3.13.16+4:26pm // Desk Organization Complete! Whew, I Am Feeling Much Better Now That Everything Is Coming

Habits of successful students

Discipline: “discipline is doing what needs to be done, even when you don’t want to”, which means that you have to force yourself to start doing things. 

Concentration: when you make a real effort in your work (study, homeworks etc…) you will be more likely to actually focus, understand and learn. 

Organization: always set tasks and goals and organize a study-schedule. Maybe you don’t really want to plan all the week, but if you just wake up and open your agenda/bullet journal/iphone calendar and write down all the things you have to do, setting due dates and deadlines, you’ll feel more conscious and encouraged to stay on track. 

Tasks-splitting: sometimes, you write down your tasks. Some of these tasks may be very hard and complicated, and it will take a long long time to complete them. So, you can split them in smaller tasks, so you will feel satisfied after a shorter period of time, instead of studying for hours and still seeing that chapter undone on your study-schedule. 

Watch the sunrise: when I wake up late, I feel like I don’t have enought time to do my work and lose my motivation. I literally panic and then I think “whatever, I could not complete all the things anyway”. So, if you wake up earlier you will feel more positive and  controlled. 

Smart reading: try not to read your textbook just like a newspaper. For every paragraph you read, try to underline and write down key words and then your question about that subject. Literally, turn your textbook into questions. If you write down question - particularly why…? - and think about the answer, you will be more likely to remember that stuff later. 

Healthy lifestile: if you don’t drink enough water in the morning, you will be more likely to have a decrease of concentration in the afternoon/evening, so: stay hydrated. Try also to have some snaks every one-two hours: feed your brain. 

I finally finished my final exams and also took the results , this year was a difficult year for me and also my last year of school which means next year i will be in university inshallah.

I decided to doodle on the cover of my bio ii notebook so I could distinguish it among the others.

How I Got Straight A’s in My First Year of University

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.

Part One: Everyday Study Routine

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!

Part Two: Assessment Time

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

Do you know some good movies that give you that cosy feeling and make you want to go study? Like Harry Potter for example

Firstly, I am so sorry for the lateness of this post. I really had to do some thinking when considering which movies are my “study inspiration.” So here are a few: 

“Dear White People” dir. Justin Simien.  (I like this one because as a person of colour, I identify with most of the character. This movie has a great message and is also set at a fictitious Ivy league school. It is one of those movies set in university that actually show people doing university things, like going to class and studying). 

“Gilmore Girls” Season 4. (I am a big fan of Gilmore Girls especially this season because this is when Rory sets off to Yale. It is nice seeing that there is a a plit as well as a well read, motivated protagonist who is attending Yale. After waiting Rory do her thing, it always gets me ready to start my work). 

“The Dead Poet’s Society” dir. Peter Wier  (This one is a classic and set at a prestigious boarding school. Need I say more?) 

“Goats” dir. Christopher Neil (This movie follows Ellis, a super smart 14-15 year old who moves away from home to go to boarding school. There is also some family drama that keeps things interesting). 

“How to Get Away with Murder” (I am a big fan of law television shows, and watching law students do there thing really inspire me to get on my studying in hopes that I may end up going to law school some day). 

“The Newsroom” (This is one of my favourite shows. It is set in a newsroom where everybody is bustling around working non-stop to get the news out there. I also really like how it uses real current events as the news that they are broadcasting). 

“Liberal Arts”  dir. Josh Radnor ( Although this movie does feature a “manic pixie dream girl type” (some may argue) it is great. It is about a man who goes back to his university and kinda re-lives his glory days in a sense. Just watch it, it is great and gets me think about how lucky I am to be learning so much. This almost always gets me studying). 

“House of Cards” (I love this show because of the excellent writing and political badassary). 

“The Re-Write” (This movies is exclusively focused on writing fiction. It always helps when I have to get my Lit homework done). 

“Miss Representation” dir. Jennifer Siebel Newsom (I fabulous documentary about how women are treated in out media and in society at large. Seeing this always makes me want to work even harder to defy these stereotypes. Even if you don’t need to study, this is a great watch). 

So, these are all I could think of a the moment. But if I think of more I will add some. And everybody, feel free to add your favourite movie/tv show study motivators too!

I found an old train ticket in this second hand book I bought a while ago. 

I’m wondering who was so passionate about studying Romanticism on a train from Milano to Trieste on 11th april 1988. Were they returning from holidays and studying for an exam? Or were they doing research for their thesis? 

21.05.2018 Practicing informatics for my exam, it’s not really hard, but I’m so tired ahaha, have a good day or night, FIGHTING !

Working hard at my paper. This is how my weekend went. #studygram #studyblr #studymotivation #college https://www.instagram.com/p/Bqmqg0aFXEf/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1n2938k3n5tkf

06.06.16 | it’s crunch time! i tried a commemorative spread to celebrate finals season, lol