On Academic Advisory

Typically, pre Covid-19 era, university life was different. Students typically had to juggle between studying and social life. The year 2020 has changed that completely for students all around including me. Classes are now online and students spend most of their day in front of a screen with little or no human interaction. For me personally, I will have to start adjusting myself to the new norm because a person like me who has based his social life on human interaction suddenly finds himself lacking it all and at times find himself in a potential depressing state. Before I get to forming a reading and writing plan to improve me performance for all subjects the first thing, I will need to do is to manage my emotions and I have started by meditating daily.

Next, in this political science course, reading is one of the most important elements to be able to interact with lecturers and understand a particular subject better and I do read quite a bit but apart from reading daily news, when it comes to books I read probably 1-2 books in 2-3 months and what I will need to do is start making it a point to finish 2 books a month and with that try to observe the style of writing of the two books, compare them and identify the message, how it is portrayed, to what audience it is portrayed to, etc. I shall be on the look-out for patterns, similarities, and differences. I can even try to read books from multiple academic fields and compare the differences. This way, I will not be only improving my reading and writing but speaking to when it comes to message delivery.

When it comes to writing, I feel that the more I read the better I will be able to write but I may also attempt to change my writing style and use more similes, metaphor, jargons to improve my essay and writings. The other thing would also be to explore the possibility to try and play to change the location of the additional words or also rephrase sentences or rearrange them to try an improve the overall writing. Sometimes the way a sentence is written can make a lot of differences.