Get your summer semester off on the right foot by learning how to read smarter, not harder (or longer)!

Graduate Writing Facilitator Jennesia Pedri has generously shared with us a Reading Guide that she created to support her own reading during her comprehensive exams for her doctoral studies in the School of Communications. As Jennesia explains, the guide aims to help you read more efficiently and effectively. It also aims to make itself obsolete: eventually you won’t need it because you’ll begin to automatically ask yourself these kinds of questions as you read.

The Student Learning Commons is scouting out new talent for our Writing and Learning Peer and English as Additional Language Peer programs. 

Both positions will allow you to develop transferable skills in the areas of client service, interpersonal skills, giving effective feedback, and cross-cultural communication, and will give you access to a professional reference as well as a private study/social space in the library.

We hope you will join our team! Apply now through http://myinvolvement.sfu.ca

I'm sure I don't have to mention that it is exam time! In this blog post, Donya Samadi --  PhD student in Educational Psychology and former Graduate Facilitator with the SLC -- shares how the concept of self-explanation can be applied to studying. 

Self-explanation, Donya explains, may be beneficial because information previously learned is recalled and integrated with new information to generate a self-explanation. In this way, self-explanation is a connection and elaboration to prior knowledge. When engaged in self-explanations, learners can develop new meaningful associations, and further understand the content they are studying. 

Part-two of Eric Cai's top tips for excelling in university classes that require math and problem-solving. 

Want to know more about Eric? Read his In Common welcome interview here. 

Many university classes require a lot of math and problem-solving. Eric Cai, the former SLC Peer and guest blogger who we introduced just before the holiday closure, shares his top tips on how to excel in these challenging courses in a two-part series.  

In Common welcomes former SLC Peer Eric Cai as a guest blogger. In his posts, he will focus on study and communication skills for students in math and science. Learn more about Eric in the following email interview.

By Daniel Chang

PhD candidate and SLC Graduate Writing Facilitator Daniel Chang offers some important reminders and tips to help take you through the end of the Fall 2018 academic term. 

By Alexandra Patzak, SLC Graduate Learning Facilitator & PhD Candidate in Educational Psychology 

Your assignment is due next week.

It’s totally okay to put it off for a while... Right? 

In this blog post, Alex takes a close look at procrastination and how it can stop you from accomplishing your goals and result in unnecessary stress. 

Globe and Mail reporter Diane Jermyn wrote a report on November 1st 2018 titled "Seven tips to help you deal with academic pressures." 

In gathering her tips, she turned to the experts including the SLC's own Learning Services Coordinators, Ruth Silverman and Dal Sohal. 

This post features an interview between Mariam, a Writing and Learning Peer with the Student Learning Commons, and Ghezal, a student in Criminology and Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies and an SLC client.

In this interview, Ghezal talks about her tips for busy students and shares her perspective on using the Student Learning Commons as an academic resource.