In schools teachers often talk about planning your time. But how do you do this? How do you plan your time effectively? Planning is difficult and you need to practice it but what is even more difficult is to do what you have planned. Planning is only the first part the second part so to execute the plan.

You can use different tools for planning, a calendar in your phone, computer, on paper it doesn't matter where you do your plan as long as you do it. At the moment I use google calendar but I will change into a paper calender as soon as the one I have is valid, which will be in the end of November.

In you weekly plan you first have to think about what days during the week am I booked? It can be practice, lectures, meetings, work anything that is set, that you cannot move. All the time that is left you need to figure out when to do what. You need to include studies in your plan, be sure to pinpoint what you are going to study not just that you are going to study but what. Then you also have to include time for meeting friends or doing other things such as, shopping, going to the cinema and so forth. To make it easier to get started with making your weekly plan choose a specific day of the week when you are going to do the planning. For example, Sundays, it's the last day of the week and you have the whole next week before you and your week start on the Monday and maybe you have to start studying for that test.

Want some more ideas about planning check out this short youtube clip: 

I have decided I want to study abroad. First I wanted to go to England but that is not really possible for me as a teacker trainee since it is very difficult to find courses that suit my studies at my home univeristy. Instead I'm going to the US after one of my preofessors told me that there are three universities where it is easy to find courses that are suitable and where other students have gone and been really happy with it. 

I decided to look further into San Francisco and Duluth. I kind of think that I'm leaning more against Duluth than San Francisco and the reason why is because of the courses that are available. In Duluth there where a lot more courses and I found many that would be interesting and hopefully I will get to study some of them, keep your fingers crossed guys. The sexond reason is kind of lame but Duluth university's webpage was a lot easier to navigate and find the courses than San Francisco, which I think is really bad since I think it should be easy to find what you can study at a university. 

Since I'm probably going to the US I will get housing through the university and don't have to find an appartement on my own which I believe is a really nice benefit. Knowing beforehand that you will have somewhere to live when you get there is really calming in one way, on the other hand it is also a bit scary since you probably will share rooms with other students. But more about that when we get that far.

It is anot always the motivation is on top when you have to study. I once heard someone say don't feel so much just do it. At times I can find it difficult to study, when I think the assignment is unclear, or it is a lot to read, or you are just not in the mood for actually spending time studying when you can do something else that is a lot more fun.

Like today, I started to bake bread instead of picking up The Good Research Guide and read the chapter about Ethnography. Knowing that if I don't do it today I have to do it tomorrow since the seminar is on Monday. And I also know that I have to read a 30 page article tomorrow for the same seminar, so in my study plan I divided the reading so that I wouldn't need to read everything on the same day.

At the moment we are reading about speaking in class. Students need to practice speaking but how do you de this in a fun and not intimidating way? Well, according to The Practice of English Language Teaching by Jeremy Harmer students often feel anxious when they are supposed to speak, and this is because students are often asked to speak without giving them time to prepare what they are going to say or that they have to speak in front of the entire class. Dividing the students into smaller groups and giving them some time to think about how they would say something I belive would be a valuable way of getting students to speak. I also believe that you as a teacher shouldn't interupt your students to correct them when they speak but encurage them to use the language. 

There are a lot of things happening right now in my life, there is studies, obviously, work and something a bit more exciting if everything works out. I might go to the US to study in the Spring of 2018. Yes, it seems far away but apparently you have to apply before the 1st of December so I still have one month to get everything together. I will try to explain the process of applying and things I have been thinking of and will think of during this whole process.

First, you have to decide where you want to go. This is not as easy as it sounds since you have to pick a place where you can take courses that are similar to those you are going to take at your home university at that semester in order to be able to transfer the credits. Otherwise you will have to study one term extra to make up for the term you missed. 

Second, you have to find courses and get them approved by the examinor at your university. This part would have been a lot easier if anybody knew who the hell is examinating the courses I will take but apparently nothing is every going to be easy right? So here came my first bump in the road. It was superhard to find someone who actually could answer my question "Who should I talk to?". At my university the teacher programme is not part of a faculty, which means I don't belong to a certain faculty which means that I don't have anyone who really works with students who want to go abroad and can help them. My second difficulty at this stage was also that during the semester on which I might go I'm studying history. Hurray for that I got accepted but the thing is history isn't really part of any faculty either and is kind of an inbetweener. Fourtunalty I have an amazing professor at the English faculty who is really that kind of person who takes time to find you an answer and it doesn't matter what you are asking. 

Right now in my plans I'm at the part where I look for possible courses at mainly two universities, San Francisco state university and Duluth univeristy in Minnesota. On Monday I have a meeting with the examinor of the course and hopefully I have managed to find some suitable courses.

Since I'm probably going abroad to study in the US in the Spring of 2018 I was thinking that I might tell you guys about the process of choosing where to go, applying, the hinders that might occur and how I manage to get around them. Going abroad is such a big thing today and it is a really valuable experience which many employers really value when hiring. I have already been to Oxford, England studying English for one month and it was amazing going somewhere else and see something new. 

The application process is the first thing I will tell you about. I will also write about my thoughts and feelings about the universities I have in mind and why or why not I want to go there. Furthermore, I will tell you about all the preparations and finally I will blogg about what I'm doing on my term abroad, if I get in that is. There are tests that I need to do and the application process is long and difficult since a lot of students want to go and there aren't places for everyone.

I hope you will enjoy reading about this adventure!

Well, it has been two days of the new course and we are already drowning in work. Like okey it's university but there are still limits to what we can do, we are only humans. Teachers often forget that students have a lot to do especially students at upper secondary school since they have mutliple subjects at the same time and I remember how we could have 5 tests in one week, plus papers that needed to be handed in and other homework. It's really incredible how teachers don't communicate with each other and plan their tests and bigger papers so that the students don't need to have everything at the same time.

At university it is a bit different, most of the time you only have one course at a time (we are a bit different and have atleast 2) but it's manageble. Until this new teacher of ours who believe that we have all the time in the world just because we only have 2 seminars/week. Teachers who overdo things is not really liked by the students and hey thats not their job either, but I believe that students will learn more if the teachers respect that students need time to recover to. 

Studying at university is a fulltime job and when we go home from university in the afternoon many think that yeah now you are free to do whatever you want. They don't understand that studying at university is a 24/7 job if you wan't to make it. You can maybe take the weekend off if you have studied at least 8-9 hours everyday not including seminars, lectures or group work but individual studying where you read up on everything, start planning you exam, try to find a suitable topic and so forth.