term of fly fishing through a society costs less than a gym.
Muscle memory is still memory: practising a physical skill like you revise
A knot is stored like a fact. Spaced, effortful practice on a length of cord is the revision method applied to your hands.
An outdoors week on a student budget: licences, seasons and one guided day
A week of fishing runs on three money lines and none of them is tackle. Licence, access and travel, priced before the pleasure.
Running a fan night on campus: the room, the licence and the plan
A small gathering is three bookings and a plan: the room, the licence question and the run-up, in that order.
The legacy language on the job spec: why VBA still shows up in interviews
Offices run on macros nobody maintains. A little VBA, learned in short sessions, carries a placement application further than expected.
The practical logbook: notes for courses you take with your hands
Settings, failures and adjustments: the knowledge a workshop course produces that lecture notes cannot hold.
First rented flat: the safety check nobody gives you
A rented flat arrives with keys, an inventory and no manual. Ten minutes on move in day covers alarms, exits and doors.
How to read a technical standard when you are not an engineer
Scope first, then definitions, then the numbered clauses. A reading method for the dense documents a course eventually hands you.
A crock in the shared kitchen: fermenting vegetables on a student budget
A jar, salt and the cheapest vegetable in the shop. The only part that has to be right is the salt, and the figures are published.
The brewing society: the quietest club on campus
A few sessions a term, one batch at a time, and a skill measured in weeks. How to join a brewing society or start one.
Joining a university golf team: what the season actually asks of your kit
A squad place asks less of your wallet than the catalogues suggest and more of your organisation than a fresher expects.
The Cornell page, six months later
The two column layout is easy to draw and easy to abandon. Here is what the page has to contain on the day of the lecture for it to still be useful in revision week.
A first CV when the experience column is thin
Coursework, a summer job and a society treasurer role are enough material for one honest page. What matters is which verb starts each line.
Spaced repetition without an app
Three boxes, a calendar and a rule about what moves forward. The paper version is slower to set up and much harder to quietly abandon.
The first fortnight, hour by hour
The two weeks that set the habits of a whole year. Which admin to clear on day one, and which invitations are worth saying yes to twice.
Past papers, timed and marked honestly
An untimed past paper measures nothing. The value comes from the clock, the closed book and the twenty minutes spent marking yourself afterwards.
A budget sheet that survives term one
Fixed costs, weekly costs and the small leaks in between. The sheet works when it is filled in on the same day of the week, every week.
Placement interviews: the questions that come back
The same handful of questions turns up in almost every placement interview. Preparing one example properly beats rehearsing five answers badly.
Typing or writing, in a two hour lecture
Typing keeps up and remembers less. Writing falls behind and forces a decision on every line. The honest answer is that the choice depends on the subject.
Flashcards that ask harder questions
Most cards test recognition and feel productive. Rewriting the front of the card so it demands an explanation changes what the pack is worth.
The last three days before an exam
Nothing new goes in. The work left is consolidation, sleep and rehearsing the first ten minutes of the paper until they are automatic.
Rewriting notes is not revision
Copying a page out neatly feels like work and produces very little memory. The same hour spent turning notes into questions produces a great deal.
Sleep and the nine in the morning lecture
A timetable with early starts is not a reason to give up on sleep. It is a reason to move the evening, which is the part actually under your control.
How the bench is kept
Start with revision methods
Method first, motivation second
Every guide describes something you can do this week with the materials you already own: a notebook, a printer, a calendar and whatever the reading list demands. Where a method has a known limit, the limit is written down with it. Guides are revised when the practice changes, and the date at the top moves with the revision.
New notes
For students weighing a study stay abroad, Cuaderno del Páramo is a Spanish-language guide to studying Spanish in Valladolid, covering course levels, the DELE exam, host-family housing and getting around the city.
Students after cheap, social exercise can use Lane Six, an editorial guide to grassroots running, for RunTogether groups explained, club trial sessions and athlete registration in England.
For a US comparison, The Activity Period lays out how American school clubs and science fairs and student officer roles actually run week to week.
Students building a film society or a discussion group will find The Repertory Notebook useful: classic film entries written for a room, and plain guides on rights, prints and running a screening night.
For the student who ends up officiating a friend's ceremony, planning a wedding ceremony walks through scripts, rehearsal logistics and the legal frame in plain English.
On the clothing side of a student budget, Get Real Clothes is a magazine on caring for everyday clothes: buying less, washing less and mending what you already own.
For the computer science side of the bench, GIF4J is a technical guide to processing animated GIFs in Java, from BufferedImage sequences to encoder settings.
Students far from home who receive a hospital letter can read on Inside the Scanner what a scan involves, what happens during the appointment, and what the dose figures mean.