Hi !!! My name is Julia Clugston and my home town is Stawell in Western Victoria, next to the Grampians! I’ve moved to Melbourne and I am studying a Bachelor of Arts at Swinburne University of Technology. My majors are Journalism and Professional Writing and Editing. I am currently at home isolating myself in Stawell to have a bit of fresh air and more space to move around! I’ve loved working with YouThrive Victoria where I can. At the moment I’m helping them with ideas on how to keep alumni connected and motivated to continue studying whilst we’re all online! I’m a part of the Alumni Committee for this year, and brainstorming as many ideas to keep this community as fabulous as it is! Take care everyone xx

During year 12, my school didn’t have enough teachers for all of our subjects. My friend, Elissa, and I really wanted to continue to learn German until the end of year 12. So, we persisted. But we persisted without a teacher.

Now that Universities and TAFE courses have changed to online resources, you’d think anything that I was studying in English would be easy right? In a way, yes, but also there is a lot to learn and adapt from this change.

A few things I have learnt from studying online I have found super important to help with my studies and I hope they will be helpful to you too.

Setting out a timetable for your day and week and STICKING to it is the most important.

The average day has a lot of hours in it, if you don’t plan your day, procrastination can be at its strongest and divert you from what you should be doing.

If you want to follow your original timetable you have, that is fine. But teachers already recommend you do study outside of class, so make sure you give yourself 2-3 hours a week where it is not ‘class time’ study.

Write out the times of your classes and when you aim to have breaks.

Make sure you give yourself breaks where you can stretch and think about something else, a bit of fresh air is always nice

If you’re at home this is a good chance to play with your pets, do the dishes, cook a cake. Whatever it is, make sure you set enough time for it.

Set an alarm and wake up at a reasonable time every day, make breakfast and start your day.

You will get much more done if you’re productive from the start rather than mooching through the morning.

Trust me, a 9am start will help you finish study by 1pm… instead of starting at 1pm and finishing late into the night

I find writing a ‘to-do’ list daily is super helpful.

It is better if this is a hard copy piece of paper, so you have the satisfaction of ticking things off and knowing you have done them. This way you can also keep track of what you have completed over the semester.

I try and do small things from each subject each day. That’s because that works for me. I know some people just focus on one subject or one assignment a day. You do you!

Highlight your assignments or tests in colours that remind you of what is coming up next and date them!!

When we moved online, all my assignment dates were changed, and I got super confused. I wrote them all down and wrote ‘Reporting- Assignment 1- due 10^th April’ and highlighted it the colour for ‘assignment one’ (which was yellow for me). This was a good visual cue for me as I could see what assignment I needed to focus on first. And what could wait.

Make sure you set one full day or perhaps two, to relax and do something you enjoy.  

It is hard to do lots of things in isolation, but if you have the luxury of getting outside, do so and enjoy the sun! Go for a walk, read that book, paint that painting, bake that cake. Give life and yourself a little bit of loving!