SUMMER FALLS GRANT COUNTY WA

Build some of your study activities into your everyday life. For example, if you are studying for a professional management qualification, read a business newspaper or journal instead of your usual newspaper, look out for business focused programmes on the television and radio, read business and management books to gain background knowledge and understanding, talk with your manager and specialists at work to see if you can be included, perhaps as an observer, in management meetings.

Talk regularly with your Tutor. Good distance learning providers will have tutors who are accessible on a regular basis, and who will talk with you in the evening and weekends as well, at least for emergencies. Use email, instant messaging, and the telephone, appropriately but regularly.

Equip yourself with the best study aids that you can afford. Your PC or Laptop doesn’t have to be the latest model, or the most powerful, and it’s not necessary to have the latest versions of software, but if it regularly crashes, or you lose valuable work, that can be very demotivating. Make sure that you have good quality anti-virus software (this should be kept up current through regular updates). Losing completed coursework and other files and folders because of a virus can make the most sane person suicidal! Don’t risk it, our own experiences and those of many of our students tell us that viruses are a real, ever-present danger.

Keep fit and healthy. This is crucial. You need to take regular exercise, eat a balanced diet, try to avoid too much alcohol. It is well established knowledge that poor diet and lack of exercise has a very detrimental effect on concentration levels and on achievement levels.

Reward yourself. When you meet a key target, submit an assignment on time, pass an examination, give yourself some time off, or a special treat. Be pleased with yourself.

• Finally, work at your studies to the best of your ability. Study hard. Study effectively. This will almost certainly guarantee that you will meet your deadlines and that the standard of your work will be high. The result will be that your progress will be successful and you will complete the course and achieve the qualification. Nothing is more powerful in raising morale and motivation levels than success.
• For most students, whether studying in the classroom or by distance learning, their course of study is usually spread over many months, and in some cases, two or three years, and maintaining consistently high levels of motivation over such long periods is almost impossible. The reasons for this are many, and each of these reasons affects different individuals in different ways.
• Firstly, in general terms, once you have started your course of studies, this event itself changes the balance in your life. Study time has to be planned and fitted into a pattern of life where it didn’t exist before. Family, friends, and work colleagues are all affected, to a lesser or greater degree, by your decision to study. The demands of studying, the planning, the organising of facilities, the concentration needed, the pressure of coursework and-or examination deadlines all add stresses to your life that have to be managed effectively. Once the initial excitement of starting the course and setting out on the road to achieving a new objective has passed, then the pressures and the workload start to have more impact on your life.
• Secondly, over these relatively long periods of study, you change. By this I mean that after one year, for example, you have gained more experience in your work role, you will have completed a large part of the course of studies. You may have been promoted, or been disappointed that you weren’t. Your work colleagues may have changed, or your manager may have been replaced with another. You may have changed jobs, moved to a new work location, or moved to a new home. You may have found new friends, or a new partner, be having relationship difficulties, or have become a father, or mother. You may feel unsure, albeit temporarily, that the course of studies is going to be as useful as you first thought, or the qualification as relevant to your career as you initially believed.

Thirdly, the people in your life will have changed, perhaps in small ways, perhaps in significant, major ways.

• Your partner and family members will also have changed, at least in some ways. If you have children they will have grown older, and perhaps become more demanding of your time. Your friends may have developed new interests, or moved away, or changed jobs, and are not as close as before. Any one or more of your family, friends, work colleagues, may have themselves changed jobs or started a course of studies, and taken on the pressures that accompany these.
• Fourthly, a long course of studies will almost inevitably include areas of study that you are not excited about, or find boring, or which you can’t see the relevance of. Personally, I have always struggled with subjects like Statistics and Data Analysis, and motivating myself to study these was very difficult! Some of my colleagues love these subjects but dislike what they view as vague subjects such as those around managing people.