UNSW Back On Track program

Step 2: Help yourself to information and tips

The ‘self-help’ approach is one way to get started on making changes to help you get back on track. Quite often, students know what needs to change but don’t know how to achieve it.

Click here to link to our Help Yourself webpage. Areas of focus outlined in this section include skills to help with:

  • Academic enhancement (for problems studying)
  • Personal development (for difficulties in your personal life)
  • Life management skills (for problems adjusting to university). 

For example:

Wei Sin is a mature age local student whose didn’t do well in her first year at university. She hopes to improve on her grades so that she can transfer into law. After taking the Quiz and looking at the Back on Track Starting Point, she identified the following difficulties:

Aspect Factors leading to poor performance
Relevant Help Yourelf information
Academic enhancement She didn’t know how to study for university and found independent learning difficult. She was also not used to working in groups.
Working in groups (Communication)
Study skills
Personal development Experiences anxiety around tutorials and giving presentations, and in social situations more generally. She avoids these situations where possible but it affects her marks and she also feels lonely. She also felt overwhelmed as a mature age student and felt that she didn’t belong.
Social anxiety
Anxiety about giving presentations
Life management Life management skills: Wei Sin did not know how to balance her paid work with her studies. She found herself procrastinating a lot.
Time management
Procrastination

 

Jorge is an international student in his third year at university. While he did well in his first year at university, he did poorly in his second year. After taking the Quiz and looking at the Back on Track Starting Point, Jorge identified the following difficulties:

Aspect
Factors leading to poor performance
Relevant Help Yourself information
Academic enhancement Started to question his career direction and what career path his degree would allow him.While he did well in his first year at university he felt that it was more to do with memorising facts. In his second year, he was expected to approach his studies with a more critical eye; something that he was not used to. Log on to The Learning Centre (www.lc.unsw.edu.au) which has resources on critical thinking
Personal development Jorge was involved in an accident that was quite traumatic for him. After this he spent a fair bit of time hiding away from other people, and spent more and more time on the Internet. His anxiety increased to the point where he started to feel very anxious and even experienced panic attacks occasionally. Coping with traumatic or difficult life events Anxiety. Online self-paced module for managing panic attacks (Panic Stations: Coping with panic attacks Internet ‘addiction’
Life management When Jorge started to withdraw after his accident he also cut down his hours at work. Managing his finances became a significant issue for him after that Links to student life (including managing student finances)

Go to >step 3