Study Smart: Everything they forgot to tell you about university

University isn’t just about getting a degree. It’s about what happens to you while you’re getting one.

Study Smart: Everything They Forgot to Tell You About University is a practical guide to studying — but it is also a book about why we study in the first place.

Yes, you’ll find advice on how to read academic books and journal articles, write better assignments, think critically, manage your attention, use AI wisely, work ethically and cope when things don’t quite go to plan. But this isn’t a collection of study hacks designed simply to help you get through your next assignment.

University should do something more than fill your head with information. At its best, it changes the way you think. It teaches you to ask better questions, weigh evidence, challenge assumptions, communicate ideas clearly and become comfortable with sometimes saying, I don’t know yet.

Drawing on years of teaching university students, Stephen J. Mordue explores the things that higher education often expects students to somehow already know: how university works, what lecturers are actually looking for, why academic reading feels so difficult, what critical thinking really means, how to make your writing clearer, and why struggling with something can be evidence that you are learning rather than evidence that you don’t belong.

Along the way, Study Smart tackles the hidden curriculum of university, the battle for your attention in a permanently distracted world, the difference between learning and simply completing tasks, and the opportunities — and temptations — presented by AI.

Written in straightforward, conversational language, this is a book for new students, returning students, first-generation students, and anyone who has ever looked around a university classroom and wondered whether everybody else has been given a set of instructions they somehow missed.

There are tips. There are strategies. There are things you can start doing differently tomorrow.

But the bigger idea is simple:

University isn’t about proving how clever you already are. It’s about becoming more capable than you were when you arrived.

You’re not just earning a degree.

You’re learning how to learn, how to think — and perhaps how to see the world a little differently.

Book Details
Format: Paperback
Pages: [101]
ISBN: [9798192620755]