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Keep Writing and Learning: Designing Your Academic Life

Thriving at Carolina will call on you to learn new skills and build upon on what has made you successful thus far. Support from coaches and peer tutors is available from the Writing Center and Learning Center. Read on for tips to help you design a successful academic life and finish strong this semester.

Managing time

Structuring your time may be one of the most challenging aspects of college. With more unstructured time, it can help to sort out where to work, and how to work, and when. Developing a schedule can help you manage unstructured time and set you up for success. We’ve got some great tools to help you design your academic life:

Managing distractions

On an ordinary day at Carolina we all have many distractions to manage. But remember, you can take control of elements of your academic life and learn to manage distractions—a vital skill that will serve you well now and in your future courses and career. Consider these tools and approaches:

Active learning and studying

There is a lot of research about how we learn and how to study best. This moment may be your opportunity to implement improved learning and study strategies that will help you learn remotely and enhance your academic life in any setting. Take a look at the Learning Center’s online tips and see what new study strategies and approaches you might try as you navigate new classes and assignments:

Managing writing projects

The Writing Center has a collection of online handouts to help you with specific kinds of assignments, sentence-level conundrums, and moments in the writing process, including tips for writing in specific disciplines. Take a look at these resources to get started and remember the time management tools described above as you structure your writing projects:

Connecting with instructors and classmates

Pay attention to the materials posted, course-related announcements, and the online resources your instructors recommend. Here are some tips you may adapt when connecting with professors, teaching assistants, and classmates remotely:

STEM support

The Learning Center joins with your instructors in Biology, Chemistry, Math, and Physics courses to support you as you navigate an online landscape. Visit the STEM support page to sign up for Sakai and Zoom learning opportunities for students taking Bio 101; Chemistry 101, 102, and 261; and Math 110, 130, and 231.

There’s more! Visit our tips and tools pages to check out many more helpful strategies tailored to support your academic success at Carolina. Check out https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/ and https://learningcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/

Are you an international student? Click here for additional tips and tools that may support ESL learning.

Are ADHD and/or learning differences part of your academic life? Click here for tips and tools that may be especially useful for learning with ADHD or learning differences.

We welcome suggestions for handouts or resources you wish existed and would like us to develop.

Contact us: writing_center@unc.edu and learning_center@unc.edu

Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License.
You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Learning Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

If you enjoy using our handouts, we appreciate contributions of acknowledgement.

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