Advancing through your teens brings with it all sorts of exciting privileges that are unlocked with each birthday. Some of them, such as being allowed to see a 15-rated film, are fairly small. Others, such as the right to vote, represent much bigger milestones. The right you gain in turning 17, namely learning to drive, is certainly up there as one of the bigger ones. This is partly because it’s a skill you’ll use throughout your life. But, more importantly, being able to drive + access to a car = freedom!

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With classes quickly coming to an end before the summer break, it can only mean one thing: exams are on the way. Unfortunately, most students can’t begin to truly enjoy the summer until they’ve taken several exams, and this time of year generally promises to be a stressful period for most if not all students. However, there are a few tricks which can help balance out stress levels and help motivate you to push through the final hurdles. So why not give a few of them a try?

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Deciding to look for a postgraduate course very often proves to be the first step on a truly rewarding journey towards either gaining a deeper knowledge of a subject you love or gaining a specialist qualification.

When you first begin looking for a postgraduate course, however, the first thing you might feel is overwhelmed. It’s the same feeling you might get with any complex item you’re shopping for, such as a phone or a laptop. You need to know what all the numbers and features mean to help you choose one that suits your requirements.

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Looming on the horizon this month is the Easter holidays. We say “looming” because although holidays are usually a very good thing, if you’re in Years 11, 12 or 13 they probably also mean that it’s time to get down to some revision for your summer exams.

When the first big period of revision time comes up, it often leads to people discussing revision techniques. A quick google of the term revision techniques will bring up all sorts of tips and tricks that will supposedly make your revision that much more effective. But how can you be sure they work?

Last year a group of American scientists published a research paper suggesting that, in fact, many revision techniques that conventional wisdom says are must-dos are in fact at best ineffective and at worst counter-productive.

The research paper on revision techniques makes interesting (though challenging) reading. We shan’t expect you to work your way through its fifty-odd pages, especially not at a time when you’ve got real revision to be doing. But in a nutshell, the research examined ten different revision techniques (through tests on real students) and concluded that eight of them were not worthy of the hype that surrounds them.

One of the biggest surprises of the study was that the use of highlighters apparently does little to improve students’ performance, as it makes them focus too narrowly on the point they are highlighting without looking at the bigger picture. Mnemonics (Richard of York Gave Battle In Vain etc.) were also seen to be not particularly good revision tools. In many cases the problem wasn’t so much that the technique didn’t help a student retain a specific piece of information that they could then use in their exam, but rather that it didn’t help them truly learn and understand their subject–something that is crucial if you are to get the top marks.

The only two revision techniques that came out unscathed from the study were regular self-testing and “distributed practice”–that is, lots of short study sessions spread out over time rather than mammoth cramming sessions.

So, while we certainly wouldn’t advise you to abandon all other revision techniques or not try out any other ones–ultimately an effective revision technique is the one that works for you personally, no matter how unconventional it is–if you’re looking to develop just a couple of revision techniques for these Easter holidays then the science is clear: test yourself on what you’ve revised frequently, and revise in lots of short bursts over a longer period of time.

As we’ve mentioned before, the few months of each year are the prime time for getting applications together for postgraduate courses. So if you’ve been thinking about doing a Master’s, now is the time to make some concrete decisions. One great way to help you do this is to attend a postgraduate open day.

Just as pretty much all universities hold open days for undergraduates, so too do they hold specialised open days for postgraduate courses. These offer a great opportunity to get a sense of if postgraduate studies would be right for you and if the university you are visiting would be the best place to do those studies.

One important thing to bear in mind, though, is that a postgraduate open day needs to be approached in a slightly different way to an undergraduate one. While your trip to open days as a young pup of a teenager was all about seeing how big the union’s beer garden was and what the city itself was like, here you’re going to be more focused on strictly study-related matters.

If you’re going to be attending a postgraduate open day, then, these are some tips that’ll help you get the most out of it, and in turn set you up for the best postgraduate study experience possible.

Ask lots of questions about the course to the people that run it

The postgraduate open day is generally a fairly intimate affair, during which you’ll have the chance to speak personally to the lecturers who run the courses for at least a couple of minutes. During this time you’ll have the chance to find out a lot about the course. By this we don’t mean factual information, but rather what your impressions are of the people who’ll be running the course and their ability to provide a stimulating teaching experience. Personal contact with your lecturers plays a much bigger role in postgraduate studies, and so taking the time to confirm you’ll get on well with the teaching staff will pay dividends later.

Find out about funding

A key element of postgraduate studies is being able to access the funding that will help you through your studies. Now, successfully applying for funding can be a daunting task, but many of its challenges can be demystified at a postgraduate open day. Moreover, your success in this area can often depend on the personal links you build with the people who work in your chosen subject’s department, and so creating a good first impression by asking insightful questions and showing enthusiasm for the subject (and perhaps also getting permission to email the person you speak to with follow up questions) at the postgraduate open day could really help you in your push for funding.

Get a sense of student life on the course

Whereas your social priorities as an undergraduate were probably based more around things like nightlife, for a postgraduate it’s all about being part of a course where you’ll have the chance to share your love of your studies with your classmates. This isn’t just because it’ll provide interesting conversation after classes–it’ll also help provide you with inspiration and insight that’ll help you in your current and future studies. You should be able to get a sense of the postgraduate community through the postgraduate open day–be on the lookout for current postgraduates who have volunteered to take part and seek out information on things like seminar series organised by the postgraduates.

Last week on our blog we had a look at international relations. Not in the form of assessing current world conflicts, of course, but instead as a degree course. What we said is so refreshing about it is that it has an interdisciplinary degree, by which we mean that it combines together a range of traditional subjects like history, politics, economics and so on.

What we didn’t get round to talking about last time was the fact that international relations is certainly not the only interdisciplinary degree out there. So fear not if you read last week’s post and thought that while you liked the idea of combining different disciplines the focus on international relations is not of interest to you. For there are lots of other interdisciplinary degrees out there that might just fit the bill.

Area Studies

For students who fall into the arts, humanities and social sciences tribes, degrees in different types of area studies are one great way of pursuing an interdisciplinary degree. Within the rich variety of courses offered at UK universities, virtually every region of the world is covered. American Studies degrees have been big since the sixties, and European Studies courses have become popular in more recent decades. East Asian Studies is also becoming more popular and relevant than ever. And nowadays many universities’ modern languages courses count as a type of interdisciplinary degree, as not only do you learn a language, but you also study the literature, politics, history and other aspects of the people who speak that language. And with all of these degrees you often get the chance to spend a year studying or working abroad!

Conceptual combos

More scientifically minded people also have the chance to complete an interdisciplinary degree. For you guys it’s more a case of combining different strands of the sciences for a particular goal. This could take the form of certain specialist forms of engineering that require expertise in two or more sciences (for example petroleum engineering), or more lab-based sciences that straddle two or more of biology, chemistry and physics (for example biotechnology).

Dual/joint honours

If you can’t find a degree course that meets what you’re looking for in an interdisciplinary degree, then completing a dual or joint-honours degree is a great option. Often people overlook these degrees or pick two subjects that are very similar (for example economics and business studies, or French and Spanish), but depending on the university you might be able to combine two subjects that at first glance seem unrelated but in fact complement one another very well. Chinese and business studies is a perfect example of this.

Today we thought we’d offer you some inspirational stories of young people coming up with great ideas. These folks are an example to all of us that young people can often come up with the most inventive of ideas, and that youth is a springboard rather than a barrier to success.

The teenager who find out how typefaces could help keep governments in the black

We live in tough economic times, and governments are feeling the pinch as much as households. Any opportunity for them to save a bit of money is welcomed. And while economists and politicians might come up with unworkable or controversial schemes, this teenager worked out a way to save governments hundreds of millions a year just by changing the font they use in their documents. Realising just how expensive ink is, Suvir Mirchandani, 14, calculated how much the US government would save by using Garamond instead of Times New Roman. The figures he came up with were astonishing, and experts across America were wowed by the workability of his suggestions. Survi got his idea by working out how much money his school could save on its own printing just by changing font, which just goes to show that the ideas we have at school can have applications far beyond the classroom!

The eleven-year-old who used pizza to come up with a great idea to solve the Euro crisis

The second of our young people coming up with great ideas was just eleven years old when he stunned economic experts two years ago with his idea for helping the ailing Greek economy and the then-struggling eurozone. Jurre Hermans’s idea came to the world’s attention when he submitted it to the Wolfson Prize, a contest aimed at established economists. But in spite of his lack of economics credentials, young Jurre came up with an idea for exchanging Euros for Greek drachma that the judging panel were very much taken with. The moral of the story is clear here: if you’re young and have a great idea, don’t be afraid to share it!

The 14-year old scientist who is pioneering new techniques for reversing water contamination

It’s hard to know where to begin with American teen Maria Elena Grimmett. By the age of fourteen her scientific research had been published in prestigious academic journals, she had won numerous science prizes, and had had a planet named after her. Perhaps her greatest achievement, though, has been her ideas for cleaning up contaminated water. Not only is the discovery she made important in its own right, but Maria also had to overcome all sorts of obstacles, including a lack of access to professional research facilities. But with the support of her parents and a lot of persistency and hard work, Maria has been able to conduct scientific research that would be the envy of many senior-level university professors.

The lesson of all three of these young people coming up with great ideas is clear: let your enthusiasm guide you, and don’t be afraid to see your ideas as having a place out in the real world!

Over the last couple of years there have been a number of stories about the bad behaviour that students get up to at university, both here in the UK and overseas. From individuals desecrating monuments to sports teams singing songs containing offensive lyrics, there’s been a real succession of shameful student bad behaviour.

What has your response been to these sorts of antics? Generally the reaction of other young people to student bad behaviour that makes it into the media goes one of two ways. Some people are genuinely offended and appalled. And others, while not taking any particular stance on the behaviour itself, condemn the stupidity of the students involved for allowing themselves to be photographed or recorded saying or doing things that were likely to get them into trouble.

Whichever of these two responses you have had to stories of student bad behaviour, if you’re soon to be going to university or are currently a student it’s worth taking these stories as cautionary tales, and be on guard against ensuring you don’t become the villain in the next one of these stories.

You might assume that this scenario is unlikely to happen to you. And while you could be right, it’s a good idea to avoid being complacent. It’s unlikely that the young people whose student bad behaviour has got them in the news or landed them in trouble thought that they’d ever do what they ended up doing. But a combination of alcohol, peer pressure and the heat of the moment can lead to people doing things that they look back on with disgust the next day.

And the key thing with these stories of student bad behaviour is that they do represent just one moment in that student’s life, but the damaging consequences of that moment on their lives lasts much, much longer. Whether in the form of a criminal conviction, disciplinary action from the university or social stigma, student bad behaviour stories have truly long-term negative impacts on those caught up in them, regardless of how out of character their actions were or how much they plead that their actions have been taken out of context or not seen as the jokey behaviour they were intended to be. In an age of social media and smartphones, a moment of madness can be recorded and spread forever.

We’re not for a second suggesting that you curtail the social fun you have at university. The social side of being a student is a key part of the undergraduate experience and will provide you with treasured memories and lifelong friendships. But to prevent yourself falling into the trap of indulging in student bad behaviour that goes viral and then hits the media, we’d recommend that you always keep the following points in mind:

Don’t think it can’t happen to you–we all do stupid and out-of-character things, especially when we’re young. And while if you do something risqu or dumb you and the people doing it might swear no offense was intended, if it doesn’t look that way to other people that defence will count for nothing.

It’s not good enough to be discreet–even if you don’t have Facebook or Twitter, your fellow students do. It’s far, far better to avoid doing the sorts of things that we see in news stories on student bad behaviour altogether rather than calculating that your actions won’t make it onto social media.

Think of the long-term consequences–Once something is recorded on a phone and uploaded to the internet, it’s there forever. Anyone (including your university’s authorities and–in the worst case scenario–the police) will be able to see it. And if the consequences of these parties seeing it are being kicked off your course or ending up before a judge, you’ll be regretting your antics for much more longer than just the day after.

Today we wrap up our tips for turning the process of searching for a job online into a manageable and efficient task that’ll connect you with the great job you deserve.

Tip #4: Don’t use a jobsite at all!

So far our tips on searching for a job have all focused on using jobsites. But it’s a mistake to limit yourself to these, great though they are. This is because jobsites are not the only places out there that contain job vacancies. And for some types of job, jobsites are often not the best place to look at all.

There are two main alternatives to turning to jobsites when searching for a job: company sites and recruitment-consultancy sites. Let’s start by looking at the first of these. Although companies will often put their vacancies on jobsites, it’s also very likely put them on their own site. And since they’ll only be putting their vacancies on their site, the list of postings you’ll need to go through will be much smaller.

This means that if you know what sector you want to work in or what type of company you want to work for searching for a job can be a lot less time consuming if you go direct to the websites of companies. Draw up a list of the companies you want to or could work for–think about both the industry you want to work in and which companies operate in the town(s) where you are looking for a job–and then bookmark the job section of their sites after locating them.

Recruitment firms’ websites are another key source of job listings, especially when it comes to temporary jobs. And unlike jobsites not run by recruitment firms, they often also allow you to upload your CV and register with the company, who may then contact you when a vacancy comes up rather than you needing to apply for each and every job posting.

Tip #5: Get creative with your Googling

If you’re going to branch out from jobsites when searching for a job online, the one thing that you’ll need to do is develop good skills in googling to help you locate the best sites and postings. Just typing in the word “jobs” and the name of your “city” probably isn’t going to get you any further than rediscovering jobsites that you’ve used already. As we saw in our third tip, a good keyword strategy can work wonders when searching for a job, and you should develop one when it comes to using Google for this purpose as well. This means not only picking the right terms, but also searching for phrases (i.e., a combination of two or more words in a fixed order) that often appear in the adverts that are relevant to you. You can do this by putting quotation marks (“”) around the phrase.