If you’d rather listen to this newsletter, click here. (This one is slightly different from the usual, more personal and emotional. Try listening.) It’s holiday time, and many of you are going home for the first time since leaving to come to university. As you pack your bags, take a moment to pause and breathe. In this year, starting your … 22 June 2026 – Going Home

If you’d rather listen to this newsletter, click here. You’re halfway through your exams, and you’re exhausted. You must find the strength and the energy – the GRIT – to keep going in the last stretch. How does one do that?! Prof Angela Duckworth of the University of Pennsylvania in America wrote a book called “GRIT: The Power … 15 June 2026 – GRIT

If you’d rather listen to this newsletter, click here. It’s exam time, often a time of stress and tension. Next week we’ll give you some support in dealing with that stress and finding the grit you need to get you through, but for now it’s about the practical stuff: how to give your absolute best when you sit … 08 June 2026 – Writing Exams with Confidence

If you’d rather listen to this newsletter, click here. With the mid-year exams upon you, sleep is probably the last on your list of priorities at the moment. Let’s talk about that. Brain Science teaches us that physical changes occur in the brain when we learn. It is similar to when you work out in the gym – your muscles … 01 June 2026 – Sleep in Order to Learn

If you’d rather listen to this newsletter, click here. How’s it going with your studies? Have you been keeping to your schedule and using the pomodoro technique, as we discussed last week? Good for you! Here’s another reminder of one the great tools we have introduced before, to help you use your study time as effectively as possible. … 25 May 2026 – Effective Study: Spaced Repetition

If you’d rather listen to this newsletter, click here. Last week we talked about that big dark shadow, fear of failure. The first step to overcoming it, we said, is to face it. Name it to tame it. What exactly are you afraid of? Define it. Then, secondly, focus on what you can control, and thirdly, take action. This week we pick … 18 May 2026 – Beating Procrastination

If you’d rather listen to this newsletter, click here. This week we’re talking deep stuff that few of us will acknowledge, even to ourselves, but most of us have experienced: fear of failure. That paralysing conviction that you’ll never be able to do this, whatever “this” is. You’ll never understand calculus, or the Middle English poem you have … 11 May 2026 – Fear of Failure

If you’d rather listen to this newsletter, click here. We hear about misinformation and fake news every day. People lose money to scammers. It seems like you cannot trust anything or anybody. How can you know what to believe? How do you evaluate information? It may sound weird, but the first step is to trust yourself. Trust your common sense. … 04 May 2026 – Handling Information: Staying Safe Online

If you’d rather listen to this newsletter, click here. If you have been using the section on study methods in GRAD, you will have come across the name of Dr Barbara Oakley. She’s the one who failed Mathematics in high school and yet became a professor of Engineering after she upgraded her Maths using knowledge from brain science … 27 April 2026 – Working with AI to Study more Effectively

If you’d rather listen to this newsletter, click here. We’re well into the academic year. Even those of you who had never met a computer before coming to university, know that computers and the digital world are an essential, very rich part of this new journey. Use it. Always try and learn more. As you get used to Excel … 20 April 2026 – Handling Information 2: Digital Literacy using AI