My semester starts from tomorrow *sigh*. Three more months of working & working & working.
So true.
“Anyone who says they have only one life to live must not know how to read a book.” 📙❤️
After a long time a study session for Deutsch. #studyblr #studygram #languagelearning #langblr #studying https://www.instagram.com/p/Bs0UXBhhWgH/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=13sg8rv0iacfq
Go study for your finals. Write that paper and finish that presentation. Study those flash cards. Stop procrastinating, have more trust in you and get off your phone.
I hope you wake up early enough to put on your favorite outfit and make your favorite breakfast. I hope you find your skin clear and hair healthy. I hope you’re content with the way your body looks. I hope you get good grade on that exam you’ve been anxious about, and that presentation you have passes smoothly. I hope you find happiness in small things today. I hope that, even with your ups and downs, you are content with yourself.
Hi guys! So this will officially be my first ever study masterpost. My grades have been going up this year, and I thought of sharing all of my tips and secrets to a 4.0 gpa. It’s definetly not easy, but if you work hard it will eventually happen.
Organization - Keep a separate binder/folder for each of your classes - Pencil Case- pens, pencils, highlighters, ruler, sticky notes, erasers - Macbook/iphone: make sure your devices are organized as well, and everything is easy for you to access - Start a bullet journal/planner to keep your life together. - Have notebooks for your lecture and reading notes - Make sure your handwriting is legible and nice. Practice makes perfect - Plan your outfits and organize your school bag the night before - Start homework/assignments 3 weeks early, don’t leave anything on the day of or the day before its due - Study for 5-7hrs everyday. But good grades aren’t everything. Have a blanced lifestyle, sleep for 8hrs, and go out with your friends.
Lectures - arrive 10/15m early - Go to every class - sit at the front or second row - I use onenotes to take notes, and will transfer them to notebook format. Do whatever format you like - Review your notes right after, or the next day
Readings - finish your readings before each lecture - i take notes from textbook using studyign method - try to understand, and if you can’t get it watch videos on youtube
Exams - Study 2/3 weeks before. - Create a list of topics you need to study - Review readings and lecture notes - Do make additional notes for the main topics Essays - Choose your topic - Create a rough outline and brainstorm ideas - Research, but make sure your arguments are stronger. Research is mainly used for evidence to support your own arguments. - Make sure your rough draft is concise enough - Use the refme app or easybib to keep track of your sources - Edit your essay- 2 times Other - Join the studyblr community. I have actually enjoyed studying, after creating a study blog. People are so nice. Highly recommend! - Don’t get discouraged by negative people. Don’t ever let anyone tell you “your not good enough”. - “You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do”- Carl Jung - Don’t tell all of your plans and ambitions in detail to anyone, just show - Focus on your hobbies as well, like playing an instrument, youtube, makeup, reading, writing, and art - Study what you love. Have a great day! - Tara
I was so proud of myself when I received firsts (that’s A’s for those not attending uni in the UK) on all of my assessments in my first year at university. Here are some tips for y’all to try at any point in university. They may be specific at times to my experience—my degree is in the social sciences and humanities, and I’m studying in the UK—but I did try to make them more generally applicable, and hopefully they should be helpful to someone out there.
Before the start of the academic year, try to get in a little bit of preparation. See if there are any syllabi or reading lists posted online. You don’t have to pour over them, of course, but do attempt to do something, and have a basic grasp on what will be covered in your classes.
Go to all your lectures and seminars. Unless you absolutely have to miss class because you are ill or have an important obligation to take care of, it’s really important to attend your lectures every day. (Note: if you are struggling with mental or chronic illness or a disability, don’t beat yourself up if you keep missing class. Please take care of yourself.) You may be tempted to just look at the PowerPoint presentation online, but it’s much more effective to be there in person. Often the lecturer may include information or extra explanations which are not included in the presentation. It will also allow you to process the information aurally as well as visually, and you will have the added benefit of taking notes too. You may also be able to ask questions.
Do all the pre-reading for lectures. I know it’s tempting to put it off, but try to work it into your daily routine (because you will have reading to do every day). Inevitably, there will be times where you slip up and don’t have time to finish. If this happens, make sure you catch up on it at some point, because it’s very important to solidifying the concepts you are learning about. Also, the more you read in general, the better you will become at reading (and also writing).
Take diligent notes (for both your lectures and pre-reading), and keep them organized. I prefer to handwrite in a notebook, as it helps me synthesize information rather than just typing it out verbatim—but it is totally up to you. If you do use a notebook, make a table of contents on the first page, where you write the date, topic, class, and page numbers of each set of notes you take. I think it’s a great idea to include your own thoughts and opinions in notes, or linking concepts you are learning to concepts you already know about.
If you have the time, make sure to be reading books/essays/articles and engaging with ideas outside of your regular syllabus. This is one of the most important techniques (in my experience, at least) when it comes to writing essays and answering exam questions. Evidence of wider reading around a topic is a great way to boost the credibility of your argument. It also does wonders to solidify and broaden your conceptualization of certain ideas you may have covered in your classes.
Where possible, try to contribute (as much as you feel comfortable) in seminars. If you are very quiet and reserved, that is totally okay too. I’m with you. But it has helped me tremendously in the past year to push myself to speak up more often in seminars. Talking in seminars allows you to clarify concepts and engage more deeply with the material being discussed (and it might impress your seminar tutor too, though this is secondary to the learning in my opinion).
If you have some nerdy-ass friends, talk with them about your ideas and what you’re both learning in your courses. I can’t tell you the number of essays I’ve written which actually have blossomed out of conversations I’ve had with friends, where they’ve exposed me to topics I’d never heard of before or broadened my view of a concept. Learning from each other in a casual and fun setting is amazing!
When you are given notice about big assignments coming up, such as essays or group projects, try to start working on them ASAP. Trust me, I know how hard it is. This is coming from someone who has dealt for years with chronic procrastination issues and nearly didn’t graduate from high school because of it. But you must start planning as soon as you possibly can, because the due date will come screaming up and before you know it, it’ll be the night before the deadline and you won’t have a clue what you’re writing about. Work it into your daily schedule if you have to. One great tip is to write down the deadline as being earlier (say, a week earlier) than what it actually is. This will prompt you to start earlier than you normally would have.
Do a shitload of reading, widely, from multiple sources. Read everything you can on the topic you are doing your assignment on. For a basic literature review, this means looking through at least 20+ sources. That doesn’t mean carefully perusing each one front to back; it means looking through all the relevant literature to find a few great sources which will really give you a coherent argument and a big picture of the topic at hand.
Keep your sources organized. I use Paperpile, which is a Chrome extension that allows you to save and organize academic sources. I make a folder for each assessment I am working on, and anything I find relevant to my topic, I save it to the folder. This will be a life saver for you when you actually go to plan your paper and also do the referencing.
Content is important, but perhaps even more important is your argument and structure. This mostly applies to essays, but you can apply it to other types of assessments too. Try not to structure your argument in terms of blocks of content—e.g. Paragraph 1 is about Topic A, Paragraph 2 is about Topic B—but rather in terms of how you are laying out your argument. Make sure each part of your essay flows into the next, so that you are, for example, setting up a kind of dialogue or narrative between the different sources you’re using. Also ensure that any point you are making clearly relates back to your main thesis.
If you’re a perfectionist like me: train yourself to remember that there is no such thing as perfect. Try to imagine what the perfect essay would be like. Can you imagine it? It’s probably pretty difficult, right? That’s because there is no such thing as a perfect assignment. Remind yourself of this, constantly. Tell yourself that you will be okay with just doing your very best. If you think about it logically: handing in something that is perhaps not your best ever, but handing it in on time and doing pretty well, is infinitely better than attempting to have a “perfect” essay but handing it in late and failing the assignment.
I hope this helped some of you! Best of luck and happy studying this year—go knock ‘em out! xo
What today has been in 3 words:- coding in bed. https://www.instagram.com/p/BpWY4p8Dd9o/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=15049swijues1