One of the most important skills you need to develop as a university student is your ability to study. Although you may have developed effective study techniques in school, being at university poses some new and unique challenges. This article focuses on how to deal with the new challenges of studying while having enrolled for higher education.

If you have not studied for a long time you may think you do not have the skills you need for advanced study, but you will probably find that your time management skills are a great asset. Often the most pressing problem is having to juggle work, study and home commitments. Make sure those close to you understand what you're doing and why. Let them know in advance your timelines and periods of greatest potential stress. If you have already been managing home and work for some time, you can turn your time management skills to a new set of tasks.
•Try making a list of things that have to be done to keep life running smoothly.
•Then make another list of thing which could be done, but which are not really essential. They can be put aside till the end of semester, or even reallocated to other family members.
• Do a backwards diary from your furthest deadline to the present time, so you can see how many days and hours you have available to allocate to study tasks.

Study goals
It is good to be clear about your purposes for study. Perhaps your aim is to achieve a more interesting career. For many students it is a question of meeting challenges, and of self-fulfillment. Possibly the best way of getting involved and drawing satisfaction from your studies is to try and enjoy your subjects for their intrinsic value. Your interest can be kindled and maintained by reading around the subject area, making connections between subjects, seeing links with real life situations and in discussing with students and lecturers.
Some people find it useful to distinguish between those subjects which they find interesting and those which are essential to complete their course. If this happens to you, it's important that you employ some strategies to keep your motivation and focus on those essential but not-so-interesting subjects.
Hence, getting your goals clear is the important thing.

Task-oriented study
As with most things in life, the quality of your study is more important than the quantity. So you'll probably achieve more with task-oriented study than time-oriented study.  Task-oriented study means setting clear tasks and prioritising your work to accomplish certain selected tasks in the time you have available.

Weekly timetables
You can use a study timetable to fit in study, work and leisure activities around your weekly classes. It is up to you how rigidly you allot the remaining hours from week to week. The danger is that you may set impossibly high standards for yourself so that the whole system collapses. But is it is always better to have some system rather than none at all.

Focus on your purpose
Be clear about what you need to achieve when you're studying. Your approaches to study should be affected by the knowledge that some material simply needs to be understood, whereas other material should be understood and remembered. You need to adapt your reading and note-taking skills accordingly.
Keep asking these critical questions:
•What do I know already?
•What do I need to know?

Manageable tasks
People tend to put off large tasks because of the sheer size of them. Try and make it a matter of course that you attempt to convert larger tasks into smaller tasks. Whatever we attempt to do is made easier by looking at it on a small, manageable scale.

Reward yourself
After you've completed a sizeable task, it's a good idea to reward yourself. You could:
•Read a newspaper
•Watch a program on TV
•Ring a friend
•Listen to some music.

However, do not expect that each subject will require equal time. And do not think that, if you have not been sitting in front of your books, you have not been 'studying'. Remember,  many different activities qualify as 'study', including the thinking that goes on in your mind when you take a break from your books.