New Year, New Habits

Have you ever made a New Year’s resolution only to find yourself giving up or forgetting about it two weeks later? We have great news- you still have time to start strong this semester! There is never a wrong time to start implementing a healthy habit.  The Academic Success Center (ASC) provides loads of strategies and resources that can help equip you this winter and spring.

Here are a few tips to help you succeed this semester:

  1. Get organized
    • Take all of the information you received last week from your syllabi, and put the assignment information into this Semester Planning document. This printable handout allows you to put all major/minor assignment deadlines in one place so you can have a “zoomed out” view of what this semester will demand.
    • Our Student Resources site provides great videos, articles, and handouts on everything from Organization, to Note Taking, to Time Management.
  2.  Take advantage of an ASC service
  3. Remember that you have people in your corner!

While all of the ASC resources can be found online, you are welcome to stop by our office in Van Zoeren 261 Monday-Friday 9am-5pm. We’re excited to support and celebrate your success this semester!

Final Exam Prep Starts Now!

Final Exam Week is less than two (2) weeks away! Will YOU be ready? 

You CAN be! Check out the Academic Success Center’s tips, hints and tools to navigate your way to Final Exam Week success!

Start with the ASC’s “Final Exam Study Strategies.” This quick slide deck will help you create a “plan of attack.” You’ll end the slideshow with your exam schedule, a comprehensive plan of action for each course, a master to-do list that enables you to prioritize your study time, and schedule planners to help you stay on task.

Hungry for even more resources? Check out the ASC’s “De-Cram Your Exams” web page. Crammed with resources including links to helpful videos, study tools and memory aids, you will be on your way to A-cing your exams!

Need more personalized help/encouragement/hot cocoa? You’re always welcome to come and talk with a study strategies expert at the ASC. Our office is located directly outside of the 2nd floor VanWylen Library entrance in VanZoeren 261. We look forward to seeing you! 

Best wishes for a successful Finals Week!

No Motivation?

If you’d answer ‘yes’ to that question, it’s not surprising. Any combination of factors could be contributing to a dip in your academic energy.

First, know that you’re not alone. Just ask around. This helps!

Second, there are easy steps you can take to improve the situation.

Check the Academic Success Center’s “Student Resources” page for tips to boost your motivation. Here are a few:

  • Set small goals.
  • Celebrate each completion with a small reward that doesn’t take you off track.
  • Set and stick to a routine that includes personal wellness – sleep, exercise, etc.
  • Get support – from your advisor, friends, family, a chaplain, CAPS, the ASC.
  • Remember – or imagine – the big picture of why you’re in college.

Would a tutor for a course help? You have until Monday, November 21st to apply.

Would a peer academic coach help? Apply anytime, but the sooner the better.

You CAN do this! Contact the ASC if you’d like further information or just to chat.

Exam Prep Starts Yesterday!

Yes, you’re still prepping and learning new material, but it’s not too early to start studying for exams as well. Wait any longer, and it could be too late.

Here are some steps you might take:

  1. Find out whether your exams will occur during or before exam week, perhaps in some other form, such as a paper or take-home of some sort.
  2. Find out, if you don’t already know, whether your exams will be cumulative or just final-unit tests (or something else entirely).
  3. Find out, if your profs haven’t already told you, not only what your exams will cover but also how. How will your profs want you to be able to show what you know? And just knowing ‘multiple choice’ or ‘essay’ or ‘short answer’ or ‘matching’ doesn’t cut it. Like what?
  4. Based on the answers to that last question, now study in ways that match those expectations. If you will need to do problems, do many practice problems. If you will need to relate one thing to another, practice relating. If you will need simply to recall (such as vocab), practice recalling, etc. In other words, don’t just “go through your notes.”
  5. Do such things a little at a time AND almost every day from here on. You will learn better through many easy-going reviews than through only a couple strenuous reviews.
  6. Find out early what you don’t understand so you still have time to get help from profs, TA’s, tutors, help sessions, math lab, fellow students, etc.
  7. Go ahead and study with friends, but remember you’ll eventually have to know things all by yourself. If you can’t do a problem on your own, e.g., you don’t know it.
  8. Keep circling back to draw everything together and to show yourself you still know what you knew five days ago in the ways in which you will have to show what you know.

You only have two to three weeks to go. Putting in the extra time starting now and every day from here on will help you learn better, discover early what you still need to learn, and reduce the stress of otherwise useless cramming during the day or two before an exam.

Peer Academic Coaching from the ASC

You’re in that limbo between first tests and midterms, first papers and upcoming projects, more demanding curriculars and even more attractive extra-curriculars. And maybe it’s hitting you that life feels a little out of control and not getting any better.

At one-third of the way through the semester (yes!), you might want to do something about it.

One step to take is to the Academic Success Center (ASC) where you can access various kinds of help. Tutors, for example, are great for help in specific classes and highly recommended. But what if you’re dealing more vaguely with just “doing college”?

Peer Academic Coaching could be just what you need.

An ASC-trained student can pair up with you to help you discover and implement new routines and strategies that fit and work for you: organization, time-management, motivation, anti-procrastination, efficient reading, note-taking, test prep, test-taking, and/or balancing academic and social lives.

A crew of wonderful peer coaches is ready to serve. It’s easy to apply and get started. Check it out!

De-Cram Your Exams!

Of course you’re already prepping for exams–in fact, you’ve been studying for them since late January, right? Right……..

Well, you may still be tempted to cram your final “learning” into the couple of days just before and during exam week itself, hoping you’ll remember everything long enough to get you through.

Yes, that’s one way to do it, and for sure a rather popular one. But, face it, not a good one.

We at the Academic Success Center encourage you to de-cram your exams: start preparing now, even though you probably still have new material coming at you. You will be amazed by how much more you learn and retain.

This link will take you to the ASC’s “De-Cram Your Exams Resources” page, which is chock-full of information, suggestions, planning tools, and links to other resources. Just clicking to it will break the procrastination ice and get you started toward a solid end to the semester.

And here’s a link to the ASC’s “Student Resources” page, a complete set of study tips and strategies to help you now and anytime during any semester.

Best wishes for semester’s end and the summer ahead.

No Motivation?

If you’d answer ‘yes’ to that question, it’s not surprising. Any combination of factors could be contributing to a dip in your academic energy.

First, know that you’re not alone. Just ask around. This helps!

Second, there are easy steps you can take to improve the situation.

Check the Academic Success Center’s “Student Resources” page for tips to boost your motivation. Here are a few:

► Set small goals.

► Celebrate each completion with a small reward that doesn’t take you off track.

► Set and stick to a routine that includes personal wellness – sleep, exercise, etc.

► Get support – from your advisor, friends, family, a chaplain, CAPS, the ASC.

► Remember – or imagine – the big picture of why you’re in college.

Would a tutor for a course help? You have until Monday, November 21st to apply.

Would a peer academic coach help? Apply anytime, but the sooner the better.

You CAN do this! Contact the ASC if you’d like further information or just to chat.

Course Tutoring, Academic Coaching, & Success Strategies!

The Academic Success Center is up and running virtually with all of our usual services:

Content tutoring for most 100- and 200-level courses has opened and as always is in high demand. Apply now!

Group study opportunities for accounting, organic chemistry, computer science 225, 235, and 265, and any math class up to 232 are also available. Check it out!

Peer Academic Coaching for 1-on-1 help with study strategies and simply “doing” college is also open. Apply now!

The ASC has upgraded its “Student Resources” page and now links to even more studying tips than ever. Check it out!

De-Cram Your Exams!

Join the ASC Staff for our virtual exam-preparation workshop, “De-Cram Your Exams!” this Thursday, November 12th, from 11:00 – 11:30am.

Here is the Google Meet link to connect you with customized advice on how you might best organize your own run-up to final exams, which start on Wednesday, November 18th and end on Tuesday, November 24th.

Also, check out the Academic Success Center website for advice and materials to help you navigate this stressful time on your own or, even better, with a staff member during our virtual workshop.

Yes, you can do this!

It’s Not Too Late: ASC Course Tutoring and Peer Academic Coaching

With this shortened semester coming to a faster close than usual, you may feel like whatever’s going to happen academically is just going to happens–whether you like it or not. But in case you’re not particularly liking what’s happening, and you don’t particularly believe there’s much you can do about it, it’s actually not too late to take positive steps.

Believe it or not, you can still be assigned a peer content tutor for most 100- or 200-level courses. But only until Tuesday, November 3rd. Read about it and complete the application at this link, and a staff member will respond within 2 business days about the status of your request. This is the ASC’s most used service (approaching 500 assignments this semester alone!), and students can’t say enough about how much it helps.

Also, it’s not too late to pair up with a peer academic coach. A coach could both help you navigate the remaining days and weeks of this semester as well as stay paired with you to help you make a fresh start next semester if you so desire.

Whereas an ASC peer content tutor helps students exclusively with a specific course, an ASC peer academic coach helps students more generally to “do college,” whatever that might entail. From helping create situation-specific study and time-management strategies to helping set goals and balance the various aspects of college life, coaches recognize that different students need different things. Successful students themselves, peer coaches meet students where they are and help them go where they want to go.

Here’s a link to our website’s description of peer academic coaching as well as the online application. Getting paired up with a coach can take as few as a couple of days, and it could make a big difference in both finishing this semester and settling into next semester right from the start.

And seriously, it’s not too late.

ASC peer content tutoring

ASC peer academic coaching