College is a unique life experience - independence from family members and high school teachers comes with new responsibility over your time and self-care. 

Peer pressure to socialize at the expense of your school work can lead to you falling behind, or the abrupt change in classroom style may lead you to struggle with your material. Being away from home can be lonely, and the added stress of school can make you shy away from meeting new people.

Some quick tips? Pay attention at orientation to what resources your school has available for you, from tutoring to counseling, to interest groups to help meet new friends. Tutoring can help you learn how you learn, overcoming difficulties in new coursework, while counseling can help you identify negative thoughts and replace them with positive ones. You can also learn positive self-care coping strategies. Finally, develop your time management skills by utilizing assignment and quiz dates to stay up on your materials, blocking your time around classes to be efficient while on campus. 

​Read on for more tips.

Writing a literature review is daunting (hey, writing a dissertation is daunting!)

While dissertation formats vary between universities and disciplines, most (if not all) require a literature review.  

In this post I'll walk you through my process in developing an organization system that helped me write my dissertation literature review. It's a long post, but I wanted it all to be in one place for you so it's not broken up into different articles. 

First, I'll walk you through my back story in the dissertation literature review process, and describe my overall system of organization.

Then, I'll describe 2 methods to take you from reading articles to taking notes to organizing your notes into themes.

Lastly, I'll wrap up with thoughts on how to continue your literature review in a cohesive and transparent way.

All external links open in a new window.

Background photo by freddie marriage on Unsplash