Changes

Now that I’ve finished the Back-to-School series I’m moving over to wordpress. I’ve been toying with the idea of a move – and a change in direction with my blog.

So here is what will be happening – firstly, since I am no longer a student I’m changing my website to simply my name – travisthetrout and will be moving over to wordpress – so please update your links / reader.

Secondly, as I want my blog to have a more “grown up” feel my student and a lot of my organisational blogging with be done over at Organisation for Students – so please feel free to check me out over there as well.

Back to School Series – Tackling the Home office [part 5]

 

This is the final part in my back to school series. Law Minx asked for tips on tackling the thesis monster – unfortunately as I’ve never had the delights of doing such a thing myself I found anything I would say would be somewhat unhelpful. That said, a large chunk of her problem appears to be keeping the paperwork under control – and that I can help with.

Firstly I’d like to stress the importance of confining paperwork / study materials to one area of the house (side of the room if you live in halls).This helps improve your concentration when you are working and relaxation when you are having a time out. I always used to work while in bed as a student – which was a dangerous habit to get into as bed really should only be used for sleeping, otherwise you get into difficulties sleeping.

The next thing to do is be ruthless with your papers. There is always an overload of information – usually stuff that you don’t need and don’t use. If you are going to keep stuff “just in case” at least have a proper way of organising it – its not like electronic copies where you can just search for it. This is also a great way of clearing the clutter before starting a new academic year.

So we’ve got rid of the unnecessary paper and dumped it in the recycle box. Next step is to organise it. I do like keeping electronic copies of everything and but for those of you who simply love paper as it is easier to read / annotate etc you are most likely not going to get by without a filing cabinet of some kind. I know they are not particularly cheap but they are a god send when it comes to organising papers/articles and general bits and bobs. For everything else you can have the usual folders, and box files. The cheaper alternative to having a filing cabinet is metal box file.

After you have decided what you will use for the purpose of filing the papers, the next step is deciding how you will organise it. Labels should be usable – you need to know where everything is and unless you files are actually people’s names, alphabetically filing rarely works.

Assuming you’ve already split the papers into the large general topics. The way you split it next is very important. I am using the example here, where you are writing coursework, you’ve researched everything under the sun that’s remotely linked to your topic of choice and have photocopied books and printed articles / journals and legislation – everything you could get your hands on. If you have stopped using the material and just want to keep it “for future reference” a good, simple way to do it is simply find everything on that topic, band it, put it in a box file and label it – and put it on a shelf somewhere.

If still using the material it is more important to organise the papers in a way that is reflective of how you see yourself using them. For example my last piece of course work had 3 main arguments. So to start with I split the material into these categories. Then within each category – there was:

• the essential material – the weighty articles backing up everything I had to say
• the opposing POV – the stuff that developed a counter argument, or provided an interesting reflection.
• the stuff that I may refer to, if I couldn’t find something strong  - a lot of what I found at the beginning of my research ended up in this category – as I found as my research developed I found stronger arguments and more developed points of view.
• and finally the stuff that I wouldn’t use but wanted to keep.

Each page/bundle is labelled with where I got it with a post it detailed why I want it  and I what I intend to use it for. And that is just the basics – I will also have highlighted and annotate the materials.

In another file I will keep everything I’ve written to date, every draft and all my rough notes. I also used to photocopy particular arguments/notes on a particular topic and include them with the research papers on the matter as well as in my working file – so that when I looked at a particular file I knew what was going on.

Once you’ve filed the papers away into a filing cabinet in terms of research project and your general subject files. hopefully you’ll have less clutter and a more organised space.

Drinks with: LPC Students

 

Yesterday after work we had what was our first reunion post – LPC. Most people have now returned from their summer of travelling to start training contracts or job hunting. The stats are as follows: 4x with Training Contracts, 3x non law jobs, 2x law jobs, 1x no job. Quite a variety.

There was a sort of familiarity about being back in our usual haunt surrounded by friendly faces, yet undoubtedly things have changed, there was a new sense of competitiveness and tension. Particularly when 2 friends were talking about the fantastic interview they had last week that they really thought they got – unfortunately it turned out to be the same place, for the one job. So they decided to analyse the differences between their interviews until they were blue in the face. It is clear as long as we are all searching for a training contract there will be a certain tension.

Graduation is in three months – lets hope there will be a lighter atmosphere then.