Taking Opportunities

Taking opportunities, what do I mean? Well you’re not stupid you know what I’m talking about. This is whenever you find something that is useful for you to do you do it and it can greatly benefit, but let’s be more specific. Almost all colleges have multiple opportunities for you to chase. They have their own programmes like at my college they have a student ambassador scheme where you apply for it and if you get it it’s almost like being a prefect but in college, you help with college events and you even help organize them. Keeping it brief it basically looks good for your UCAS application (so they say) and it helps you get somewhere with the experiences in the scheme. But that’s just one of many. They don’t just have their own schemes, they allow other organisations come in and talk about what they did, that’s how I found out about NCS and that was one of the best experiences in my life, but apart from it being an amazing experience it helped me gain skills that I wouldn’t have otherwise had.

Getting to the point, you should at the very least consider these kind of opportunities because your college is there to help you get somewhere, so if they are opening doors for you, get your foot in that door. The harsh reality is that if you aren’t making enough noise nobody will notice you. If you are just another person trying their look on their application for whatever it is and they compare you to people who took every opportunity that had put in front of them, chances are they will choose that person. I used to be that person that either could never be bothered or I didn’t think it would benefit me but in reality I should have been bother and it did benefit me. Now I just take anything that is put in front of me.

So what was the best opportunity that you have had or missed? Leave a comment or tweet me @Jayson__Knott :)

Revision Problems?

The infamous monster we all know as revision. It takes up our free time, our life, makes us stressed and just generally makes most of not want to do that subject anymore. For me it’s maths revision. I do a GCSE resit in college and it is getting ever so closer to my exam and everyone is encouraging me to revise, I want to revise. But it never happens. Only recently I have actually bit the bullet and just revised. It took a lot of will power though because for some reason I’m not wired to revise.

So why am I talking about this? Well I want to get my three main triggers out there that stop me from revising just in case you have the same ones so that you can learn to avoid or overcome them because after all, revision is what’s going to get you the grade you deserve.

1)   Thinking of better and more entertaining ways to spend my time – this is the classic one. Every time that I say to myself “I better revise tonight” I think about the fact that I want to update my playlist on soundcloud or that I want to watch House of Cards on Netflix (great series by the way). So what I’ve started to do is get my parents to make me revise, and so far it’s working because they can stop me from doing these things because I used to not have enough self-restraint.

2)    Making pathetic excuses – Yet another classic. I always say to myself “I don’t have to revise this, it’s really easy and I’ll remember it anyway” wrong! Take trigonometry for example, I’ll listen and understand it one minute and the next I’ve forgotten how to label the triangle. To counter this I’ve started to think back to this and tell myself that I will forget it and its worth a little time to revise it so it sticks in my head.

3)    Becoming easily distracted – This one was a massive one for me, I could never stop looking at my phone to see what was going on or if there was another YouTube video up for me to watch. Although this was a big issue for me I found that the solution was simple. Turn your phone off.

Now I know what stops me from revising I’ve been revising almost every night now. Instead of going on my phone or Xbox to kill time I revise and I actually feel pretty good after it because I’ve done something productive instead of sitting around and doing meaningless things. My expected grade has gone back up and I’m rarely left confused on a topic in class now. Trust me when I say that this is worth it, nothing is more important to me now than revising.

I hope I haven’t left you guys thinking I’m a complete nerd but yeah that’s what revision is like for me and leave a comment of what your triggers are so others can learn from your mistakes also :)

Tweet me! @Jayson__Knott

Keeping Organized

Organisation, this is something that is considered more of chore than something that is quite useful. The little things like keeping specific pieces of coursework in organised folders. This is a topic that could become somewhat confusing so bear with me.

I’m going to go off of my own organisational skills so some of you might even be better organised than I am. To view the full sized screen shot click on the images that are all in order at the bottom. So what do I do? Personally most of my work in college is on computer so it’s pretty easy to keep organised and I've noticed that if I didn't stay organised I would have to search through hundreds of files to find the work I’m currently doing and I could see that getting pretty confusing. The first thing I do is create a folder with this structure in naming “Frederick Knott – Business Studies” this is what it looks like. I like to keep it in a first letter capital structure because of my slight OCD. After you go into this folder you’ll notice that I have a folder for each tutor that teach me different topics to others and the ones who teach the same topic get put into the same folder. Jumping into the folder with two tutors for example sake my law folder, I have the folder with Beth and then Jasmine, then I have the assignment sheets and assessment records on the outside, this is so I know exactly where they are and I can just go straight to them when I need to. Once you go into the folders you’ll be met with pass, merit and distinction folders, these are self-explanatory. Once you get into the pass folder I have yet more folders and most of you are probably thinking “another folder!” but this is because in these units there are a lot of passes that have to be done in comparison to merits and distinctions. I have them split into different categories like “Business Law – Leaflets” and “Business Law – Posters” this is to ensure that I don’t have to look around for what I need to get to. For the units that require that I have lots of different images I then separate them from the work itself so that I have something to back me up just in case I lose the work.

That’s pretty much it for my way of organising my work. I can’t help with organising paper based stuff because I don’t do that kind of thing, but if you guys have any suggestions just leave a comment on how you do it :) Also most of my organisation is OCD like and convenience so do what works for you and I wrote this because when I've managed to have this standard of organisation in my work I feel proud of it (weird I know) but I thought I'd share it with you guys :)

Tweet me! @Jayson__Knott

Getting Help When YOU Need It

We've all been there, that time where you feel like everything is getting on top of you and the stress becomes a little too much. Some people can cope others (like me) seem to just give up sometimes and it’s easy to forget that there are people that can help you in these situations. So here’s a little advice.

1)   Accepting that you need a little help – A lot of people never even acknowledge that they need some help with this, accepting that you do isn’t a weakness. If anything it’s a strength because it involves accepting that you can’t deal with everything that is going on whether that is to do with your work or personal life it’s good to get the practical things out of the way, especially coursework because you don’t want to the work to pile up in times of stress as it would just end up adding to your stress.

2)  Seeking Help – This is another thing that people struggle with, most feel embarrassed or as if they are being a pest. I can guarantee that you wouldn’t be the first student to struggle, you’re only human and your college or school will know this. There is most likely someone to help you in school or college to email people you think will know about said person, for example your tutor or head of year if you’re in school. Remember you can get help with the stress itself or with the things that are stressing you out like coursework of the whole subject, just going to a tutor and having them explain things to you does a world of good.

3)  Follow the advice! – This is the biggest of them all! A lot of people go to see someone about some help in a close minded attitude. So because of this the advice they give you could be the best advice ever but you won’t follow it because you either think you are above it or you just don’t want to. So ironically, my advice would be to follow their advice! You’ve gone for the help that you need so you do need to follow that advice no matter what!

4)    Find stress relievers – this is the final step which is the most useful one of all. Find things that calm you down, whether that is just taking an hour or so to watch something on the TV or listening to music just do it. You need a rest you can’t be expected to do everything at once all of the time, you’ll just become more frustrated and everything you’ve gone and done so far would have been a waste, just sit back and relax!

That’s what I think you should do based on my personal experience, you’re not the only that struggles every so often :)

If you’ve got any good tips for relieving some stress let me know by either leaving a comment or by tweeting me at @Jayson__Knott :)

Looking For The Right University

So many of us have probably been thinking about university and some of us are studying for a BTEC qualification like me. But when you look at university courses online most of us have noticed that more often than not you see that their requirements are usually A-Level or AS. So what does this mean for BTEC? I mean take what I study for example, I do Business Studies Level 3 Extended Diploma which is equivalent to 3 A-levels. But what does this mean?

I recently had a look at Manchester University for International Management with American Business Studies and when I had a look at the entry requirements at first I was a little confused because I study BTEC and I had to look for the alternative entry requirements but after I found the BTEC option it became clearer. After look around more at different universities I got gist for the entry requirements and what most business courses have to offer.

So how do you find a course that suits you? Well coming from me I don’t have an exact way of doing this, I’d recommend just research and even if you have your heart set on a specific course, keep looking because you could find a uni with better version of that course or you might even stumble across something that interests you more. I’ve recently been looking around at universities and because my main access to the internet is through my phone and the computers at college, I would do basic research on my phone, like looking local universities and then I’d email my college email the links. After this I would go into college and when I got some free time I made a little table with what uni it was, the course, brief description, location of the uni and then the link. Of course this is just a starting point for me, I have until next year to worry about this but it’s good to have a head start instead of worrying too much when it comes to it.

Got a better way to look for a good uni? 

Tweet me! – @Jayson__Knott

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