A story of success and happiness shared by Chris — a student using Nerdify services.
I’m Chris and If you’d ask me six months ago whether I liked doing my homework, I’d answer something along the lines of ‘of course not — who does?” Today, it’s me who does like doing all kinds of homework. My major is social psychology, so you can imagine the amount of homework I’m dealing with! Don’t get me wrong — I still did my homework before, but now it’s completely different because I don’t see this process as a tedious thing I can’t wait to get over and done with.
Here’s how I do my homework faster and better with a Personal Nerd.
It’s All About Setting Priorities
To tell the truth, I’m not very organized. I don’t write down everything during lectures and don’t use highlighters to make important parts of my notes. However, one thing I can do is setting priorities when it comes to homework.
If there’s one thing that I’m most grateful that Personal Nerd taught me, it’s organization.
When I first turned to a Personal Nerd, my homework was a complete mess. I never knew how to evaluate how much time I needed to do certain types of homework, so I often ended up doing it the night before I had to submit it. Let me tell you, I didn’t get the best grades. The Nerd helped me learn how to evaluate the amount of time I’ll need to complete any homework by figuring these questions out:
- How many pages should I write?
- Am I familiar with the topic and/or how to do the task?
- Do I have the sources to do the task?
- When should I submit the paper?
These questions are very easy, but they help me learn which homework I should prioritize in my schedule.
Being able to know how much time a homework will require is the key to effective planning and doing it faster and better.
That’s another thing — schedule!
Personal Nerd said that having a schedule is one of the simplest, yet the most effective ways to improve homework. I set reminders in my phone saying ‘write essay outline’ or ‘proofread the research paper’ and never forget about my tasks anymore. This advice was also very valuable because I reduced the stress because of the fear to forget about something and get issues with late submission.
Organization Helps Me Do My Homework
Now that I take my deadlines seriously, I started taking organization seriously as well. I know that organizing the course materials is similar to writing an outline for an essay — at first you don’t see any use of doing it, but later suddenly realize that the time and effort were spent for a good reason.
Organizing all the books, articles, and papers in folders by course and class helps keep track of all the information and never lose anything you might need later.
When I asked my Personal Nerd about improving my process of doing homework, she suggested creating separate folders for each course and class.
Following this advice was the best decision for me as a student! Now I know where to get all the information from and never lose any data anymore. I save my papers, drafts, books, lectures and presentations for each class in individual folders.
As you might have noticed, some sciences often intertwine and knowing one means also knowing a little bit of the other. If I do a research on some topic and find particularly good articles, I also save them just for future reference if I need it. Better safe than sorry!
Pay Attention To Do Your Homework
One of my biggest problems when it comes to doing homework is procrastination and getting distracted. I constantly check my social media accounts, my favorite blogs, or just browse without getting anything done. At one point, I realized that all I do is just wasting time, so I wanted to change it somehow. One time, while trying to write a 500 word essay, I was struggling for 5 hours and finished it only by 2am — 6 hours before I had to submit it.
My Personal Nerd said that every student faces this issue and it can actually be very frustrating (that’s for sure!). It was a revelation to me when the Nerd told me that procrastination is normal and even useful. The reason is that we as humans cannot focus the attention on one subject for a long period of time. This is actually an evolutionary trait that we all have, according to Psychology Today. To trick the brain and make the best out of your time, you need to — surprisingly — play along and alternate rest and work.
Humans can’t focus on one thing for a long period of time, so why torture yourself? Taking a short break will help ‘restart’ the thinking process and improve productivity
I followed this suggestion and it worked like a charm. Now I don’t make myself study when my brain just refuses to take new information in. Instead, I just do something different for a while — usually 10–15 minutes is enough — like make a cup of coffee or wash dishes. Then I get back to work and feel a lot more productive and inspired. Of course, I don’t recommend overdoing it and allowing yourself too much procrastination, but having a regular short rest is a must.
Bad Grades Is The Price to Pay for Homework Without Good Sources
I learned that doing research is also a skill much too late. I truly lacked the skills of Googling stuff! When I couldn’t find relevant sources, I got so frustrated that often bought academic articles online, getting way out of my budget.
When I asked my Personal Nerd about it, I got several important advice that I think can help any student:
- Alternate search keywords multiple times to get more results
- If you find a good article, check out its bibliography — it often contains equally good sources
- Reputable news agencies often have great articles with up-to-date information
Good sources is a half of the successfully done homework. To get good sources, you need to know where and how to search.
These tips helped me save time for literature research whenever I do my homework. I also considerably reduced the amount of articles I purchase — an in-depth Google Scholar search now can result in sufficient sources every time. I need a lot less time to find relevant sources now. In addition, my Personal Nerd suggested me useful databases where I can find articles in social sciences — that helps me so much to do my homework much faster.
Multitasking Isn’t The Best Homework Doer Strategy
I love multitasking! It often makes me feel like I’m getting so much work done at once. In reality, it’s definitely the worst strategy for doing homework! However, I’ve found out that I can only try multitasking and not actually do it, as the studies show.
My attention is just getting dispersed and I after a while I stop understanding what I need to do and how. Lost in a pile of books, articles, and task requirements, I get uninspired and confused.
Focusing on one homework task at a time will help perform better, save time, and get better grades
Before contacting a Nerd, I used to do 3–4 homeworks at a time (like in one evening) and, needless to say, the quality wasn’t the best. The Personal Nerd advised to do one work at a time to ensure that I fully focus on it, then do a short break, and proceed to the next one. This strategy helped me reduce stress of having everything to do, and the fear of not getting some homework done by the due date. If you’re also a multitasker, I’d highly recommend this strategy and avoid piling up information trying to do everything at once.
If I Could Suggest One Thing To Every Student…
It would be to be more confident about doing homework. I know the flow of homework never ends and if you don’t get it all under control, it becomes overwhelming very quickly. For me, working with a tutor automatically removes the hardest things about doing homework — searching for correct sources, organizing the homework, and just having someone to advise during the whole process.
Now I realize that any homework is doable once you know what to do and how, and with a bit of expert advice it truly becomes a piece of cake!
