How I Went From a 2:2 to a 1st in My Degree, and How You Can Do It Too.

I've written a few tips and tricks posts...

I would like to think I've gotten the knack of it, so I'll put a few disclaimers out before I begin.

Firstly, this post will not be about motivation techniques and how to change your mindset, there are hundreds of blogs about this and I believe it largely varies per person. I will, however cover my own experience in the education system and how I was able to break down some of my own barriers with commitment to study. This is simply for background, and won't be the guiding dialogue of this post. To put it simply, If you're not motivated, it will be more difficult, but if you don't enjoy a subject it's not impossible to excel. You don't need to be passionate about something in order to achieve a high grade, you just need to understand what markers are looking for. The subject of appeasing markers, planning, purposeful research and structuring assignments will make up the majority of this post. Thus, my advice is more applicable to students taking part in a Bachelors of Art's degree than a Science or Maths one.

By giving background on my experience and how I improved my grades, I hope there will still be things to be learned, and perhaps there are some valuable lessons that you won't have to learn the hard way like I did. So, let's start before the University even began and talk through my previous mindset at secondary and primary school.

Breaking Barriers: How I Curbed Academic Apathy

I'd always thought there were 3 phases of motivation you would experience during University, each one being at the beginning of a new academic year. In my mind, the motivation phase was simple. Feeling confident and ready to impress your teachers and classmates by getting a head start straight away, a new year is an opportunity to put your bad habits to rest, and if you apply yourself at the beginning, the rest of the year will be a lot easier. In my case, this feeling typically lasted a week at most, slowly turning into a period of bargaining which eventually led to an acceptance of bad habits once again. It was a bit like the cycle of grief, except it was quicker and a lot less productive. This had been my reality since I begun school, I started the year feeling hopeful, and then after a few hurdles and a lack of understanding due to my failure to concentrate last year, I soon fell back into old habits and went back to achieving the minimum.

For me, achieving the minimum had always been a safe and easy route. I knew I was capable, but part of me didn't want to be the smart kid that always had to compete with someone else. I didn't want to be subject to high expectations and picked on if I got something wrong, so like in a lot of other areas of my life at the time, I hid. I'm not saying I failed at school, I did ok, even good in some subjects, but I didn't want to stand out. I didn't enjoy the process of learning and taking notes, so I had very little reason to want to do well. This mindset remained the same in University. Despite being in a different crowd, doing a subject I had chosen and being completely removed from my previous school, my mindset remained the same. Except this time I wanted to do well, I just didn't know how. The past 13 years I had spent in school felt like it had been for nothing. I had no idea how to take notes and retain information, I didn't even know what research was beyond scrolling through a Wikipedia article. Most of all, I had no idea what hard work felt like. I may as well had been a year 10 that was put in the wrong class, I felt completely out of place and couldn't shake the feeling that everyone else was smarter than me.

What I really needed was to find something I was passionate about, a reason to study hard and get good grades, and a way to practice study methods in a setting I enjoyed. This is where I got lucky, I started studying Korean and my whole world changed, I woke up every morning excited to open my notepad and start memorizing new vocabulary, and I dove head-first into research about the best retention methods for all the different language skills. If you've read any of my other blogs, you'll know how much I love languages, I love everything about them, from learning them to learning how to learn them. Things like comprehensible input, language pedagogy and even the paradox of language acquisition. When you start to learn another language so many things become fascinating and exciting, like how we're able to speak our native languages without even thinking about which words go where, and how children are able to communicate fluently without understanding grammatical forms in depth. I could go on about languages for hours, but I'll stop here. My main point is, it helps a lot to have an outlet in which you can still acquire academic skills whilst doing something you love. Of course, as I said in the beginning, this isn't something that's easy to achieve. Henceforth, with the context out of the way, I'll move onto some fool-proof methods to boost your grades without doing all these extra steps.

Tip 1: The Planning Phase

Planning used to be the bane of my existence in school. I was definitely the 'I don't need to plan' person, thinking that if you plan things your creativity will be hindered and it will be difficult to let the writing flow. Perhaps in storytelling this is a redeemable method, but for academic writing, planning is a must. Planning doesn't have to be writing out each section in detail and redrafting it several times, for me planning was just a way to record all of the important topics so I wouldn't forget them when I was actually writing. I should also highlight the important of editing, something I hated the idea of up until 3rd year. Don't expect your assignment to be perfect the first time, hindsight is an important tool and rereading your work can uncover a lot of mistakes that would be easier to detect for someone reading for the first time. You need to remember that the marker's only knowledge of your assignment is what you've written down, so ensuring your work accurately represents what you want to convey is essential.

I structure my plans quite simply, they don't take much time and serve to solidify a lot of the previously learned content that would have stayed in my notes if I hadn't applied them to the assignment through the plan. Typically, I list off each section by the points I want to make, and underneath write down everything I've learned in the course and researched independently that's relevant. I'll also look for critiques for each source and try to convey multiple viewpoints.

Here's an example of 1 part of a rough plan I made for an assignment that was marked as a 1st. Note that in this plan, I didn't discuss anything too critical and remained focused on the theories covered in class. I got the impression that this assignment was a lot more about signposting theories and relating it to the case study rather than being critical:

The topic my lecturer had assigned to this part of the report was 'Empowering Employees through Change'. In our lectures, we had been introduced to applicable leadership styles, various soft issues that may be encountered, and the importance of encouraging autonomy by giving employees an opportunity to take part in the change process.

I decided to begin this section by citing a statistic covered in the previous lecture about the importance of soft issues within change. I used this to justify the importance of the section before discussing it further. I also used this as a bridge to begin discussing common barriers to change and how they can be combatted using the theories covered in the course. I wrote this in a table to reduce wordcount. I briefly covered employee voice despite it not being mentioned in the course, because I had been studying it in regards to my dissertation and found it relevant. I also discussed a few topics that hadn't been covered in lessons but were in the core textbook to show that I had done further reading on the topic. I continued to take pieces of theory from the lectures, using them as a reference point to back up my writing.

Whilst my plan is incredibly specific, it highlights the importance of being tactical and thinking about how you can impress the marker before you even start the assignment. However, If you are looking for more general tips that can be applied to your plan, this next part might be of interest to you.

When writing your assignment, you won't want to list things off in a detached manner, drawing theories from seemingly unrelated topics and attempting to string them along with the hopes it will make sense. An example is: "This theory says this, but this theory says this. There's also another theory about this." Make sure it flows and is more focused on discussion rather than narration. This type of discussion-based writing is relevant for both essays and reports, but must be used more tentatively for the latter. Whilst reports focus more on factual research and objectivity, there is still a need for discussion to make the writing more cohesive and well-rounded. You want to show the marker that you've acknowledged that references are not concrete and can be critiqued in various ways. Whether you're acknowledging the lack of credibility from a non-peer reviewed article or bringing up an opposing viewpoint, critical elements can still be applicable to reports, but should be interwoven with the main body rather than presented as a separate section.

There's so much to write about planning, but I don't want to bore you (and myself). Ironically, I didn't plan any of this blog, so I'll leave it here and hope that some of what I've said sticks.

Tip 2: Structuring your Assignments for Success

Once you've planned your assignment and set out all the important points you'll need to cover, structuring the information will be your next challenge. Structure is something that school's teach often, yet it's typically taught in the context of paragraph and sentence structure. Whilst being useful for students that find it difficult to form their thoughts in a coherent way on paper, it typically emphasizes a rather hollow approach to writing. Something that was drilled into my head from a young age was the P.E.E paragraph, consisting of a point, example and explanation. This structure doesn't work for all essay types, and encourages students to 'tick off all the boxes' rather than thinking for themselves and writing in a way that's fluid and cohesive. It's a good way to ensure time isn't wasted rambling about unrelated topics, but I've always found that limiting yourself to a inflexible framework makes your writing bland. When markers are reading something, like anyone else they want to feel engaged. The main feeling markers want to pick up from reading your work is that:

1. You've done sufficient research and can use a range of sources (which you'll also need to be critical of) and support your conclusions (you should be including at least 2-3 references per paragraph)
2. You show an interest in the topic at hand and lead the reader through your work methodically (this requires sufficient planning and connecting sentences at the end of each section), avoiding a mismatch of numerous points with little to no critical discussion (sometimes 1 point will require 2-3 paragraphs, or even a page to fully discuss it).
3. You are bringing forth content from multiple weeks of learning to support your ideas in interesting ways.

I can't draft up a complete explanation for each structure and where it would apply, because it's impossible to assign without knowing the full context of the assignment and subject. Rather than being informative about which structures will work where, this section serves as more of an anti-structure position. Don't focus too heavily on the structure of your assignment, save your energy for creating a purposeful dialogue within your assignment and being fluid throughout. Rather than providing you with a one-size fits all blueprint to use for all of your assignments (which would ultimately be ineffective) what I can say is, show dedication to the subject early on. Whether this means emailing the teacher after class for extra support or showing up every lesson, little things like this will make you stand out as a diligent and committed student. You don't have to actually be committed, just taking the extra steps to get information about the course can put you in the teacher's good books (which is great if they're the one marking it, and still beneficial if not, because you're likely to get details about assignments that no one else will have). Be strategic and apply the advice you get to your assignment directly, this extra attention to appeasing the person marking your work will go a long way.

Tip 3: Purposeful Research

Researching effectively was a steep learning curve for me. I started my degree by skimming the surface of google scholar and only looking at the first page of results on other search engines. I had no idea how to research effectively and it certainly wasn't taught to us in school or university. I learnt the hard way through conducting a dissertation on a foreign country. To make matters worse, I chose the country with the highest data limitations worldwide: China. I struggled through endless nights of research in the deepest corners of the internet, being faced with all the obstacles you can imagine. There are a few things I learned that if I were to do a Master's degree in the future (0.1% change) would definitely save me a lot of time and energy.

1. Search through multiple academic reports to find the original source. Whether it's a research paper introducing and testing the theory or a critique of another theory which introduces an alternative, having the original citation should be your starting point. I would recommend creating a separate document for each theory including all of the major viewpoints. You can use the original reference to find various consecutive papers either backing up the theory with evidence or criticizing it. You'll need to look for papers criticizing and supporting the theory because they will be necessary to demonstrate your ability to bring up a range of sources and viewpoints. If you're struggling to find the major viewpoints, look for a comprehensive literature review on the topic.
2. Make sure you're conducting your research for a specific purpose. It's easy to get carried away and start researching things that aren't directly related to your research question or assignment topic. However, spending too long on these things can lead to writing unrelated points that are only taking up your word-count. To avoid spending valuable time on irrelevant topics, ask yourself these questions when finding a new source: Is this valuable to my current discussion? Will this information fit into my assignment seamlessly? Is this source creating more questions rather than answering them? Often times, something is incredibly interesting and you can convince yourself it's relevant to the topic at hand because you want to discuss it, but it's really drawing attention away from the purpose of the assignment. This is a habit I've struggled with for a long time, and can be difficult to curb. It was only through having a quantitative researcher as my dissertation supervisor that I learned (the hard way) how many boxes you need to tick when conducting research, and how little (if any) room there is for diverging from the research question.
3. Remain open minded. Don't let a lot of studies disproving your point scare you into changing your entire research question. At the same time, if you find a study that affirms your point, try to avoid applying it to your study without taking the appropriate precautions. Information you should be looking for whilst reading any paper should involve: the sample size, selection methods, possible biases induced by a politics, gender or location. A good way to find this is by looking at the limitations section of the research. Ultimately, your research doesn't need to prove a new point or have endless studies to back it up, it just needs to be unique and add to the literature.

Concluding Thoughts:

I've illustrated a few ways to enhance your academic effectiveness in your assignments, but the main thing to note is that being tactical and focusing on how you present yourself within your work is the best way to get a good mark. If you're drawing from a range of sources, being critical and demonstrating a high level of knowledge on the topic itself (including it's importance to the wider subject of study), you'll find your results will often reflect it.

I hope this post will be of help to someone, university is hard but you get plenty of time to do everything, so try not to feel too overwhelmed. If I can boost my grades from a 2:2 to a 1st in 1 year, anyone can do it! It's difficult not to feel like you're out of your depth when you encounter a lot of new terminology and theories, but as long as you make sure to note everything down (preferably in 1 word document) and select the most important theories before you start planning, you'll find it's a lot easier than you thought.