6 Hacks to Ace Online Grad School
Reading Time : 6 minutes
Day 5/30.
I might be a little late with this post given most Spring Semesters just ended. However, if you’re planning to take courses this summer, I am opening my pandora box of small hacks that have helped me excel in online classes not just at school, but also all the Coursera Specializations I have completed. We are living in unprecedented times (I need a new phrase, I know but who would have ever imagined, except Bill Gates, of course. 🤯) A lot of the schools in the US and around the world have moved their curriculums online for the summer to prevent social interaction given the pandemic.
I have taken my fair share of online courses, both on Coursera and at school. I self-taught myself a whole lot of computer science knowledge I have today including the language I use most frequently, Python, on Coursera. This Spring, I also took a Database Management Systems course online at school along side my internship. I am currently registered for another course this summer but I might go ahead and drop it - I am not a fan of doing a course while doing an internship but I will keep you posted about that. 🤪 I know a lot of people have mixed feelings about taking classes online. Specially as international students, spending all the 💸💸💸 for an online curriculum neither feels fair nor productive. However, you did not come to this post to hear me crib about schooling on the web so let’s dive right into the hacks that have worked best for me :
Have a realistic mindset of what to expect
High expectations almost always lead to disappointment and that doesn’t change in this scenario. I think it is important to know that taking a class online does not offer the same experience as sitting in a classroom and being able to interact closely with your professors or peers. This happens to be even more important to consider if your school is offering online classes for the first time. Keeping your expectations in the realms of reality will save you from a whole lot of heartbreak (this holds true for most things in life). Anticipate connection issues, especially during group projects. If there is one thing I struggled with, was not being able to be in the same room with my team-mates to work on a project. Communication issues sky-rocket - but on the bright side, you are able to be come out of the course more well-rounded. Moreover, online lectures will mostly always be recorded and don’t have attendance criteria. So you can take the classes at your own pace not having to worry about waking up at 8.45am for a 9am lecture. (If you know, you know 🤷🏻♀️)
Have a schedule
That slides me well into my next hack. Just because you don’t have to attend a lecture every week, on the same day, at the same time, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. I am not saying it should be 8 am on a Monday, but having a strict schedule to finish watching the lectures every week will take you further than you know. It sucks to have piled up lectures from the past, and the motivation to watch them only goes down with time. So set some time out every week to watch the lectures and work on the other assignments & readings. It is much easier to work on the assignments because there usually are deadlines (and grades 🙄) associated with them, but the same is not true for lectures.
Have a mini-reward set aside for yourself when you finish watching the week’s videos. For me it was usually an episode of the series I was watching at the time : 1 week of lecture videos = 2 episodes of Crash Landing On you. Very fair.
Use the fast-forward option in recorded videos
Biggest advantage of online school is being able to fast-forward through the lecture, something you can’t do in-person 🙄. On Coursera, I love watching the lecture videos on 2x speed, sometimes 1.5x depending on the professor, and same is true for videos from school. And if there is a topic that I am fairly confident that I already know about, I can skip that part altogether. So a lecture which lasts 3 hours in person, becomes much shorter saving me time that I can use more productively watching more Netflix. Not to forget, all the commute time saved (even more Netflix). 👯♀️
Use the resources available wisely
Laziness is the biggest obstacle between you and success in an online course. I know it is difficult to take online office hours seriously, but they are way better than waiting for email replies from your teaching staff. It will benefit you immensely to set time aside for the office hours, and attending them as often as you can. In that regard, don’t forget to ask a lot of questions. Don’t let your laziness to log in come in the way of using Piazza / Teams / Canvas / Blackboard - whatever it is that your university uses to ask questions / start a discussion. The more you interact and immerse yourself in the “course community”, the more motivated you will be to do better and stay on track. 💯
Disengage
All of these hacks are great, but by far, the one that helps me the most is time blocking. Time blocking to study, and then taking the time off as well. If you are a computer science student, it is possible to start working on a script and then be at it for hours because you “get in the zone”. I am guilty of it myself. However, it is important to take that break ever so often so that the line between student life and life-life doesn’t become very hazy. Burn-out is real my friends, and we are not at the age to get burnt out. It’s too early and we have miles to go before we sleep 😉
Take that lunch break, go for a walk (don’t forget that face mask), call your friends and family and then get back to your desk. Yes, desk not bed. I cannot stress how important it is to have a separate chilling-space and separate working-space. It is when the lines between the two disappear that the real problem starts. If you keep your bed for sleeping, and your desk for working, I promise you, you will solve at least 50% of all the productivity issues you have.
Have an accountability / study group
All of the hacks above work great in my experience. But if you are not self-motivated enough, yet, then you might want to get a study-buddy. It is easy to convince yourself that you’re on-track even when you’re not. But if you have someone else who you are accountable to, you are less likely to be able to lie about how much work you are actually getting done. That is honestly the sole reason I put out this 30-day challenge on social media. I could have very well waited to write a few posts and then start posting them. But what is the fun in that?
(Also, it would have never happened. It took me a full 8 months or so to finally sit and work on this website).
Anyhow, that’s the end of my hacks. I wish you a great and productive summer ahead! If there is anything else that you did in the last 6 weeks that helped you with online classes, leave them below in the comments 😄
