During the recent Wimbledon season, I watched the Andy Murray: Resurfacing documentary (Cappuccini, 2019). I was awestruck by Murray’s tenacity and endurance as he rode a rollercoaster of pain, surgery, rehabilitation and setbacks to try to stay at the top of his game. I’m similarly impressed by students who pick themselves up from what can feel like a gut punch of not passing their modules and climb aboard the rollercoaster of resubmission. Just as Murray was surrounded by family, friends, coaches, physios and had exercise plans and timetables to help him get back on track, being in resubmission doesn’t mean having to go it alone. This blog post shares examples of support available to students facing up to the challenge of resubmission. The post signposts to resources and guidance for common areas that students have told us they need to develop to navigate the resubmission process succesfully.
Feedback
Tutors take time to clarify what needs to be developed and addressed in an assignment in order to pass so spend time reading over your feedback. Below are some resources and guidance to help you process and apply feedback:
Blog post: Making feedback work for you
Videos: How to work with your feedback; Setting SMART goals for feedback
skills@cumbria webpage: Working with feedback resources & guides
Time management
Resubmission can feel like a highly pressurised and overwhelming time. Use these time management resources to take back control of your time and energy.
Snacksize videos: Time management – 3 key questions; The Pomodoro Technique
Blog posts: Getting stuff done when you don’t want to do stuff; Understanding Procrastination
Time Management page for more tips & strategies, including Time Management resource
Referencing academic sources
Skills@cumbria provide lots of referencing guidance on the Referencing and Avoiding Plagiarism webpage, which includes various Quick Guides, as well as tutorials, FAQs and more on all aspects of Referencing. As well as being accurate with your citation and reference formatting, your tutor’s feedback might also encourage you to search for, analyse and evaluate more quality, academic sources. See the Finding Information, Reading, and Being Critical webpages for guidance on finding and critically engaging with academic sources.
Resubmission – an opportunity for rewriting
For professional writers, first drafts never hit the mark and rewriting is the key to success. If there’s any silver lining about being in resubmission, maybe it’s the opportunity to step back, view our writing from a more critical distance, and learn how to improve it. Many students find that this experience doesn’t just improve their writing for the particular assignments they need to resubmit, but also helps them become better rewriters for future assignments. To support you with rewriting your resubmission, check out the Quick Guide to Academic Writing (PDF). This summary guide provides an overview to quickly dip into the area you want to develop. There’s also the skills@cumbria Writing at University page for a more comprehensive guide to writing development.
If you’re looking for academic, library and digital skills support about other areas, visit our skills@cumbria online resources for more guidance. See our Need More Help page for information about ways we work alongside students to support your academic work, including 1 to 1 appointments and the skills@cumbria email service. Remember that you can use the Student Enquiry Point to contact any team in Student Services for further support. Just click on the Student Enquiry Point tile in the Student Hub. And finally … all the best for successfully riding that resubmission rollercoaster; you’ve got this!
