Eat An Apple While Reading Shakespeare Outside I Dare You

stop believing that you ran out of time to shape yourself into who you want to be! stop believing that its ruined! stop believing you don’t have potential! you are not a fixed being! you have endless opportunities to grow.

Feb 21 ‘19 ~ my class schedule makes me so exhausted I have to do all my homework on the weekends cause I just. Can’t. After classes when I come home at like 5pm😶 here I’m reading through some physics notes

im in a good place rn. not emotionally. just in my room

This is a summary of college only using two pictures; expensive as hell.

That’s my Sociology “book”. In fact what it is is a piece of paper with codes written on it to allow me to access an electronic version of a book. I was told by my professor that I could not buy any other paperback version, or use another code, so I was left with no option other than buying a piece of paper for over $200. Best part about all this is my professor wrote the books; there’s something hilariously sadistic about that. So I pretty much doled out $200 for a current edition of an online textbook that is no different than an older, paperback edition of the same book for $5; yeah, I checked. My mistake for listening to my professor.

This is why we download. 

 Alternatives to buying overpriced textbooks

Textbooknova 

Reddit

Bookboon 

Textbookrevolution 

GaTech Math Textbooks

Ebookee 

Freebookspot 

Free-ebooks

Getfreeebooks 

BookFinder

Oerconsortium 

Project Gutenberg

Just vacated beds are sometimes comforting or pleasing to look at.

avousmorne

60 Tips for IB - from a 45 pointer

A lot of people have been asking me about general tips for surviving IB and how I got 45 points. If I’m honest I think the difference between 40 and 45 points is just pure, dumb luck, but at least here are some tips to getting up to the 40 -points level :D

This is a list of tips my friend and I wrote right after our IB exams. We were feeling quite high at the moment, so I had to edit some of the tips so you could actually take the advice seriously…

1. HAPPINESS FIRST DO WHATEVER YOU CAN TO KEEP YOURSELF HAPPY

2. Don’t do “homework” at home!!!

3. Find a study buddy

4. Proceed to ignore everyone but your study buddy

5. Not your dog though

6. Escape from your family / responsibilities (e.g. do your homework abroad, in someone else’s basement, coffee shops, libraries, group rooms at school, sneak into university study halls etcetc. The possibilities are endless)

7. Set yourself a time limit for doing the TOK Essay. (Don’t do it two weekends in a row, you will go crazy)

8. Don’t attempt to finish the EE in one day

9. Remind your science teacher about the IA. It’s for your own good.

10. Whether it’s 5am or 2am, figure out when you work best and stick to it.

11. Don’t think you’ll learn stuff in class. Seriously. Read the books instead, and use classes as revision / sleep time / relaxing time.

12. Mark schemes will be your best teacher. 

13. Write syllabus notes FROM THE VERY START.

14. You won’t understand TOK but at least try to have fun with it.

15. Don’t forget about CAS, but don’t spend too much time on it either.

16. Install “StayFocusd” but don’t go nuclear option for a week

17. Memorize the opening hours of the public study areas in your vicinity 

18. Listen to Christmas music if you’re sad

19. Get a whiteboard for revision

20. Physics students: buy the Tsokos revision guide

21. Chemistry students: YouTube Richard Thornley 

22. Biology students: YouTube Alex Lee

23. Read the language books during the summer

24. Don’t give a fuck about English B…but TAKE ENGLISH B IF YOU CAN

25. Don’t choose science as your EE subject (unless you have a super smart and helpful and amazing supervisor)

26. Love your teachers, see them as your friend. They’re adorable.

27. Love yourself too

28. Making a plan (without necessarily following it) will help calm you down

29. 8tracks have amazing playlists

30. Dictionaries are cool

31. Thesaurus.com is cooler

32. Watch TV shows all year round to get your mind off things, just not season finales right before the exams

33. Cry it out

34. Shout it out

35. Drink it out

36. Just don’t get too drunk or violent that’s bad

37. Your nerdy classmates are your friends and teachers

38. Bring coffee / tea to school, if you make it to school

39. It’s OK to skip school for school

40. Waste money on school shit, you’ll earn it back in the future

41. If you can afford it, go to Lanterna summer course. You might get friends from other countries who’ll be able to help you throughout the year, by exchanging resources etc.

42. Make puns about nerdy stuff (like, about life, the universe and everything)

43. Be proud of being a nerd, everyone knows it already

44. EAT

45. SLEEP (sometimes it’s worth skipping school for)

46. Some teachers are nice about students sleeping in class

47. Concentrate when doing IA experiments though, take notes, or even better: film it

48. By the way, FILMING can reduce a lot of errors in science experiments. Write that as an improvement in your evaluation part!!

49. Question banks can be found, if you know where to look

50. Don’t care about other people’s grades

51. Don’t care too much about your own grades either. You’ll survive either way. Calm down. “Chillax”. 

52. Don’t do TOK presentation alone.

53. WHAT DOESN’T KILL YOU MAKES YOU STRONGER (uni will be a piece of cake for you. also u can puke out a 4-paged-essay, proof-read and everything, in less than an hour, handwritten. amazing)

54. IB therefore I BS

55. Decorate your wall with IB gems

56. You’ll learn a lot from teaching others / making up games / doing past papers. Don’t just read books and highlight. Don’t just listen to the teachers. You won’t remember shit that way.

57. I repeat, DON’T JUST TRUST THE CLASSES, READ THE EFFING BOOKS

58. You’re allowed to protest sometimes

59. Don’t think too much about TOK / the uncertainty principle / relativity / astrophysics / DNA / nihilist bullshit from the language books. Stick to your reality and be happy. Have fun. Enjoy life. Stop giving so much fucks. Lower your expectations. (I honestly spent IB preparing to fail and start a bakery or something. Life is full of pleasant surprises that way)

60. Your Non-IB friends will laugh at you. Your siblings will laugh at you. Your teachers will laugh at you. You will laugh at you. But it’s okay, 2 years will be over in a flash ^^

PRETEND YOU’RE OBAMA

school mindset

essays - make each essay you write better than the last


 small assignments - aim for 100s, expect 100s, get 100s


 homework - pretend they’re assignments


 homework that’s not graded - pretend! they’re! assignments!


 tests - study for 100s, expect less


 long term projects - act like it’s due in four days -even when it’s not- until you’re done with it


 group projects - do not get angry


 presentations - pretend you’re obama

disclaimer - this works for me, it may not work for everybody, do not push yourself too hard!!

coffee, journaling and a view of central park, what more could I ask for?

Why do Americans put the month first. It just makes no sense.

Taking textbook notes is a chore. It’s tedious and boring and sometimes challenging, but hopefully these tips will help you improve your skill and shorten the time it takes you to do textbook notes!

Give yourself time: Realistically, you can’t knock out 30 pages of notes in 20 minutes. Take your time with textbook notes so they’re a good studying tool in the future. The general rule is to take how many pages you have to do and multiply it by 5: that’s how many minutes it’ll take you to do the notes.

Also, divide you notes up into manageable chunks to increase your productivity. I am personally a huge fan of using pomodoro timers, and I adjust the intervals for however long I need to.

Skim before you start taking notes: If time is an issue, don’t read your 40 page in depth before even picking up a pen, but make sure you know what you’re reading about by skimming a bit ahead of your notes. Read over section titles, and look at charts, maps, or graphs. Writing and highlighting as you read the chapter for the first time isn’t effective because you don’t know if a sentence will be important or not, so make sure you’re reading a paragraph or section in advance before writing.

Use the format they give you in the book to help take your notes: In a lot of textbooks, there will be a mini outline before the chapter itself that shows all the headings and subheadings. Those will be your guidelines! I find this super helpful because long chapters can be daunting to go into without any structure. If you don’t have one of those, use the headings and subheadings provided for you. If you haven’t already been doing this, it will help you so much.

Read actively: It’s so easy to “read” a textbook without digesting any information, but that is the last thing you want to do. Not only does it make taking notes a million times harder, but you’ll be lost in class discussions because you didn’t understand the reading. To keep from passively reading, highlight, underline, star any important information in the book itself.

Have a color coding system for highlighting or underlining and write down a key somewhere (here’s a few that you can adjust for your needs: x,x)

Use sticky notes or tabs to mark any questions or important points to come back to

Summarize important information and paraphrase: When taking the actual notes, don’t copy down full sentences word for word. Not only does writing full sentences waste a lot of time, it’s not an effective way to learn. If you can paraphrase the information, then you understand it. It’s also easier to study notes which are in your own words instead of textbook academia writing.

Be selective: You shouldn’t be writing down every fact that comes up in your textbook. If a fact ties into the bigger topic and provides evidence, then it’s probably something to keep, but you don’t need every piece of supplemental information (but do make sure you always write down the vocab). Learn your teacher’s testing style to help you decide what to write down. Could this be on the quiz/test? If the answer is yes, make sure you write it down.

Learn to abbreviate: Just like writing full sentences, writing out full words will waste time. Implement some shortenings (make sure to use ones that you’ll understand later!) into your notes. Some common ones are: b/c=because, gov=government, w/o=without, and here’s a great list of a ton of examples of abbreviations and shortenings.

Answer margin and review questions: A lot of textbooks have margin questions on every page or so that sum up what’s really important about that information. Make sure not to skip them because they’re really helpful for understanding. Write them down and answer them clearly in your notes. Most textbooks also have review questions after the chapter that check for reading comprehension, so make sure to answer those because they’ll show you if you really understood the chapter.

Don’t skip over visual sources: Maps, diagrams, illustrations, charts, and any other visuals in textbooks are so helpful. If you’re a visual learner, these things will be so essential to you and how you understand what you’re reading. Charts, tables, and diagrams sometimes also summarize information, so if you’re a visual learner it might benefit you to copy those down instead of writing it out.

Add visuals if it’ll help you: As said above, copying down charts, tables, illustrations, or diagrams can be super helpful for visual learners. They’re clear and concise, so pay attention to them.

Write your notes in a way that’s effective and makes sense to you: Mindmaps, Cornell notes, or plain outline notes are all really good forms of notetaking. Find which one works best for you to understand them and which one is most effective for your class, and use it (stuff on mindmaps and cornell notes).

Combine your class and textbook notes: If you rewrite your class notes, add in information you think is relevant from your textbook notes. Mark anything both your book and teacher said were important–you don’t want to forget any of that. If you don’t rewrite class notes, then put stars next to anything repeated.