Summary of course

I am a graduate nurse in my final year having completed a diploma in Anatomy and Physiology as a foundation degree. I also do some modelling but not full-time, as I like nursing too much. I tend to work in the Halls of Residence at Basingstoke. But I don't have access to the internet in my room. We asked for it when we first moved in. I didn’t have access for 2 years, only in the library. They said they’d have paid for internet facility but as they were knocking down the building they couldn’t. It really did affect my learning. You need the internet as everything’s on it.

Description of strategies used

One of the things they picked up about my dyslexia was taking things in, processing them and spitting them out in my way! That is what I struggle doing that is why in lectures it just goes in and doesn’t come back out! I can’t summarise in my own way. Highlights and bold help, not just a mass of text that you have to filter through - you have pick out the bits you need.

When I’m doing my assignments, I highlight things I make yellow the words I’m not sure about, blue for those I need to check (ie: effect or affect), red is words that I need to change to more academic ones (ie: like traffic lights. But pink I keep as a reference. I try to get one in each paragraph because it reminds me to include references. Write REF in capitals and go back to it.

I now use advanced search in Google - say you are searching for water - you advance search it and you say what type of water and put in a few more words... it is more of a pin point. Whereas it is not so general. The general one I struggle with because I do not know what to look for. I put one word in and it will find that then you can filter through and find another word and then another one, so instead of having a 100, you can get it down to 60 and then you get it down to 20 and then 10 and then you look through those instead of having to look through all of them.

I do Mind-map to start with, with all the ideas on a piece of paper, put it into a list, and put that list on my Word document. Then write a paragraph about each one. So, it’s just a load of random paragraphs, and then I organise it and link it that way.

Before, when I did essays, I didn’t have the Dragon NaturallySpeaking to speak to it.I’d sit there and type it in and it would take me ages. Whereas with that it’s so much quicker and it takes me near enough half the time, and reading is better as well.

I've got a Samsung D900 and it’s got a stopwatch and a timer, so I use that when I’m cooking. I go and do something and then forget and four hours later I am still cooking. So I use that and then the alarm – I set that up... I set my phone clock fast. None of my clocks have the same time. They are all about 10 minutes fast. One clock at home is the correct time – You plug it in and it sets itself. So I know that is the only one that is right whereas everything else is about ten minutes fast. So I set a timer and give myself 10 minutes earlier so now I have got 20 minutes to prepare. – It sounds stupid but I’m always late and never on time so if I set myself alarms I know I am going to be OK!

The DSA was massive turning point. It was brilliant – if I didn’t have it I’d still be stuck and I probably wouldn’t still be on the course to be honest ....