Three Strategies for Success

Self-Advocacy

1. Work with others to inform and sensitize the student body, faculty, administration, and staff about disabilities. Organize public lectures, student panels, and films. Write articles for the student newspaper on your campus.
2. Become a student member of and/or provide input to policy-making university committees.
3. Find out if there is a support group for students with disabilities on your campus and become an active member in this group. At such group meetings you will find out you are not unique nor are you alone in your struggles. In addition to the comfort that provides, you will learn studying and test taking strategies and about instructors whose teaching style will be most compatible with your learning style.
4. Provide peer counseling and support to other students with disabilities on an individual basis or through a support group on campus.
5. Join professional organizations as a student member advocating for rights of adults with learning disabilities.

Time Management

1. Keep a master calendar. Make sure it.s large enough to enter assignments, exams, social events, and important appointments. Use other calendars or daily .to do. lists for specific tasks. You will need to take the time to coordinate your activities. (This is a skill for a lifetime, work to learn as early as possible).
2. Work backwards from the due date on a long-range assignments and build in extra time for setting the project aside to just think about it. Go over this time line with your instructor and ask for feedback on your progress periodically.
3. Make sure you have understood an assignment correctly before plunging in or soon after you have started by scheduling an appointment with your instructor early. Don.t wait until you have finished the assignments to find out you have not fulfilled the requirements.
4. Often, the hardest part of getting your work done on time and keeping up with the workload is getting started on a new assignment. Start by making a commitment of 30 minutes and then lengthen studying periods gradually.

Building Memory

1. Learning is synonymous with reviewing and, for you, reviewing frequently and regularly throughout the semester is essential.
2. Color code, enlarge, underline, and highlight your notes to strengthen your visual memory of the material.
3. Copy your notes over if, for you, the act of writing facilitates memorizing.
4. Read aloud (tape recording while reading) if hearing with or without seeing the words helps you remember what you.ve read.
5. Tape record lectures and listen to them while driving, exercising, eating, etc.
6. Rehearse material to be mastered either orally or in writing. Write out concepts in full. Read your notes silently or aloud. Paraphrase or explain concepts to a study partner.
7. Review frequently and commit material to memory using strategies that aid recall such as listing, categorizing, imaging, revisualizing , alphabetizing, devising acronyms, and associations.