Finished My Infographic Project For Chem!

A Note on “Weeder Courses”

Is your first year gen-ed (general education) course really hard for absolutely no reason? Or perhaps it’s an early course in your major that’s required for the rest of the degree. Maybe the homework is really hard to get through or the exams are just brutal. You might be in a “weeder course.”

Generally weeder courses are introductory level; the STEM field gen-eds are notorious for this. The thought process from an administrative level is to make these courses very difficult and challenging to vet out students who can’t hack it. They do it with the intro level courses to serve as a warning for students who might want to major in something, but aren’t ready for how rigorous the degree actually is. 

Now I have my own thoughts on that mindset but what I want to stress that these courses are designed to be difficult. You’re not making it up in your mind; they are designed to feel like hell. 

Personal anecdote: I got my undergrad degree in literal rocket science from a “name” university. In my first year I failed physics I, the very course that is the basis for the rest of your physics education. I nearly failed it again the second time I took it, passing by the skin of my teeth. Despite the material being more difficult, I found my calculus 4 course easier than my calculus 1 course.

And that was because, as I found out from an upperclassman years later, those intro courses were designed as weeder courses. They taught the material yes, but their primary function was to act as a buffer to students who the administration see as lacking the discipline to follow through on a major in that field.

My advice? If it is a field or major you love, do not let your performance in these classes stop you.

I cannot stress this enough: if you love the field and the major and the subject, don’t let terribly designed classes stop you. I worked as a peer advisor my senior year and I had these brilliant first and second year students come up to me and tell me that they were struggling in an intro level course, wondering if they should drop out of a major they genuinely loved because they felt like they weren’t smart enough. Every single one of them was smart enough. 

You are smart enough. You can and will get through it. 

Some advice of a more practical nature under the cut:

Keep reading

---

Pro-tips for rookie academic writers after grading about a quarter of the midterm papers for my undergrad Shakespeare class:

If your entire argument can be made in one sentence, it’s too simple. 

If your argument cannot be summarized in one sentence, it’s too broad.

If your argument can’t be argued with, it’s not an argument.

Teachers don’t want you to fawn on the material; they want you to engage with it. Just fangirling over Shakespeare isn’t going to get you an A.

Avoid big sweeping generalizations in your opening sentences (and everywhere else). “Since the dawn of time” or “Of all the playwrights who have ever lived,” etc. etc. are superlatives you can’t possibly prove.

If you’re going to say that an author/text does something, you’d better be ready to demonstrate how. 

Your opinion is not analysis. Learn the difference. 

“Interesting” and “intriguing” are useless words that tell a reader nothing about the text. Be more specific.

Don’t assume you know a character’s motives without evidence from the text. Don’t assume you know an author’s motives, full stop.

If you’re a man making an argument about female perspectives in a text, have a woman read it before you turn it in. Just trust me on this one. 

---

What I think is really interesting about the papyrus account of the workers building the tomb of Rameses III going on strike to demand better wages is really fascinating to me because if you look at the description given by the royal scribe you see that there was an attempt to satisfy the workers by bringing a large amount of food at once but that was rebuffed by the workers who declared that it wasn’t just that they were hungry at the moment but had serious charges to bring that “something bad had been done in this place of Pharoah” (is poor wages and mistreatment). They understood themselves as having long term economic interests as a -class- and organized together knowing that by doing so they could put forward their demands collectively. It so strongly flies in the face of narratives that are like “in this Time and Place people were happy to be serve because they believed in the God-King and maybe you get some intellectual outliers but certainly no common person questioned that”. If historical sources might paint that sorta picture of cultural homogeneity it is because those sources sought not to describe something true but invent a myth for the stability of a regime.

---

I’m taking the AB Calc AP this year (yikes), so here are some of the resources I’ve found so far! I’ll add more as I find them.

Free Practice Tests & Questions

1969-1988 Multiple Choice Questions

2006 Practice Exams (AB & BC, with answers)

Varsity Tutors

College Board Released FRQs 

Peterson’s Practice Test

GetAFive Practice Questions

4Tests Practice

Booooooks

The Princeton Review (3 practice exams)

REA Crash Course (online practice exams)

Barrons (AB & BC, 5 practice exams each)

Kaplan (6 practice exams & 2 diagnostics)

5 Steps to a 5 (3 practice exams)

COW Math (online calculus books)

Peterson’s (online, AB & BC)

Multiple Choice Workbook

Videos

HippoCampus

Khan Academy (so many worked answers)

WOWmath (free response questions)

Other Resources

PDF Reference Sheets (from EE, but here in a handy folder)

Interactive Mathematics Lessons

Visual Calculus (tutorials & drills)

College Board FRQ Index

MIT OpenCourseware Exam Prep

Brightstorm

Mr. Calculus

GetAFive

Paul’s Online Math Notes

Study Guides

Elaine Cheong’s Study Guide

University of Houston Study Guide

Final Review Sheet

Calculus Cheat Sheet

I hope this helps you out! There are more useful posts from my study series here.

---

Popular apps perfect for students

Staying on top of all your to-dos, errands, tasks and due dates can get complicated but luckily there is an app for everything! If you’re looking for app to wake you up in a morning, manage your priorities or soothe your anxiety, you’ve come to the right place. Here is a list of all the top apps that students are using:

Organisation

Wunderlist

Planner Pro

24me

Remember The Milk

Google Calendar

Pocket Schedule - Class Schedule, Homework Planner

AwesomeNote2 - All in One Organiser

AnyList

The Homework App - Your Class Assignment & Timetable Schedule Planner

My Study Life

Calendars by Readdle - Event and Task Manager

Class Timetable

Countdown+

Due - Reminders, Countdown Timers

Do! - The Best of Simple To Do Lists

Workflow: Powerful Automation Made Simple

Glass Planner

Day One Journal

iStudiez Pro

Awesome Note 2

Grammarly

Konmari

Productivity

RescueTime

Streaks

Forest

ToDoIst

Tide - Stay focused, be peaceful

Focus Keeper

Habitica

Productive habits and daily goal tracker

HabitBull (recommend by @ravn-studies)

BrainFocus (recommend by @ravn-studies)

Toggle Time Tracker (recommend by @ravn-studies)

Self Control

Jot - Notes Widget

Swipes - To Do List

ClearFocus: Productivity Timer

Noisli

Binaural beats

Lanes

Note taking

Microsoft OneNote

Evernote

Quizlet

Notability

Byword

Flashcards+

Goodnotes

Outline

Boximize - Structured notetaking, personal database, form builder, manager and organiser

INKredible (recommend by @lottestudiesphysics)

RefME - Referencing Made Easy

Bear (recommended by @revisionsandcoffee​)

InkFlow Visual Notebook

Studying

Quizlet

Flashcards+

Duolingo

Khan Academy

Xmind

Writer

Studyblue

Coffitivity

Prezi

MindMeister

Hemingway Editor

StudyStack

Crashcourse

Shmoop

Beelinguapp

Brightstorm

Coggle mindmaps

Mindly

Sleeping

Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock

Sleep Genius

Rain Rain

Pillow: The sleep cycle alarm clock for sleep tracking

Sleepytime Sleep Scheduler

Mental health and self care

Headspace

Stop, Breathe & Think: Meditation and Mindfulness

Pacifica - Anxiety, Stress, & Depression relief

Centered

Buddhify

Calm: Meditation techniques for stress reduction

Moodnotes - Thought Journal/Mood Diary

Colorfy

7 Cups Anxiety, Stress & Depression Chat & Therapy

Companion 

Smiling Mind

Bsafe

Circle of 6

Health and fitness

Sweat with Kayla - Fitness & Bikini Body Workouts

Yoga Work Out

Freeletics

7-minutes workout

Waterlogged - Drink More Water, Daily Water Intake Tracker and Hydration Reminders

Sworkit (recommend by @leviosa-studies)

Medisafe pill reminder

Plant Nanny Water Reminder

Mealboard

Finance

UNiDAYS

Pocketbook Personal Finance Expense Tracker

Splitwise - Split bills and expenses the easy way

Pocket Expense - Personal Finance Assistant

Daily Budget Original Pro - Saving Is Fun!

Mvelopes

PocketGuard

Mint

The Coupons App

Groupon

Ebates

Hope this helps! x

---

04.29.20—It has indeed been a hot minute.

---

How to Study Like a Harvard Student

Taken from Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld, daughter of the Tiger Mother

Preliminary Steps 1. Choose classes that interest you. That way studying doesn’t feel like slave labor. If you don’t want to learn, then I can’t help you. 2. Make some friends. See steps 12, 13, 23, 24. General Principles 3. Study less, but study better. 4. Avoid Autopilot Brain at all costs. 5. Vague is bad. Vague is a waste of your time. 6. Write it down. 7. Suck it up, buckle down, get it done. Plan of Attack Phase I: Class 8. Show up. Everything will make a lot more sense that way, and you will save yourself a lot of time in the long run. 9. Take notes by hand. I don’t know the science behind it, but doing anything by hand is a way of carving it into your memory. Also, if you get bored you will doodle, which is still a thousand times better than ending up on stumbleupon or something. Phase II: Study Time 10. Get out of the library. The sheer fact of being in a library doesn’t fill you with knowledge. Eight hours of Facebooking in the library is still eight hours of Facebooking. Also, people who bring food and blankets to the library and just stay there during finals week start to smell weird. Go home and bathe. You can quiz yourself while you wash your hair. 11. Do a little every day, but don’t let it be your whole day. “This afternoon, I will read a chapter of something and do half a problem set. Then, I will watch an episode of South Park and go to the gym” ALWAYS BEATS “Starting right now, I am going to read as much as I possibly can…oh wow, now it’s midnight, I’m on page five, and my room reeks of ramen and dysfunction.” 12. Give yourself incentive. There’s nothing worse than a gaping abyss of study time. If you know you’re going out in six hours, you’re more likely to get something done. 13. Allow friends to confiscate your phone when they catch you playing Angry Birds. Oh and if you think you need a break, you probably don’t. Phase III: Assignments 14. Stop highlighting. Underlining is supposed to keep you focused, but it’s actually a one-way ticket to Autopilot Brain. You zone out, look down, and suddenly you have five pages of neon green that you don’t remember reading. Write notes in the margins instead. 15. Do all your own work. You get nothing out of copying a problem set. It’s also shady. 16. Read as much as you can. No way around it. Stop trying to cheat with Sparknotes. 17. Be a smart reader, not a robot (lol). Ask yourself: What is the author trying to prove? What is the logical progression of the argument? You can usually answer these questions by reading the introduction and conclusion of every chapter. Then, pick any two examples/anecdotes and commit them to memory (write them down). They will help you reconstruct the author’s argument later on. 18. Don’t read everything, but understand everything that you read. Better to have a deep understanding of a limited amount of material, than to have a vague understanding of an entire course. Once again: Vague is bad. Vague is a waste of your time. 19. Bullet points. For essays, summarizing, everything. Phase IV: Reading Period (Review Week) 20. Once again: do not move into the library. Eat, sleep, and bathe. 21. If you don’t understand it, it will definitely be on the exam. Solution: textbooks; the internet. 22. Do all the practice problems. This one is totally tiger mom. 23. People are often contemptuous of rote learning. Newsflash: even at great intellectual bastions like Harvard, you will be required to memorize formulas, names and dates. To memorize effectively: stop reading your list over and over again. It doesn’t work. Say it out loud, write it down. Remember how you made friends? Have them quiz you, then return the favor. 24. Again with the friends: ask them to listen while you explain a difficult concept to them. This forces you to articulate your understanding. Remember, vague is bad. 25. Go for the big picture. Try to figure out where a specific concept fits into the course as a whole. This will help you tap into Big Themes – every class has Big Themes – which will streamline what you need to know. You can learn a million facts, but until you understand how they fit together, you’re missing the point. Phase V: Exam Day 26. Crush exam. Get A.

---

10/09/2017

this week’s spread :)

---

---

september 26th 2017 | 2/100 days of productivity

my quarterly exams are finally over!! woo^^ test scores come out tomorrow tho huhuhu i’m not sure how to feel about it but i think i did pretty decently! hope my grades are doing well :3

meanwhile, entrance exams are just around the corner… guess who hasnt started yet? yup that’s right! me lol 😂 tbh idk how y'all do it? share me your secrets!!

calling out any fellow procrastinators out there! wanna procrastinate together? 😂😂

what i’m currently in love with : breathe again by emily slough ( @emslough on wattpad!! she’s awesome i love her so much omg )

---