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Overcome Exam Stress- Easy Ways To Overcome Exam Stress

Posted by THE_INSPIRER UTP Tuesday, November 16, 2010 0 comments

Tests and exams, are a challenging part of life for children, parents and professionals alike. Now there are ways to overcome the Stresses of exams during this crucial time.
Let me share with you some secrets to help you overcome the Exam stress.
Some ways to help you attain even more success during this time of challenge
Have a clear sense of purpose with your exams. Set out exactly the mark that you working towards as opposed to just studying to “see what mark I get”. This alone gives you a clear sense of direction and puts your mind in a frame of achievement.
Manage Your Energy
During these crucial and challenging times you need to manage your energy levels more than anything. The more energy you have the more you can accomplish thus gaining you more time and more success.
Exercise will help boost your energy levels, clear your mind and relieve stress. Walking, cycling, swimming, indoor soccer and dancing are all effective ways of exercising.
Revision tips
Craete a timetable to monitor your progress. ALWAYS allocate adequate time for fun and relaxation as well.
While revising a subject, practise writing. This would give you an actual simulation of the examination itself. Plan your revision and complete it in time. This gives you a sense of achievement and builds your confidence.
Set realistic targets of what you can achieve in the time available.
Spend as much time on recall as on reading. Practise by writing answers as you would do in the exam. This will help you remember the important points when you answer each paper.
Practise writing answers under exam conditions. Take two hour tests, without a break in between, preferably at the same time as that of the exam. This will help your body clock adjust to the examination time and conditions.
Help yourself ace the exams
Time out
To prevent mental fatigue, take a short break as soon as you notice your mind is losing concentration. Stick to activities that do not break your study continuum during these breaks. Avoid television and loud music. You will then be able to come back to your revision refreshed.
It is important to relax. Your mind and body perform at their best only if you get adequate rest.
Maintain a regular sleep pattern
Regular eight hours of sleep is mandatory for the body to function well. Also, sleep at a regular time; don’t alter your sleeping cycle.
It is not important whether you study late or get up early, as long as you get into the habit of being most alert at the same time as that of the exam.
Stop working at least an hour before bedtime. You will find it helpful to do some light exercises, which is particularly effective in relieving stress.
Are you afraid to fail?
What to eat
Food rich in vitamins and proteins, such as green leafy salads and fresh fruits, are a must.
The nutrients will help your brain stay sharp. Avoid food with high fat content.
Don’t drink too much coffee, tea or fizzy drinks. Caffeine will keep you up and reduce the clarity of your thinking.
NO distractions
Keep all unimportant issues at bay.
Right now, your examinations is your only focus. Stay away from distractions that will cause loss of concentration or unwanted anxiety. Stick to activities that do not break your study continuum. Your friends and family must be made aware of not distracting you with things unrelated you your exams.
Are you studying intelligently?
The power of positive thinking
Spend time with people who have a positive effect. It will rub off on you.  Spend few moments daily reflecting on all the things that went RIGHT and all the good that come out of your studying.
Avoid negative thoughts, such as ‘Everyone else seems better organised, while I’m struggling.’ Challenge such thoughts with positive thinking; for example, ‘I have done well in exams before.’
Have a winning Attitude. You control your thoughts and your thoughts DO NOT control you.
Practise relaxation techniques
Practise deep breathing, meditation and yoga as forms of relaxation. They help your body relax and reduce stress. Alternately, take a brisk walk in fresh air after your day’s revision is over.
Make dua before you start studying. Dua will help you increase confidence and reduce your stress as well.
And yes, lots of luck with those exams.

10 Tips for Improving Your Grades and Achieving Academic Success

Posted by THE_INSPIRER UTP Tuesday, November 9, 2010 0 comments

   
10 Tips for Improving Your  Grades and Achieving Academic Success
Here's a collection of 10 solid suggestions that any student can use to improve grades and academic performance. We'll review 10 great tips on how you can take your academic performance up one or more notches -- to feel better about yourself, to learn and grow more as a person, and, yes, to get better grades. Be careful about setting too lofty a goal to begin with -- you want a goal that is a stretch for you, but not so much of a stretch that it's impossible to reach.

(1) Understand Yourself. A big part of academic success is having the right mindset. You have to not only believe in yourself, but also know enough about yourself to know how to achieve that success. Take the time to examine your academic strengths and weaknesses and find ways to capitalize on your strengths while overcoming or minimizing your weaknesses. Finally, understand how you learn things best -- your learning style -- and try and find classes and study methods that best utilize the way you learn.

(2) Manage Your Courses. Many students struggle academically, not because they do not have the abilities, but because they simply do not actively manage their courses. You should be an expert on the syllabus of each of your courses, with a strong sense of every major assignment and test – including expectations, requirements, and due dates. If some of your professors are too vague on their syllabi, take the time to get the detailed information you need to better plan and execute all graded materials for your classes now.

(3) Read Actively. Yes, there is quite a bit of reading assigned in university. Still, part of your job as a student is to not only read all of it—but do so actively rather than passively. Active reading means doing more than just reading. For some people, it means underlining, highlighting, or annotating the materials. Others develop a list of keywords and summarize materials as they read. Still others continually quiz themselves and try to put the information in a different context that helps them better understand it and retain it. Understand the three R’s of memory: reception (attentive and observant), retention (review and recite), and recollection (organizing and visualizing).

(4) Utilize Every ClassToo obvious? This tip is not just about attending every class -- though attendance is the foundation of it. Not only must you attend every class session, but you should do so with a strategy to succeed. First, you should sit toward the front of the class; studies show that students who sit in one of the first few rows generally achieve better grades than students who sit toward the back. Second, you should get actively involved in the class. Of course, some classes are pure lecture format, but most allow -- and desire -- some level of student participation -- so get involved and speak up. Finally, if you're going to make the effort to attend class, do so with the primary goal of learning -- which means don't be distracted reading other materials, texting, surfing the Net on your laptop, or talking to the student next to you.

(5) Take Great Notes. It's not enough to attend and be actively involved in every class -- you need to also listen carefully and take detailed notes. Obviously you need to listen to take great notes, but there's more to listening than just taking notes. Many professors provide pretty strong clues about the most important elements within a lecture -- even going as far as to say something about a topic's importance for the next test. The best students pick up on these clues. In terms of note-taking, there are any number of systems (Cornell, outlining, mapping, charting, and sentence methods), so the crucial step for you is to find the one system -- including one you develop for yourself – that works for you.

(6) Study Daily and Differently. Every single study of academic success shows that students who commit some time every day to studying – reading, writing, reviewing, etc. -- perform at a much higher level than those who study in larger chunks, and much better than those who cram. Studying daily builds and increases your knowledge base for the long-term -- assuming you are studying actively rather than passively. Active studying means practicing involving behaviors, such as creating outlines, developing flash cards, participating in study groups, rewriting notes, etc. When possible, take practice quizzes and tests to prepare for the actual examinations.

(7) Know Your Professor. Put another way; make sure your professor knows you. It's amazing how many students choose to be anonymous in the classroom. There's nothing wrong with that strategy -- and in some massive lectures halls of thousands of students, it might be your only choice. You don't have to become best buddies with your professor -- and we are not advocating the “kiss-up” strategy either. This tip is about you moving beyond being an anonymous name or number to being an actual person -- whom the professor recognizes. We suggest visiting the professor during his/her office hours. The benefits of this strategy are enormous because you'll get the help you need as well as often getting some insider information -- and there's even something termed the “halo effect,” which deals with the concept that a professor grades more leniently when s/he grades an assignment of a student s/he knows (and respects).

(8) Obtain the Help You Need. Don't wait -- find the help you need as early as possible in the course, long before you begin worrying about whether the course is even salvageable or not. Your first line of help, of course, is your professor and/or graduate assistants. Next up are campus tutoring centers (most colleges have writing, math, and foreign language labs), where you can obtain expert advice and assistance from other students. You can also find your own personal tutors, as many graduate students offer tutoring on the side. If your problem is less academic and more related to other issues, visit your school's academic support center -- in which you'll find assistance for learning disabilities and other guidance. Finally, for more informal help, don't forget to turn to your classmates for assistance.

(9) Improve Your Writing. Writing is the cornerstone of academic -- and career -- success. You most certainly should strive to improve both your writing and your vocabulary while in college. Becoming a strong writer with the ability to clearly express your ideas and arguments will have amazing payoffs in courses that have a writing component -- whether a research paper, term project, or essay exams. Plus, working to improve your writing also strengthens your critical thinking abilities as well as your listening, reading, and speaking skills -- and helps to build your self-confidence. Developing better writing skills will make you feel -- and sound -- smarter, and lead you to greater professional success.

(10) Get Involved on Campus. This advice might seem counter to some of the other tips in this article, but studies show that students who have some involvement in campus activities actually are better at managing their time and balancing multiple demands for their time. In fact, don't just get involved but strive for a leadership positions -- doing so will force you to work harder, plus it will look good to grad schools and employers when they review your resume. But before you happily join a bunch of clubs and organizations, please note that your involvement should be moderate. Be involved, but not over-extended. As soon as your social life starts interfering with your school work, cut back so that it does not affect your goal of better academic success.

Final thoughts’ becoming a better student is a process; it won't happen overnight. But if you are personally committed to improving your grades and follow these tips, you will be well on your way to a journey of greater academic success.
(Dr. Randall S. Hansen, CEO of EmpoweringSites.com,)
   

Published by the Counseling and Development Unit, SSSD UTP(Issue 6)
Prepared by: Hj Abdul Jalil Abdullah


Preparing yourself for interview involves reviewing your curriculum vitae & cover letter, doing research on the company and the positions and anticipating questions from the recruiters. By doing some research will allow you to explain why you are a good match for the position. Know your work history and achievement very well too will help to convince recruiters to take you in their organization..
June08_JobInterview_Cover.jpg

Quick Tips
  • Know the exact place and time for interview and the interviewer’s name/designation if possible.

  • Do some research on company over the internet etc

  • Learn about the job, google search is best place for you to start off.

  • Think about the Company’s products and services

  • Network with your contacts for further information

  • Consider issues the Company may face and how they relate to your job

  • Visualise what if would be like to work in the Company

  • Revise the fact and figures on your current and previous employment

  • Consider your personal image

  • Visualise and rehearse the interview

  • Be ready to lead the interview if necessary

  • Get ready question to ask the interviewers.


  • Right Behaviour
    · During interview, be prepared to listen. Focus on what the interviewer is saying and not on what you are about to say next.
    · Be an active listener. Pay attention to non verbal cues such as facial expressions to pick up underlying messages.
    · Pacing and mirroring are ways to ensure that the interview goes well. Let the interviewer set the pace and respond in kind. If they are bright and friendly, so you are.
    Be clear
  • Answer questios in a clear and concise manner. Use examples to clarify what you mean

  • Interviewers will often ask you questions about challenges you think you may face in the positions you are interviewing for, or have faced in previous job.

  • Prime yourself by reflecting on situations in your past work experience using examples to show how you handled the situations and describing the outcomes.


  • A useful structure for your answers is as follows :
  • Situation – a brief descriptions of the context

  • Tactics – the possible options you considered

  • Action – What you did and why

  • Results – what you achieved

  • Answering questions systematically enables you to demonstrates your achievement lucidly

    How To Be a Professional Student???

    Posted by THE_INSPIRER UTP Saturday, October 30, 2010 0 comments


    College is meant to prepare students for professional life. As a college student you obtain the knowledge and skills that will allow you to perform the tasks involved in your chosen career. To ensure that you are ready for a professional career it is important that you are a professional student.

    Instructions

    1. 1
      Prepare for class ahead of time. Review the material that was covered in the previous class. Read ahead in the book to get a preview of the next topics that will be discussed.
    2. 2
      Focus your attention in class. Though lecture classes can be boring and lead some to zone out or daydream, it is important that you pay attention. As a professional student you should resist the urge to let your mind wonder.
    3. 3
      Participate in the class. Join in on class discussions and ask questions that expound upon an idea introduced by the instructor or a fellow student.
    4. 4
      Take advantage of an instructor's office hours. Visit your instructor and ask for further clarification on topics that may have been confusing. Do not discuss class matters outside of the college. If you happen to run in to your instructor off-campus, leave your studies out of the conversation. As a professional student you need to recognize that studies should not interfere with recreation or vice versa.
    5. 5
      Form a study group. Take a leadership role and contact fellow students. Ask them to join your study group so that you can all benefit by working together as professional students.


    10 HABITS OF HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE

    Posted by THE_INSPIRER UTP Tuesday, October 26, 2010 0 comments



    1.  Spend an hour a day working out. Spend another hour reading the newspaper.
    2.  Be picky. This goes for when you are in a restaurant, when you are in the office, and when you are on a date.
    3.  Know when to take a break and go on vacation. Make sure to also disconnect from the Internet while you are there.
    4. Give feedback — mostly positive, but don’t be afraid to be critical. There’s nothing worse than having no feedback at all. People want to be managed, so tell them what to do!
    5.  Practice. Practice. Yes, practice again. You should feel obsessed with your work. At that point, you’ll have put in enough hours to become an expert.
    6. Be willing to relocate for better opportunities. Moving is a hassle, but throwing away physical things helps give you a fresh start if you need one.
    7. Eat with people you have meaningful relationships with. Double book for lunch if you have to.
    8.  Be a people connector. There’s no sense in keeping your contacts to yourself. Once you help someone out, they will do everything they can to help you out. It’s best to pay it forward.
    9. Don’t be afraid to cut people out of your life, especially the small minded ones. And be sure to surround yourself with people who love you.
    10. Don’t be afraid to fail. Take a risk. And enjoy the journey

    If a Course Ends in the Forest, and No One is Around to Remember it…Vault
    Across the country, college semesters are winding down. Final exams: over. That massive research paper: handed in to your professor and exiled from your nightmares. In your near future: blissful, relaxing nothingness.
    But something doesn’t feel quite right…
    You just dedicated five hard months of mind-melting concentration to conquer a full course load of difficult subjects. If you’re like me, you are probably already feeling that hard-fought knowledge starting to slip away. By June you’ll have a hard time even remembering their names. All the work will go to waste. And this just seems like a shame.
    In this academic year-end post, I want to offer up a simple system that helps make sure that you get some lasting value out of your courses.
    The Knowledge Vault
    The basic idea: During the first week after your courses end — that is, before you start forgetting everything — enter the most important ideas, insights, and resources into a long-term system that you can later easily reference. I call such a system: a knowledge vault. There are an infinite number of possible variations for constructing such a vault; here, I describe just one to get you thinking.
    What to Track in the Knowledge Vault
    You generate hundreds of pages of notes and papers and readings during a typical course: way too much material to be usefully stored and looked up again later. So how do you pare this pile down to the most important nuggets? Focus on the following:
    1. People. What important figures did you come across in the course? This could include, for example, important political figures from a history class or an influential philosopher from a philosophy class. You will want to capture in your system, for each such important person, 2 -4 sentences that captures who they are and what — at a very high level — they did or thought.
    2. Ideas. What were the major ideas that popped again and again in your class? Did a certain Marxist framework, for example, keeping slipping into your anthropology lectures? What are the major points describing the idea? Again, 2 -4 sentences.
    3. Books. Did any books (or articles) prove particularly influential to you? If so, title, author, and a — surprise! — 2 – 4 sentence description will work wonders.
    (For the sake of simplicity, I will use the generic term “info-nugget” or just “nugget” to refer to each individual person, idea, or book that you want to store.)
    How to Store the Knowledge Vault Information
    Each class will generate its own collection of info-nuggets. The obvious question is how to best store these data. Numerous formats will work. Here are a few suggestions:
    1. Index Cards. For the old-fashioned at heart: buy three plastic index card storage boxes, one each for people, ideas, and books. Store one info-nugget per card. Record at the top: the nugget’s title, the course number, and the semester you took it. The description goes below. Looking up info is as simple as flipping though a box full of cards.
    2. PBWiki. For the less old-fashioned, use a free wiki service like PBwiki. True to its name, it makes setting up a private wiki as easy as constructing a PB&J sandwich. You can construct a separate page for each of the three main categories. Within each category you can create sub-categories if you feel like getting advanced with your organization. Bonus points: share the wiki with several classmates and have them add their own info-nuggets, creating a truly massive collection of knowledge.
    3. Database. The most tech-savvy might consider building a custom database. Each row can store, in addition to the description itself: type of entry (person, idea, or book), title of entry, course number, course date, and, perhaps, some extra descriptive tags. You can then pass the database advanced queries to sort out exactly what you are looking for (e.g., show me people or books from classes taken in the year 2007 that involved science.) Free web services like Zoho make the construction of such databases easier than you might suspect.
    4. Gmail. The poor man’s database. (Or should it be the “especially clever man’s database”?) Construct a separate label for each of the three nugget categories. To add an entry, e-mail yourself a message with the nugget title in the message subject. In the body of the e-mail, include the course number and course date as usual. Once received, label the message with the appropriate label and archive it. Later, to search through your nuggets, type “l:<relevant-label-name> <various search terms>” into the search bar, and then let Google work its magic.
    5. [Update at 5:51 PM] Two readers wrote in to suggest two additional storage apps that have worked well for them. These were: Evernote and Google Notebook. I don’t have direct experience with either, but they both come highly recommended by these students.
    The Advantages of a Knowledge Vault
    There are several advantages to maintaining a knowledge vault through your college career. The first is short term. As David Masters discussed in a recent interview, the most engaged students are constantly integrating material between courses. You’d be surprised how often, when working on a paper in one class, you’ll discover that some person, idea, or book from a previous class will provide a whole new insight. It saves time and makes you look exceptionally smart.
    Another advantage is long-term. The vault helps you stay in touch with what you learned in college. When someone mentions a name that sounds familiar, you can quickly determine what you know about that person. When struggling to figure out a complicated problem in your life, you can turn back to the big ideas from your college career to see if any might prove useful. Similarly, providing book recommendations becomes a snap when you have a list of the most interesting books that you have read.
    A final, somewhat stealthy advantage, is that just taking an hour or two to record, with just a few sentences the most important information from your courses, does wonders for cementing this information in your mind — even if you never explicitly seek it in your vault down the road.
    (The alert reader might have noticed that maintaining the vault during the semester might aid exam review and paper prep. I agree with the alert reader. Keep this in mind as a new term dawns.)
    In Conclusion
    This might not be for everybody. It’s extra work and doesn’t necessarily provide immediate tangible benefits. But if you do try this technique, in the long run, you’ll be happy to have captured the benefits of all those hours of hard thinking. In other words: you’ll get your money’s worth from your education.

    BIG DAY FOR UTP '17TH OCTOBER 2010"

    Posted by THE_INSPIRER UTP Monday, October 18, 2010 0 comments

    10th ANNIVERSARY OF CONVOCATION OF UTP"

    SERI ISKANDAR, Oct 17 (Bernama) -- Ninety per cent of the Universiti Teknologi Petronas (UTP) graduates who graduated early this year were able to get jobs within six months after completing their studies, its Rector, Datuk Dr Zainal Kasim said.
    Proud with the achievement, he said there were vast employment opportunities for UTP graduates in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland with Malaysia being a signatory to the Washington Accord, an international accreditation agreement for professionals in the field of engineering, last year.
    He said UTP was also implementing its transformation plan towards achieving the objective of becoming a research university by 2013.
    "The research is focused on nine fields, namely, Enhanced Oil Recovery, Deep Water Technology, Nano Technology, Green Technology, CO2 Management, Energy, Health, Mega City and Sustainability Science," he said in his speech at the UTP''s 10th convocation today.
    Towards this end, he said, eight research centres had been established, including the Centre for Automotive Research, Enhanced Oil Recovery, Intelligent Signal and Imaging, Petronas Lonic Liuid, Biofuel and Biochemical, Corrosion, Gas Separation and South-East Asia Carbonate Research Laboratory.
    -- MORE
    UTP-CONVOCATION 2 (LAST) SERI ISKANDAR

    A total of 1,190 graduates received their scrolls, including 32 people who received their doctorate and 92 who were awarded master''s degree in science.



    The convocation also saw Petronas president and chief executive officer Datuk Shamsul Azhar Abbas proclaimed at the new UTP Pro-Chancellor. He replaced Tan Sri Mohd Hassan Marican.
    "UTP WORLD CLASS GRADUATES"


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