Just started the bl**dy things myself, distance learning + commuting + job, blah blah same as everyone else I spose. Anyway, I'm only 2 weeks in, and I have already found the nice regulated regime I had planned (mon - thurs 2-3hrs then 5 hrs sun) has gone the way of the pear. It is just not realistic, despite the fact WAGN railway's incompetence is actually helping me (stuck on a train = study time!!).
What is going to get me through (and I too have been a useless student most of my life) is basically my interest in the subject matter. I actually want to learn this stuff - not just because I need to to jump through some hoops to move on to the next stage. Despite its limited relevance in some places (so far) to pressing buttons on a 747 (not what I'm after anyway btw), it's mostly stuff that has been relevant to pilots at some point during history... though I am really struggling with all this which way-round-does-a-straight-line-bend-on-what-type-of-map stuff!! You have to be interested in it.
Anyway, that's probably not much help since you either are interested or aren't, so here's a tip that got me through a part time postgrad degree:
Mozart. Pretty much anything by him. Play him in the background, quietly. It's been scientifically proven that listening to Mozart makes your brain more active, something about the specific mathematical wave patterns all his stuff has. It could just be me of course! Good luck.
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