Skip to content

‘Wiggle room’

Photo by Jared Belson

Every assignment is a creative process, during which you learn and develop your skills. You need to build in time and breathing space for your work to flourish. Assignments involve many stages: understanding the task; researching, reading and note taking; planning your submission; writing; reviewing and editing; and final polishing. When you start an assignment, you don’t know all the problems you’re going to encounter. If you did, there would be little point in doing the assignment; after all, it is supposed to stretch you. So build in ‘wiggle room’ – extra time you don’t think you need – for those unforeseen difficulties. Start early, pace yourself and build in at least 25 per cent wiggle room. After completing an assignment, reflect on how it went. To produce high-quality work you might need to start even earlier and build in more wiggle room. It can make all the difference between an average grade and a high one.

Trevor Day
6 June 2018


Related articles

Keeping revision fresh

Keep changing what you are studying to keep revision fresh.

Time and space to play

When you start a new assignment, try to allow yourself the freedom to think creatively about it, in a relaxed way.

Let your unconscious do the work

This is how to harness the power of your unconscious to help you with writing assignments and problem solving in general.

Back To Top