Organising Your Time for Your Master's Degree

Once you have been accepted onto your master's degree, you need to begin to think about how you will structure your time whilst you are studying.

It is never too soon to begin to do this because it is all too easy to slip into the pattern of relaxing and thinking that there is plenty of time – but there isn’t.

What you must remember is that the vast majority of a master's degree is achieved outside the classroom, tutorials, lecture theatre or seminar sessions. In fact, the vast majority of a master's degree is achieved by you on your own.

For this reason, it is essential that you recognise the vital importance of organising your time during your master's degree, and that should begin the day that you start your course and not finish until the day you get your degree.

It is not simply a question of doing the reading that is given to you or of completing all your work on time. It is really about getting to know your own study patterns and ensuring that you get the best out of yourself.

Of course, you should have a good idea of your study patterns from the previous courses that you have completed. Take confidence from the fact that you have done so well on your previous courses too, because you would not be where you are if you had not done exceptionally well in those courses, would you?

Therefore, you should follow whatever pattern of study you have used before. But for a master's, you need to hone it further, because, for example, research plays a much bigger part in postgraduate studies, and it is easy to underestimate the amount of time that you will need to spend on research.

One of the most important things you must do in relation to organising your time on a master's degree course is to make an early start on your dissertation.

The main source of your marks for your master's will be your dissertation, and therefore surely it makes sense to spend a larger proportion of your time on this than on other aspects of your course.

A good way to do this is to keep a record from the beginning, of everything in your reading that strikes you as being of particular interest.

If you take notes from any text, then jot down the details of the book or journal article that it came from. This will be immensely helpful when you come to compiling your bibliography too.