Organizational skills are a graduate school must. If you lack basic organizational skills, such as the ability to prioritize, keep information easily accessible, maintain an orderly study environment and manage your time wisely, good luck passing your classes. A significant aspect of grad school is the application of organizational skills as they pertain to your studies. If you keep yourself organized, you will not risk running out of time, cramming for exams at the last minute or turning in your research papers late. Staying organized also decreases stress. Not only are organizational skills essential for your school life, but they are skills that you can develop and apply to the professional world when you graduate.
There will be times when the amount of studying, research, papers and exams can be overwhelming, but your success in graduate school largely depends on your ability to stay focused and exercise self-discipline. Such criteria may require you to turn down an invitation to a cool party or put off that weekend trip to study for exams. When you enter grad school you are making a personal commitment to all that the program asks of you, which includes a tremendous amount of work. In other words, school comes first. A January 2006 article in the Washington Post informs readers that students who exemplify excellent self-discipline skills outperform their peers on a variety of academic performance levels. Accordingly, self-disciplinary behaviors abet graduate students' success.
Build relationships with your graduate school professors, academic aides and peers. Establishing a support system can make your grad school life more comfortable, as it opens the door for communication and creates a safe environment in which you can ask questions without feeling nervous. If you have a professor who gives the class his personal phone number in case of questions, take advantage of that opportunity to discuss parts of the lesson that you may need more clarification on. Use your resources. This also includes joining campus study groups.
Being a graduate student requires you to be responsible. Not only are you responsible for yourself and your work, but you are also responsible for participation in team projects. Groups will have to rely on you to complete your section of a team assignment. Hold yourself accountable for the things that you do in graduate school, both good and bad. Graduate school is not the place to make excuses about why you turned in your homework late or failed to use the correct formatting. Instead, use a problem-solving methodology and figure out a way to resolve those less-than-optimal issues.