Seeking tips & coping strategies for better academic suc

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One of the main things - don't overburden yourself. Don't choose early classes if you don't like to wake up early. I myself prefer doing all my classes in one or two days a week instead of going for four or five days a week.

First I find out what courses I need and when I have to register by. I try to have everything ready before that. Some courses need pre-requisites so that narrows the number I can take. I see what is being taught and at what times. Then I go to ratemyprofessors and see how the teachers are. Our school also shows how teachers are internally ranked and even what grades they give each semester.

This fall all of my courses will be on two non-consecutive days. So I will have five days of free time, two days of class. Of course, I will have to study during free time. I also don't like to get up early so my classes run from the afternoon to evening.

I have trouble with math and science so if I am doing them I give myself a lighter workload. I suspect my trouble with math is it gets me into such an aspy-zone, I am socially repelled by it. When studying math I go into an aspy-daze. So I try to avoid it sort of.

Talk to a guidance counselor once in a while. He told me some stuff I did not know about what I did and did not have to take. Set up an appointment. Mine was good, your mileage may vary.

Again, don't overload yourself. I started college years ago, overburdened myself, dropped out. I started more recently, took it easy, then overburdened myself, my grades dropped, so I unburdened myself and did less - and started coming back. I know what courseload I can handle now. And some courses are harder than others.

Thanks again, Sparrowrose, you've addressed about all of my questions. You've mentioned "research" several times--am I right to understand that as searching for and reading relevant literature on a topic?

I've generally followed the experts' recommendation to do hardest things first, but the advantages of doing it the other way around may be greater for my temperament & tendencies, as they are for yours.

I do think about everything I have to do, and do get overwhelmed. If I don't think about them I can't keep track, and often spend too much time on one or a few narrow areas. I use Outlook calendar for fixed items (as advised in GTD) and Tasks lists (formerly synced with pda on Palm mobile, ticking checkboxes with a single button, but I have a Blackberry now which frustratingly takes several, so paper lists are quicker), or other software for task lists and reminders. I think there's a problem with the amount of time I give each task, and listing more tasks than needed to complete a project, even to the extent that it would be impossible to complete the project given the amount of work I've listed. I keep seeing details of details, which causes me to break down a larger task into sub-tasks, as one should, but go too far and find too many sub-sub-tasks, and do things in the longest, most thorough way possible. Being aware of this is one thing, overcoming it is another. Learning to identify and focus on doing the most essential tasks must be the answer, but how to do so quicker and more consistently, I don't know. Currently the only way I can achieve this is by making an exhaustive list, then eliminating what appear to be least important, which is a lengthy process in itself.


In order to gain such intuitive, non-conscious organisation & time management skills, (for those of us without these already), it's necessary to think things through consciously, and with repeated "deliberate practice" (K.A. Ericsson), "automaticity" (faster & more efficient subconscious processing and less proneness to cognitive overload) should gradually develop.

During my mid-year break in a few weeks I'll carefully analyse my work records and consider how to apply the many useful points in reply to my post.

It depends on your level and the field you're studying, but yes I meant searching for and reading (and analyzing and note-taking on) relevant literature on a topic. In some classes, it can also mean collecting data in the world. For example, for one of my graduate classes I had to do a real-world research project so in addition to searching for relevant articles to put what I was doing in context, I had to set aside time every evening to collect my data. I was evaluating the moderator responses to particular posts on a political message board and categorizing them according to topic and examining the effects of the official presidential polls during the run-up to the Obama-McCain election to see how the poll data correlated (or didn't) with the amount of reprimands moderators put on posters and what topic the posts were about.

It was a much bigger project than I had anticipated, but the point is that I had to set aside time every evening for "research" meaning time to go and text capture everything new on the forum (and we're talking about a forum with a post volume that makes WP look very quiet. There were something in the order of 4000 to 10,000 new posts per day!) and then, using Word software to help me count, I had to count the number of instances on the previous day's date, categorize them, and score them in my charts. I really streamlined the process but it still took a good hour and a half every night to record one short line of data. Plus I had to do it on weekends, too. On the bright side, my mind loves counting and organizing data pieces so much that I didn't have to use my timer for that project. I could have sat there for five hours, happily counting and sorting, without even noticing how much time had passed.


In order to gain such intuitive, non-conscious organisation & time management skills, (for those of us without these already), it's necessary to think things through consciously, and with repeated "deliberate practice" (K.A. Ericsson), "automaticity" (faster & more efficient subconscious processing and less proneness to cognitive overload) should gradually develop.[/quote]

How I developed the "intuitive sense" was from keeping records about how long I spent on homework and on what tasks and then going back and evaluating my diary. I also keep diary entries on things like how I feel and how often I attend class (which is how I learned that as much as I prefer long weekends, I can't take more than 2 classes per day without suffering overload and not making it to classes at all the next day.) Long before I returned to school or learned about asperger's, I learned that I function better when I keep day-to-day notes so that I can recognize patterns in things like how foods affect me, how weather affects me, how I function after certain types of events, etc.

I was once accused by a doctor of having OCD when I showed her one of my charts to prove what I had been telling her about a health condition that she was refusing to acknowledge ("oh, people THINK they do something a whole lot but it's just a perception, not tied to reality") I know I don't have OCD because I enjoy and benefit from my record-keeping and don't get upset (just a little disappointed) if something prevents me from keeping records for a day or two but my understanding is that if I had OCD I would feel compelled to keep records even if I didn't enjoy doing it or benefit from it in any way and I would be highly distraught and feel like it was a disaster if I couldn't keep my records one day.

Shiyin and Sparrowrose, I like Your ideas,and plan on using them. I have been using a tape recorder to record important class discussions,and Instructiones from the teachers. This takes the pressure out of trying to scribble down 'notes' fast enough to capture all pertainant data that is being discussed during the classes. I then will replay the tape and wright down all important data in a less 'rushed' manner,and from doing this alone, my math scores have gone up. By taping the discussions, I am also able to sit and play them back as much as I need to and this lessens the time the teacher spends in trying to explain mathimatical,and wrighting skills with me,and he is able to teach as he aught to. I hope this is of some help.