Academic survival skills: standing on your own two feet
Academic survival skills: standing on your own two feet
2.1 INTRODUCTION
Studying law for the first time is challenging, whether you are coming at it fresh from A-levels or arriving as a graduate of another discipline. There are skills that are very specific to law, and we shall cover many of these throughout this book – you’ll see detailed chapters on legal writing, legal research and mooting for example.
There are many skills that are applicable to everyone studying any discipline at university. Often students can discount these, thinking them obvious and wanting to rush onto the ‘real’ law. This is madness! Knowing how to cope with your workload, manage your time, get the most out of your face-to-face time with lecturers and get better at note-taking are not law-specific, but nevertheless essential. So we’ll try and make this as painless as possible.
2.2 LECTURES AND TUTORIALS
For those of you new to university it is a massive shock to the system – going from small classes where you know everyone (might have even been in school with some since pre-school!), to massive lecture theatres seating hundreds of you.
Generally speaking you may be taught both in large groups (via lectures) and small groups (via tutorials, also called seminars). Traditionally the lecture is where you listen to your lecturer telling you all the important stuff about a particular subject – introducing you to key cases and legal principles, as well as raising any areas of uncertainty and perhaps voices of dissent on particular issues. That said, your role won’t be a passive one. You will be working on processing, understanding and analysing the information you’re listening to. Generally your role as a student is to sit quietly, listen and take notes. For lectures with fewer students (perhaps for elective final year subjects), the format might be a little looser, with more opportunities for student and lecturer interaction.
It is in the smaller group sessions where you get a chance to put what you’ve learnt in the lectures into practice. Here, you and about 15 others (numbers depending on your university) will get involved in debate and discussion – answering questions, giving presentations and trying out theories.
2.2.1 Teaching mash-ups
Like most walks of life, times are changing, and some lecturers are trying new approaches to make the lectures more engaging. Sitting in a lecture trying to pay attention for an hour or two is challenging for most people. It’s not like going to the cinema where you are quite happy to sit and munch popcorn quietly for that period of time. Perhaps with the addition of some visual effects, supporting actors, good jokes, fight scenes, a romantic lead even, we, as lecturers, might be able to keep you glued spellbound to your seats. Alas, glamming up restrictive covenants or proprietary estoppel is a tough call.
Flipped learning is becoming more commonplace – here the large lectures become much more interactive. Students are required to watch or listen to information before the lecture – this would be the normal lecture part. Then the time in the lecture is spent in activity – with students working on problems in small groups for example. There might also be quizzes to test your knowledge.
2.2.2 What do your lecturers want from you?
Whatever the format our teaching takes, the key thing for us is engagement. We want you to play a part – there is nothing more soul-destroying than sitting in a tutorial and NOBODY SPEAKING.
We don’t want to lecture again, and we definitely don’t want to answer our own questions – gets kind of weird.
We don’t mind if you get things wrong – we like helping you learn, but please just contribute.
The tutorial is the only time you get to test out that you know what you’re talking about. You have an academic right there – so make the most of it. This may be your lecturer, another academic member of staff or a Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA). Remember that what you cover in this session will be really helpful when it comes to preparing for exams or writing a piece of coursework.
The exemplary student will*:
• read the necessary chapter(s) within the recommended text;
• follow up on any recommended journal articles in the course handout;
• prepare for tutorial thoroughly – answering any questions set, noting anything not sure of to ask in class;
• make notes!;
• add to notes from lecture and tutorial by doing some extra reading – choose a different book, perhaps a monograph or look for some comment online via a practitioner/academic blog or the Times/ Guardian law section.
*This won’t always be possible – we know sometimes you have coursework deadlines and then that’s all you can think about. Sometimes (shock horror!) you have a life outside university and you may have to focus on your family or friends. However try not to get too behind; it is difficult to get back on track. That first year of your law course will absolutely fly by, and then you’ll be sat at home trying to work out how to revise in a panic.
2.2.3 The students who drive everyone mad
• The student who says nothing in tutorials – is it just shyness or haven’t they done the preparation?
• The student who talks/giggles through lectures.
• The student who monopolises discussions.
• The student who sits in front of their laptop thinking that we don’t know that they are more focused on keeping tags on their social media world.
2.3 COMMUNICATING WITH ACADEMICS
So you’re at university – you now have lecturers rather than teachers. You will probably have a different lecturer for each subject, and often a different person will take you for tutorial than for the lecture.
You will also have a personal tutor.
We’ve already mentioned that different modules may be taught in different ways – you may see your lecturer on a weekly or fortnightly basis.
What happens if you’re finding something difficult to understand or you’ve a question about an assessment?
Ashwin: I just can’t get my head around X. I emailed my lecturer but they haven’t bothered to reply yet.
Brodie: Yeah that is really difficult; I’m a bit unsure on that too. When did you email them?
Ashwin: Yesterday about 11 pm.
Brodie: Probably a bit soon to expect a reply.
Yes!
It’s human nature to think that just because it takes a few seconds to email someone, the reply should be just as speedy. However a few points to note:
1 Your lecturer in a particular subject might have 300+ students in that lecture alone, add to that any other subjects they are responsible for teaching.
2 Your lecturer will also be a personal tutor and may have around 75 students who might need their help.
3 Your lecturer has other commitments outside teaching, these may include:
(a) Marking.
(b) Preparation for teaching (updating materials, designing new modules, keeping up with the latest legal developments).
(c) Research – many of those who teach you will also be researching in preparation for writing new books and journal articles. They may also be putting together applications for getting external funding for their research.
(d) University business – many of your lecturers will also have administrative responsibilities within the law school. This might be in relation to management of mooting, pro bono, assessments or particular programmes. This involves a lot of meetings, as well as the inevitable work resultant from this!
(e) Family life and dare we say it, a love life?
Generally you should only expect a reply within business hours. If you get one outside this – bonus!
All of this means that at peak times in term it wouldn’t be unusual for your email to be sat among another 70 received that day in your lecturer’s inbox. They will of course reply, but there may be other ways of getting answers.
That’s why those tutorials are so important! You have their undivided attention to get clarification, try out your thoughts and get guidance on tricky aspects of that module.
Many universities also lay on extra sessions for those students who are keen for extra support, often run by enthusiastic PhD students. Sign up for these where you can. Other options are to set up informal groups among your friends on the course – you will all have different levels of understanding for different subjects. It makes total sense to pool resources! You are not in competition with each other – use the time to share ideas and form a deeper understanding. This will really help with your motivation.
Your lecturers will also have ‘office hours’ where they make themselves available to you – sometimes it’s more beneficial to book a slot and go through your issue face-to-face, rather than via a long drawn-out email exchange.
2.4 NOTE-TAKING
Cracking when and how you need to take notes is absolutely key to successful study.
First let’s consider why we need these notes.
PICTURE THE SCENE …
(Start of revision period – sun is shining, but the mood is black)
Sienna is sat on her bed sobbing with head in hands, surrounded by files, a laptop, hundreds of pages of scribbled notes.
Everything you do during the year of studying for a particular module is leading up to some kind of an assessment, often in the form of a written piece of coursework and a final exam, although there will be lots of variations on this.
Organisation is dull but so important – if you start out as you mean to go on, the scene above will not feature you! When I speak to undergraduates after their first year, and ask what they’ll be changing for Year Two, they always say the way in which they prepare for and recap after taught classes. Their big recognition about that revision period was that they were learning too much for the first time.
2.4.1 When will I be taking notes?
The situations will vary but may include some combination of the following:
• while sitting in lectures;
• while preparing for tutorials;
• while participating in tutorials;
• while reading your textbook/casebook;
• while reading case law;
• while reading journal articles or other academic materials.
Everyone’s notes are different, and the hardest thing is finding the right level of detail required. You can’t write everything down – the point is to pick out the most relevant information, and this takes time to refine.
2.4.2 Lectures
The notes you take in lectures will give you the structure for the rest of your notes. Remember your lecturer can’t possibly cover everything there is to know about a subject in the hour or two allotted; you will need to research and find the extra reading yourself.
It would be sensible to use the PowerPoint slides or lecture outline provided by your lecturer as the basis for your notes. You can then just add in any additional details as you follow these along. Do spend more time listening than writing though – it is easy to get so carried away writing down everything you hear that you don’t have time to reflect on what is actually important in all that content.
2.4.3 Handwritten or typed?
More students use their laptops or tablets to take notes in lectures but there are still some who take notes old-skool style. If you’re using a pen and paper then it makes sense to leave lots of spaces under each section so you can add in any notes from additional reading in the relevant spot.
Typing them is obviously much more flexible – you can easily combine lecture, tutorial and additional reading into one document. Try not to get distracted by other things on your laptop though – the lure of Facebook can be hard to resist.
TOP TIP
Always make sure you back up your documents – the number of students whose laptops combust or get stolen each year is significant. Don’t take the risk – stick it regularly on a USB or onto a cloud-based storage centre like Dropbox.