I recently completed my master's degree in Psychology, from Southern New Hampshire University, all while balancing a full-time job as a courseroom manager. What a courseroom manager entails is that of creating content for online graduate and doctoral programs, as well as managing classes and grading assignments. Ultimately, I help create instructional assignments, reading material, as well as find research material, that is used in different courses across the university. These assignments and material become standard for the university to use in each course. I also act as both a chair and an SME (subject matter expert) for doctoral students, where I edit student's dissertations and help them through the long (roughly 5 years) program. Needless to say, I've picked up a lot of tips and tricks to help on both the educational front, as well as career front, to help ensure success. I had all of these tips written down for my own use but thought it would be beneficial to share!
Tip 1: Download the free version of Grammarly (which you can add as an extension to your browser). This will help to automatically underline any misspelled word or grammatical/formatting error that may be present in sentences. Now, this helps me when I am going through emails really fast, to make sure everything is spelled correctly and is coherent. Also, when I was in school, as well as when I grade student's papers and edit dissertations, I use the Grammarly extension for Word, which helps a tremendous amount.
Tip 2: This is mostly for those still in school: engage in the courseroom. You are guaranteed to pass the course as long as you submit something for each module/unit (and as long as your post is relevant to the prompt). Also, make sure that you have a good balance between those statements and examples that are taken from outside sources, as well as your own ideas. Utilize sources to bridge the gap between your ideas and assumptions of something. However, make sure that each statement that is not your own is cited! This may seem repetitive, but I can't tell you how many people would get A's if they just did this. A little secret is that when grading and editing papers, while we want to make sure that you understood the content, your papers are subjective, therefore as long as you back up your ideas and statements, you will do well.
Another school tip is to utilize the library catalogs to find published literature, as well as use Google Scholar. If you do a simple regular Google search for the topic you are studying, and you come across a non-peer-reviewed article (for example, articles in Psychology Today), don't use the information straight from there. At the bottom of the article, there are all the sources that the author utilized, go to THOSE sources, and obtain the information from those resources.
Tip 3: Whether at work or at school, ask questions, or if you are more of a visual learner, ask for training in that form. While you may be hesitant, sucking up your pride and asking for instructions, directions, or work descriptions to be worded in a different way will save you time in the long run, from having to redo the work in the future if you didn't understand it in the first place. Ask your fellow coworkers and peers if you have questions. Utilize them!! I can't tell you how often I have collaborated with my coworkers to figure out how to do something, or I've stayed late at the office to help walk others through how to do a certain job task.
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