The Physics Department employs a wide variety of learning methods - “front line” activities such as lectures, laboratories, tutorials and problem sheets alongside seminars, essays, student presentations, writing a précis, computer aided learning etc.  The Staff/Student Committee agrees that about 35 hours of effective work per week is appropriate for most people.  That includes lectures, tutorials and laboratory, which for a typical week for a first year student totals around 18 hours.  So, roughly, you should spend about as much time working privately as in formal teaching throughout the year, but some of you may need more time to keep up with new material. 

The College day runs from 9am to 6pm.  Excluding Wednesday afternoon and allowing one hour for lunch, the College week is 36 hours long.  Depending on your work habits, you might split the hours of private study between, say, ten hours during the College week and ten hours spread (unevenly) over evenings and the weekend.  This allows ample time for leisure activities.  Private study includes reviewing the day’s lecture notes, reading textbooks, tackling problem sheets distributed by lecturers, attempting previous examination questions, writing laboratory reports and completing classwork solutions.

It is essential that you keep up to date with lectures.  Once you fall behind it becomes much harder to follow the lecture material and then the problems will escalate.  Make sure you understand each lecture before the next lecture in the course takes place.  Do not put off doing problem sheets until shortly before the exam.  It is much better to get into a routine of doing these in the few days after they are distributed. If you do find you are struggling talk to the lecturer during office hours.  Note that each weekly problem sheet in years 1 & 2 will contain a problem which you will be asked to submit for assessment.

Procrastination is sometimes a way of avoiding fear of failure.  In tackling physics problems you will frequently get stuck or make mistakes.  It is an irritating but essential part of learning the subject and very satisfying when you overcome the difficulties.  Make your mistakes early rather than leaving them until the period just before exams.  This will allow you to get help and advice in good time.  Finding out that you do not understand something only when you start revision imposes great nervous strain and forces you to depend on short-term memory, rather than developing real long-term knowledge and understanding which you can use to solve problems.

College is not school. At school you were one of the top science students in your year and you probably understood the content more quickly and, if you were lucky, with less effort than your classmates.  That level of achievement is the average for students in this department.  If you act as though you are much smarter than your fellow (university) students and think that you need not work too hard, then you are not smart at all.  Remember that the physics programmes are designed for very able students, so you will need to work hard to keep up.

Never be embarrassed to ask questions, whether in tutorials or the laboratory – tutors and demonstrators are there to help you.  Never forget that, as a student, you have an absolute right to be wrong (if you knew it all, you wouldn’t be a student).