Jeff Gill - Get Sorted: How to make the most of your student experience

Get Sorted!

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Get Sorted!

How to Make the Most of Your Student Experience

Jeff Gill and Will Medd

Jeff Gill and Will Medd 2015

All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.

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First published 2015 by

PALGRAVE

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ISBN: 978-1-137-40593-7 paperback

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Acknowledgements

This book has come about through us both working together for quite some time. We are grateful to all those we have had the chance to work with as coaches, both on a one-to-one basis and in workshops. Much of what is in this book reects what weve learnt by testing things out with people, as well as with ourselves, and finding out what makes a difference, and what seems to be less effective. The specific focus of this book undergraduate university students has been driven in part by funding from Lancaster University Alumni and Friends which enabled us to run Get Sorted programmes at the university. We particularly thank Hilary Simmons and her team for their support in this. We also acknowledge the generosity of Open University Press/McGraw Hill in allowing us to adapt material from our previous book Your PhD Coach.

More specifically still has been the wonderful experience of working with students who have been willing to look differently at their situations and create a different experience for themselves. They have informed our thinking even if they dont know it! By working with them we have been able to put together ideas and examples that we hope now will help other students. Some of those students offered us examples of how they applied those ideas, and these are presented anonymously in the book, unedited. We are hugely grateful to those students and welcome their generosity in offering their experience for others to learn from. In particular we thank Adam, Craig, Georgia, Hannah, Harry, Luke, Rosie, Sophie, Pooky. Part of the challenge of writing a book like this is making it come to life thanks so much to Daisy Emery and Helena Waudby for their patience, creativity and professionalism in bringing together the illustrations (and to Kate Dunbavan from Lancaster University, who orchestrated our funding for Daisy and Helena from UNITE With Business European Regional Development Fund). Thanks too for the excellent anonymous reviewers feedback we received which helped us in developing the book, and to the team at Palgrave, in particular Suzannah Burywood and Bryony Ross for their editorial support and advice throughout, and Alec McAulay for meticulous proof reading. Finally, thanks to our friends and family for putting up with us through the process were sorry we sounded like your Gremlins at times!

Introduction Get Sorted!

This book is about you. Its about how you can shape your university experience in the broadest sense based on what matters to you. I just need to get sorted or I need to get my act together seem to capture the sentiments of so many of the students weve worked with during workshops, coaching and lecturing. Thats why weve written this book to help you get sorted and make the most from your experience.

Students describe their university experience in many ways. Its boring, exciting, confusing, having a laugh, satisfying, scary, fun, fine, heavy, pressurised, buzzing, disorganised, on top of things, disappointing, to name just a few. Get Sorted speaks to students with all kinds of experiences. It speaks to those whove lost the spark, and want to find a way to reignite the experience and get more from it. Get Sorted