Sam Saunders of Leeds University Education Line says of STUDYING SUCCESSFULLY:

The Haynes Workshop Manual for the Inside of Your Skull.

It's big, fat, permanently mind altering, and less than 20 quid. It's the Haynes Workshop Manual for the Inside of Your Skull. It has a totally boring title and a cheesy photograph of The Author on the cover. Do not be deceived by the rave reviews on the back either. This stuff has been road tested to destruction by grown ups from the North through the darkest days of Thatcher, and what's left is what you need on your next expedition to getting your life sorted out.
 

Studying Successfully is what it says on the cover. It isn't speed reading in ten minutes, or BBC Bitesize and Painless. It is methodical, complete, practical, well written and it doesn't patronise. It takes it for granted (unreasonably?) that you are thinking about some sort of future, that you have an uneasy feeling it's about time you got a grip, and that you can do without well-meaning prats running Study Skills Drop In Workshops. It is adult strength dosage and your discomfort zone will be entered at an early stage.

It is also very self contained and you can work on it in secret without anyone knowing that you aren't already well on top of it all.

The natural thing to do would be to pick this book up with two weeks to go and turn rapidly to Section 26 "Examinations". There's some nice small detail here, like what to do when you're in there and panic is setting in. The word is: shut your eyes, take six long breaths and think about your brain getting some of the oxygen it probably needs. But this is scenario time. (Based on real life experience) We can re-run the tape and start again with our future ahead of us and this book in our clutches.
Part One asks that awesome question "What it's all for?". The strategies you are going to adopt and refine tomorrow depend a great deal on today's ambitions and context. And if those ambitions and context are just a bit hazy, then the book says "that's fine". Don't pretend to be Little Miss Organised. Spend a little time now working through the exercises and checklists that take your fancy. You can follow the helpful signposts to avoid the bits you don't need. The general tone of the book is set here - and the tone is realistic. Ray Baxter has worked for years with people on Access Courses - and he takes the attitude that you deal with who and where you are. Not with some ideal version of the Good Student, but with a notion of the real you being perfectly good enough to end up pleased with yourself. You might find yourself coming back to this part at Interview Time or Dumped by High Achieving Partner Time.

In the meantime you will want to get on to the enormous Part Two with the nuts and bolts of learning. There seems to be a choice here. You can learn about learning entirely from your own experience. Or you can supplement that with some insights from other people's experience. The material presented in the 16 substantial Sections of Part Two has been used with adult students who have said it's been helpful for them. And if you're going to argue with them, the least you do is read some of it first.
Learning involves a very complex and open ended set of skills. "Getting organised", "Reading", "Presentations", "Essay Writing", "Special Studies" , "Statistics", "Punctuation and Grammar", "Computers", "Lectures" are all big chunky sections - and there are more. That old chestnut of how to memorise long lists is not given yards of space. Memorising is put firmly into the wider context. Taking a rational view of your own course, and how to conduct yourself through it is the principal objective here. Studying, learning, being examined and qualifying are not separate events - there are connections between them all and a book like Studying Successfully can help to give you a more confident appreciation of that blindingly obvious (but regularly ignored) truth. If it's all getting a bit hair raising, then get better acquainted with the demons. And if the demons are very small (some people get completely screwed up about apostrophes) the chances are there will be a helpful sentence or paragraph in this book to suit you.

As I said, this is a Workshop Manual and there is a lot of detail. There are also very full lists of other resources that could be useful to you. Compared to a third of a share in Zelda, or a moderate session at the local club with taxi home I would rate this as top value. A copy that is left carelessly lying around is likely to be borrowed by a "friend". So if you do buy it, keep it well hidden. If you get it from the library have your excuses ready for when it goes missing.

Sam Saunders
Education-line Link to Education-Line
Brotherton Library
University of Leeds, LS 2 9JT

Study skills, writing essays, lifelong learning,  essay writing, studying, examinations, note-taking, lectures, homework, reading, library skills, passing exams, taking notes, speed reading,  are all dealt with in "Studying Successfully" by Ray Baxter.