Back to School Series – For the Undergraduate [Part 2]

The main difference between the undergraduate experience and the LPC experience that I blogged about in part 1 is that everything (or the majority of things are done on the computer - sometimes whether you prefer it or not).

This post is not so much about HOW to study at undergraduate level - as the range is too broad - instead I've detailed three types of tools that I used at undergrad (out of the wide range of software I’ve tried over the years) that worked well for me, and that I believe that you can’t go wrong with. Any of these methods will serve their purpose with the right motivation and preparation over the course of the academic year.

1. Ready Made - Little/no set up required

For a single service look to Notely  (this can also be used by those aspiring to be more organised in the new academic year as it is very straightforward to use.) I used this during my undergraduate degree and found it to be a great addition to my studying routine (see previous  detailed posting on it here).  For those that don't like wasting time getting their services from the far reaches of the web - this is a useful service. However, for some people Notely may have more features than they know what they do with, which is why sometimes juggling only the things you need works better, for example I used to use google cal, google docs (see previous posting here) and remember the milk.

2. Use of a wiki to provide more creative freedom

Need your own voice to do what you want? A wiki is the solution. As I mentioned in my LPC Post PBworks (PBwiki) is a great online wiki, simple to use and edit. The benefits of the wiki are obvious - mainly the freedom to design it as you want.
PBwiki is useful because it is an online service (great for the LPC when I didn't take my own laptop to uni).

As an undergrad, I took my laptop everywhere so as an alternative to doing everything online, is the downloadedable Linked Notes (I use Basic) which is great for general note taking - it creates a tree like structure for your notes. It also links pages automatically for you. This works well if you incorporate your own glossary for legal terms or cases. For example you would keep a page entitled by a case name, and write about it on that page, and then any time you refer to it on any other page within linked notes it will automatically link in and you can just click on it to read the information - this is a great function as to do this in most other note-taking methods, you will have to manually put it in yourself. The downside is something like if you've entitled a page with a common term like property it will link in each time even though you may be using it in all different contexts - of course it is all in the wording and you learn to get round this easy enough.

3. For Every Student: the classic

I know that everyone knows about onenote (see previous detailed review here) by now, but you really can't beat the classics. The ability to dump all your thoughts, link pages, create the layout with a certain amount of freedom means it works well both for the organised and those who need a more relaxed approach.

Another great thing, particularly when it comes to coursework and revision is the search function for quickly highlighting and finding the things you need. Just type in the search term and all the pages with the term change colour to be identifiable. Very useful.

And as silly as it sounds I also loved simple things such as the ability to make it pretty. and getting the satisfaction of ticking off things on my to-do lists.

The Back to School series will continue soon with how to get more organised. Feel free to share what works for you and/or ask questions.