Academic Strategies

Let us be your personal academic strategist.

Organized Minds provides individualized strategies for supporting and improving your academic efforts:

We aid you in the implementation of academic accommodations.

We help you develop key skills to promote academic success.

We begin with understanding. By identifying what academic work you struggle with, we help you prepare for, limit, and mitigate the taxing effort that work demands of you.

Developing key skills

We help you develop key skills that are important tools for any student.

Subsidies for Academic Strategies

Your institution may offer you subsidies for our Academic Strategies service. Official ADHD diagnosis usually qualify our funding. Contact us for more information, and we can point you in the right direction or even help you access funding.

Identifying and implementing academic accommodations

Whether you feel unsure, unmotivated, or uncomfortable about asking for accommodations, we help you connect with your institution to request and implement what you need:

We show you how to plan for accommodations.
We show you how to ask for them.
We show you how to fill out the paperwork.

Tackling procrastination

Students procrastinate to avoid difficult or overwhelming tasks. This avoidance can lead to stress.

We help you develop strategies to manage procrastination and stress. These strategies include planning manageable steps toward accomplishing your tasks. Manageable steps encourage you to initiate and complete tasks instead of avoiding them.

Our Executive Skills Training service is also an excellent resource for tackling procrastination.

Taking notes

Many students face challenges when taking notes. We help you determine how and why:

Maybe your instructors speak more quickly than you process language.
Perhaps your handwriting speed lags behind your listening speed.
Maybe your learning style predisposes you to other methods of recording information.
Probably no one took the time to teach you note taking skills.

However you struggle, we’ll help you identify it. Then we draw on a wide range of note-taking strategies to address your unique set of challenges. You will learn how to use your strengths to overcome your weaknesses, how to recognize social cues to determine the importance of lecture content, and how to obtain assistance from your institution.

Our Note Taking Support service is also an excellent resource for note-taking skills.

Improving study skills

Students need to remember course content in order to succeed in writing tests and exams. We teach you strategies for studying that are tailored to your learning style, such as for aural, physical, or visual learning. These strategies will improve your ability to recall information when writing tests and exams.

“When you understand your strengths, you also understand your weaknesses.”

Clarifying your vocational direction

Students benefit from guidance when selecting their area of study and career path. So we help you identify your strengths. When you understand your strengths, you also understand your weaknesses. Knowing your weaknesses helps you understand which paths to avoid. With this understanding, we help you determine your vocational direction by:

Identifying which subjects and careers suit your strengths.
Flagging subjects and careers in which you would face significant difficulties or disadvantages.

With this knowledge, you can make informed choices about your vocational direction.

Navigating interpersonal dynamics

Many students face academic challenges when they neglect the social component of learning. We help you understand the nature of approaching others, and we coach you to self-advocate and to negotiate your needs with those of your peers and instructors.

With Organized Minds, you will learn how to accomplish the following:

Working in groups.
Talking to instructors so that they hear and listen to you.
Finding solutions for getting the most from your learning environment.

Managing your time

To be successful, students must manage their time effectively. Coursework, jobs, chores, self care, and social and family obligations all compete for students’ time and energy. We help you estimate the time and effort you need to accomplish your tasks. And we help you review and update these timelines to promote academic success.

Our Executive Skills Training service is also an excellent resource for time-management skills.

How often do we meet for Academic Strategies?

We recommend at least one hour per week for Academic Strategies. Longer sessions are ideal near deadlines, exams, and other busy times of term. Consider booking longer recurring sessions if you want to include any of our other services.

It takes ongoing, collaborative work to discover your learning profile, find solutions for your learning challenges, and advocate for your learning needs. You can expect the best results when you keep an open mind and participate in our process. Let Organized Minds help you along the way.