Staying productive over summer with ‘Understanding Research Methods’, a UoL MOOC on Coursera

July 4, 2014

Keep calm its summer timeIn an attempt to make the summer vacations productive, I got a chance to enroll for the Understanding Research Methods course offered by University of London via Coursera. In case you have not heard of it, Coursera is a very famous website that offers massive open online courses or MOOCs for short, from universities around the world. The world’s best courses are offered free all year round which include topics and subjects ranging from computing and information technology, health and medicine, to social sciences, development, and even music and film.

Being a global leader in distance learning and flexible study, the University of London also offers courses designed and taught by professors of its lead colleges and institutes through Coursera. Some of them include Creative Programming for Digital Media & Mobile Apps, English Common Law: Structure and Principles, The Camera Never Lies, What future for education?, Enhance Your Career and Employability Skills, and more.

Read the rest of this entry »


Exams and Economics

March 17, 2014

Image showing large to-do list and short done listWell, as the days pass, you realize the exams are only getting closer. That send terrible chills down my back.

I suppose that I have never ever felt so unprepared and overwhelmed before. There just seem to be so much work and never enough time.

Every time I have one good day, I seem to have five other bad days. Overall, it’s not good. I just end up really stressed and the problem is when I am stressed, I get even more demotivated. And so, this is not a good situation for me at all.

I really do want to do well in my year one so that I don’t have to repeat it. I really don’t want to waste anymore time or money.

As much as exams really stresses me out, I do enjoy learning. I do love going to class and simply learning. There is just so much things to digest and a lot of the stuff is really mind blowing.

Read the rest of this entry »


My checklist for making the most out of what is left of the holidays

August 5, 2013

LLB blogger Sandarenu enjoys her holidays.

The well-deserved break is almost over and the next academic year is just around the corner. The break has been pure bliss which is why you haven’t had a blog post from me for a while. With what is left of the precious holiday, this is how I plan to make the best out of it.

1. Spend time with family and friends

My family and friends have suffered while I had my head buried on the books so I’ve made sure I have spent quality time with family and friends. I’ve taken trips with family, spent time giggling and gossiping with my girlfriends and not missed a single event I was invited to. It’s refreshing to spend time with your loved ones and makes up for all the times you’ve had to take rain checks because you were too busy attending lectures or cramming for exams. Besides, we have another academic year ahead of us, we need them to be patient and understanding while we are busy earning our degrees.

Read the rest of this entry »


Plan B

May 1, 2013

Plan B

One lesson I learnt from the last academic year is to plan better. I had this fool proof study schedule for this time; at least I thought I did. It had the number of hours, the areas to be covered and exactly what I hoped to achieve each day. I had planned the specific chapters from study guides to revise, pages I’d read from text books, cases I needed to find and read online and past paper questions I would attempt.

I had considered that I take longer to read Trust Law material than Tort Law, when allocating time for the subjects. I had tried to be as specific and practical as possible. I had considered all my personal and professional commitments. I was all set for the exams. Except there was one thing I had forgotten to consider in my schedule; Life. I had not realized that sometimes when we have a plan for life, life can have a different one for us.

Read the rest of this entry »


Anyone Who Doesn’t Quit Is A Winner

March 5, 2013

LLB blogger Sandaranu of Sri Lanka

LLB blogger Sandaranu of Sri Lanka

I thought the LLB was going to be easy. I was 25 when I made the decision to start my LLB with the University of London International Programmes in Sri Lanka. By this time I already had my Bachelor of Business and MBA. I was working full time as a teacher, an examiner for a local examination body and an entrepreneur. Surely it had to be easy for me, I thought, with my experience as a teacher and examiner.

I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. Before I knew it was in the deep end of the pool without a life jacket. Not only did I realize that studying law required an entire different mindset to studying management, I also realized it demanded self-discipline, commitment and most of all; time. As a management student and teacher I was used to short notes, video clips, calculations, challenging theory, bypassing text books, and last minute studying. None of those was going to work with a LLB. LLB required sitting down and reading, memorizing, thinking and then some more reading.

Read the rest of this entry »


Sand of knowledge

February 21, 2013

Hello. My second post is about the struggle of squeezing the dough of learning material into the more or less clear patterns to get some structured knowledge in the end. I am a law student so my point of view is affected by that fact, but hopefully other people find the ideas useful to them too.

Contract Law pictureMy first serious encounter with the difficultly of grasping new law concepts occurred when I finished reading the Contract Law textbook by Richard Stone, 5th edition. I wasn’t enrolled in a course at the time, but I wanted to learn English contract law so I read it almost every day for about 5 months while commuting to Moscow from my suburbs. I remember this funny feeling of emptiness in my head when I turned the last page – I could not recall much of what I read. I remember asking myself what do I know about the English law of contracts now, when some 500 pages are done and I clearly remember thinking something like “not much, really”. To say that this was frustrating is to say nothing. I felt like a little kid who was tricked by some elder bad guys into a scheme where all my lunch money was somehow taken away from me and there was no one to turn to now because people would laugh at me if I tell them what happened.

Read the rest of this entry »


Studies On-The-Go

November 30, 2012

I’ve written before about how my study plan has to as flexible as my work schedule. My full-time work in the orchestra has some really busy periods and my moonlighting as a dance critic and journalist means that sometimes it’s really difficult to find the time to meet my weekly and monthly goals.
Autumn was a particularly busy time – Ireland has many arts festivals around this time of year, so I travelled all around the country to see dance shows. On top of that, the orchestra had a really busy period with performances and recordings, including playing live for the second Lord of the Rings movie.
Read the rest of this entry »


Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 34,557 other followers

%d bloggers like this: