How To Be A Good Student

Title : How To Be A Student
Author(s) : Sarah Moore and Maura Murphy
Publisher : Open University Press McGraw-Hill Education
Pages : 139
Price : RM 95.70
This book is a must read to every student regardless if you are only beginning your first year, in your final year at university or pursuing your masters or PhD degree. It is a mind changing, practicable book presented brilliantly using simple English and the way the hundred sub-topics being divided into four major parts only add to the reasons one should read it.
The four major parts are ‘Insights and ideas when you first arrive’, ‘Developing your skills and sharpening your awareness’, ‘Gaining momentum: building confidence and motivation’ and ‘Being the best you can be: persistence and enhancement strategies’. Though it is really good if you can afford the time to read consequently from chapter one to hundred yet you can always go straight to your desired topics and each topic, which is concisely written, will provide you with all linked topics to the topic you have chosen.
Basically, Part 1 of the book will help you to know yourself as a student hence help you to organize yourself effectively for example how you can make sure you will turn up to your lectures and adjust to your study environment instantaneously. Beside that, it suggests on how to choose a part-time job to support your finance, guide you on how to set your study goals rationally and develop your social life without jeopardizing your study.
In Part 2, you will start to accept yourself as it is and you will understand that everybody is different. It is amazing how this book will open your eyes that after all this while it is us that set traps for ourselves and turn it to a failure. Nonetheless, it will help you to pull yourself together if you find your lecturer is not very much of help, you will learn to recognize your study habits through active recording, it will help you spot signs you need a break from your study and there is an interesting explanation about intelligences: that we all acquire different smartness thus we understand differently. Einstein is a genius yet he was known as a slow learner, find out more in this book.
Part 3 is Gaining momentum: building confidence and motivation. The topics in this part are more focus and more practical. It will change your mind on how to face deadlines without perplexing yet turn your deadlines into a motivation to boost your study mood and enhance the enjoyment of your study journey. Not only dealing with yourself, this part of the book also tells you how to deal with others: how to accept negative and positive feedbacks, how to choose feedbacks wisely and how to react on them. We are used to improving our weaknesses but in this book that alone is not enough. It will show you that you will be at your best when you start playing with your strengths as well. At the end of this part, you will better cope with your worries and understand that you can never keep everyone happy in your pursue to be a good student.
Last but not least, Part 4 of the book touches on strategies and reminds about more traps we always set on ourselves like how by always aiming to be perfect we repeatedly disappoint ourselves and lowered the chance for us to enjoy study and improve ourselves. Academic wise, this part tells about plagiarism, how to go about and make a subtle literature review and using your CV as a working document. Along the way you will learn the beauty of summary, how to develop memory techniques and how to conduct an interesting study retreat that will take you out of your study environment without leaving your study behind. It is worth trying.
After reading this book, you will have a better view on yourself as a student and how to go about and enjoy your academic years.