How To Be The Best?

Elena Sysa shares how to be at the top of the rating and enjoy free time and other non-academic activities at the same time.

How To Be The Best?

I would like to provide our students with some lifehacks and advices on how to combine study and work with everything else.

Planning. Is it really so significant?

For sure. However, most of us consider that diaries and datebooks are too old-fashioned nowadays, but there are plenty of digital apps for your smartphone, which will perfectly help you to manage with your deadlines and to be in time everywhere. I would like to offer you three of them.

Trello

This app will allow you to create not only usual to-do lists, but also various boards connected with differents spheres of life (daily rutine, creativity, study etc.). The interface is also very nice and will surely improve your motivation and “work mood”.

MyStudyLife

This app was created specially for students and it is provided with all needed functions for planning: organizing schedule, putting your tasks in the lists, switching the notifications etc. There is also a possibility to synchronize your planning between your gadgets.

iStudiez

This app is similar to the previous one, but there is one more obvious advantage - an opportunity to check your marks and to note the contacts of your educators.

Setting goals. Do you really realize the final point?

No doubts, every person who wants to improve his current positions in making career tries to do all his best to achieve some goals, but the question is if he or she realise clearly realize this very goal and the path to it.
In the technology of controlling time we know as time-management exists one amazing strategy, a scheme, how to precisely set up goals. It called “SMART” (S-specific, M-measurable, A-achievable, R-relevant, T-time-bound). You can use it in the process of your study and then share the results.

Motivation. Is it the key to success?

Many students underestimate the role of motivation in their study process, however it is really significant. People who are motivated and inspired by someone or something become more successful in their sphere, because they fully realise for what reasons they should study hard and in what aspects they can use the knowledge they get at the university. It also leads to some positive changes in their attitude to the process of education and to the final aim. If you have not any motivation source yet - do all your best to find it. May be even your neighbour or ex-classmate can become your pattern?

The need to be attentive and concentrated

Leading positions in the rating require not only improving knowledge and dealing with all deadlines, but also attentive attitude to the details, changes, activities and events, connected with your study. Especially in such huge universities as HSE. For example, there is a thing which we lnow as “student estimation of teaching”, which is compulsory for all students. If your fail in filling it (may be forget about it), you firstly have an explanatory and then you might lose your discount for the year of study (if you are not a budget student and pay money for education). This and many others drawbacks can lead to really serious consequences, as you see. It is better to pay attention to all the details.

Dealing with stress and the importance of having a rest

A plenty of deadlines is familiar for every HSE student, so it is not a sensation that during our study, especially during sessions, most of us are suffering from increasing of stress. The well-known solution is having a rest, but how to relax better and with benefit for our mind? There are a lot of various suggestions, but the main thing is that relaxation is the change of activity. That is why it is so useful to have some physical exercises during study routine: yoga, pilates and other clasess from the section “body and mind” are especially recommended, because they allow you to “rechagre” your mind, which is suffering from thinking and analyzing. If you are so tired that do not want to go out of your cozy home - there is a suggestion - for example, to paint some colorful mandalas. It will also help you to get away. So, always remember that success in studying requires not only efforts, but also relaxation. You should combinate your thinking activities in such way to have enough time to chill out (in different ways) and sleep.

Text by
Elena Sysa