Sunday, August 15, 2010

Paranormal technology

Last week at uni, I met a lovely young lady in my World History class who told me she was studying to be a secondary teacher.  She studies full-time, works 38 hours a week and lives on her own!  When I asked her how on earth she managed to work and study full-time, she said every minute of her day was timetabled and if it wasn't, there's no way she'd be able to fit it in.

Now that I'm doing three subjects, I took this on board and decided it was exactly what I needed to do.  Each week I've been writing up absolutely everything that will take up my time, including regular study.  So far, it's working really well and friends and family have finally accepted my study hours during the week.  As a result, I'm keeping up with all my homework and reading AND I feel less stressed!

My World History assignment, though, is causing me a bit of frustration.  Trawling through databases trying to find journal articles about medicine in the 9th century Frankish Kingdom, was proving to be a bit difficult.  I felt like ripping my hair out yesterday afternoon as whatever I put in the search engine seemed to either produce 1,000 articles or nothing really relevant at all!  Thank goodness for Supportive Husband!  Somehow by typing "ninth" instead of "9th", he finally found something I can use.  Although I'm trying not to stress too much (it's only worth 5%), I have to make sure my information is accurate.  Unfortunately, I've always found searching through databases daunting but I suppose I'll eventually get the hang of it.

3 comments:

  1. Your new scheduling and regular study hours sound like such a great idea. And just changing a word to get more results from researching online is also very useful. The very best of luck on your studies!

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  2. Hi Caz,
    yes I know what you mean about database searches - they can be so incredibly frustrating!!! Particularly too that they don't all operate in exactly the same way with the same search parameters and wordings - so yes I absolutely sympathise with you!! Your assignment sounds quite interesting - I'll be interested to hear what you learn.
    All the best!
    P.S. It's now week 4 in my semester and I'm starting to get a bit of a routine up and running - it does make a lot of difference with the stress levels, although I don't know how that lady you met in class can work and study full-time - whew!!!!!!

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  3. A plan and a routine really take the pressure off - don't forget to factor in the unexpected though!
    I agree with Chatty1: Different Databases that use different search terms and codes is so frustrating - and time consuming!

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