Argumentative Essay on Student Survival Guide

For my student survival guide, I have incorporated my personal action plans for setting and achieving goals, developing effective study skills, effective time management, developing successful library and Internet searches, and upholding academic honesty. Some of theses action plans I have recently incorporated because of this student survival guide whereas others have been a process I have learned to develop over time throughout my educational process.For setting and achieving goals, I am setting time lines for myself and the things I will accomplish by those dates.

I enter on my computer which parts of which assignments I will complete by particular dates. Through trial and error in setting past goals, I know what has worked for me best in the past and this usually works best for me.I actually follow a plan I found on one of the web sites titled “Teaching Guide: setting & achieving goals” (Elkind, 2007). The steps I take to follow through setting and achieving goals include: defining the goal (s), outlining the steps I need to achieve it, considering possible blocks or problems along with the way I would deal with them and setting deadlines for myself.Included in my personal action plan for developing effective study skills is setting aside a certain time for each class.

I have a physical copy of the school calendar guide that I consistently update adding new assignments when they are given. I also include which parts I personally want to complete at different time intervals so the schoolwork never feels as if it’s a big burden on my life in big chunks.Knowing myself, I know that looking at the big picture can seem too overwhelming at times, so I have learned to take all assignments in small bites or steps. Doing it this way allows me to go to school and still live a pretty normal life without my schoolwork completely bogging down my life outside of my schoolwork.I also have included in my personal action plan the places I need to go that have proved to be the most efficient in completing my schoolwork.

Or, as stated in the article “Developing Effective Study Skills,” I have learned to recognize what my ideal place to study is. Like stated in the article, my favorite place to study and the most productive place to study can be two different things. I have learned to distinguish between the two by how much I am able to accomplish in both places. I had to find an environment with limited noise and distractions. I take everything I need for the assignment I will be working on at the time with me to that special study place.

The “testpedition website” (Developing, 2007) recommends even creating a checklist to double-check that you take everything you need with you. So far, I haven’t needed to do that, but if it comes to a time that it would benefit me, I would add that to my personal action plan. I have come to know I need to be in a quiet area, without distractions like a television or music playing—I can get easily distracted. My bedroom and a certain area of the library are most conducive to me being able to complete my work on time. Knowing this, those are the places I have included in my personal action plan to go to when I need to buckle down and seriously get my schoolwork completed. Ideally, I also need to mute my cell phone at least until I’ve completed the task (s) at hand.

Wise time management kind of sets the tone for my student survival guide. Whenever I add an additional assignment into my schedule, it takes some time to readjust before I learn to create a New Balance for the added schoolwork. I have learned to do this over time.For me, writing everything down is the visual way that I can see what all “apples are in my cart,” metaphorically speaking.

When I have so much going on, it is easy to lose track of an assignment here or there if I don’t put it all in writing and schedule it in my overall school planner. As soon as I learn of an additional responsibility or assignment, I either hand write it down and add it to the computer later or enter it directly into my computer if my computer is immediately accessible to me when I receive the information.In reading the article, “10 Tips on Time Management,” (Francis, 2007) I borrowed from it some ideas for my personal action plan. Linda Francis, the author of this article along with the book, Run Your Business So it Doesn’t Run You, suggests a week-at-a-glance appointment book which I have purchased. I have learned to say “no” to a lot of things I would have participated in the past. I also have learned to set goals as stated earlier and I am doing better at procrastination because I started following my personal action plans incorporated into this student survival guide.

I feel that conducting successful library and Internet searches is one of my strongest areas in my personal action plans. I have been trained in the past in this area and I continue to pick up little things along the way that help me.I have learned how to locate books, e-books, scholarly journals, magazines by title, subject, and know the difference between all of them. I have learned to do advanced searches and have learned which databases I prefer and how to use the various virtual librarian tools.For example, if I am allowed to use .

edu and .gov sites in assignments, I use Google Advanced Search and enter those in the domain boxes before I begin my search. I have learned about phrase searching and Boolean Operators. I also have learned which databases usually work best for me personally and those that are more specific to certain areas, subjects or programs. Even though I have incorporated “conducting successful library and Internet searches” as one of the topics in my personal action plan, at this point I can give it a little less time than the other topics in my personal action plans.

However, with technology changing and adding as fast as it does, I have included constantly updating my library and Internet search skills as part of my personal action plan.One of the topics we cover is upholding academic honesty. I personally feel this can be accomplished by following my personal action plans for the rest of the topics. By setting specific times aside for each class, developing effective study skills, managing my time wisely, setting and achieving my goals, my personal action plans for upholding academic honesty just falls into place. When I give each class the time and attention I know I need to give them, it is not necessary to be dishonest in my academics.

I realize that once I begin working in my preferred area of employment, I will be expected to know the information in my program. In the end, it would be doing myself a disservice by not upholding academic honesty.I feel that I can summarize my personal action plan in basically stating that I am taking responsibility for myself; responsibility for knowing what are the most effective study skills for me personally, knowing how I need to monitor the time I have, knowing what my goals are and how I need to follow through to obtain them. As Joe Landsberger states in his “Effective Study Guides and Strategies” site, “to recognize that in order to succeed you need to make decisions about your priorities, your time and your resources” (Landsberger, 2007).