the perpetrator

“Hvalvík”

I love stationery of all kinds, especially notebooks. And when you’re planning on studying, of course you need notebooks for taking notes and practicing! In this post, I’ll talk a little about my notebooks.

What kind(s) of notebook(s) do you use?

My personal preference is for spiral notebooks. I used to use notebooks that just opened like normal books, but they never liked to stay flat and they took up too much space on my desk. It’s funny because I used to hate spirals back when I was younger and way into drawing because the pages were more free to move against each other which led to more smudging, but I love spirals so much for note taking. They lay flat with no problem, which is the biggest thing for me. The spiral does get in the way of my hand sometimes, but it’s a minor annoyance.

I also consider the quality of the paper when buying my notebooks. It doesn’t have to be super high quality, but I just can’t deal with paper the quality of standard US looseleaf. It’s too thin and, more importantly, the surface is too rough. Paper with too rough a surface has led to the early death of too many of my pens—if you use fine-tip pens, size 0.5 or lower, and find they stop writing before the ink runs out—little bits from poor-quality paper probably got into the tip and ruined it. The paper I like the most feels a little bit weighty and nice and smooth!

Hardcover or softcover is also a choice to make! I use both, types:

Left to right- hardcover lined notebook, softcover lined notebook, softcover 원고지 squared paper notebook

How many notebooks do you use?

I have three main types of notebooks! I’ll go over each type:

Grammar notebooks

My grammar notebooks are all hardcover. I use them to collect grammar explanations and other important notes. I write them as cleanly as possible and even use my many colorful highlighters to make them look a little nicer. If I need to know about a grammar point that I have already learned, I open my grammar notebook for the right language and find it. This way, I don’t have to remember which textbook or source I saw a certain grammar point or explanation in—if it’s important, I write it down in my grammar notebook! So, my grammar notebooks are mashups of multiple texts and sources. These are for reference only; I don’t do any practice or extra writing in them. Nothing but the facts!

Practice notebooks

My practice notebook is where I write down definitions of new words I learned, practice sentences for my vocab flashcard words, breakdowns of articles I’ve studied on my Chinese reader apps… I guess calling it a “practice notebook” makes its purpose pretty self-explanatory. It’s nothing special; I write quickly and messily in it, and when it gets full, I can just throw it in the recycling bin and start a fresh one. My practice notebook is a softcover spiral.

Chinese article notebook

Korean squared paper—or I guess any squared paper—is wonderful for writing Chinese characters. Once I’ve encountered an article in a Chinese reader app and broken it down in my practice notebook, I rewrite it cleanly in my article notebook so I can easily find and read it again later.

I don’t always have all of my notebook types with me. If I plan on studying grammar, I will bring the correct grammar notebook along, and if I plan on studying Chinese articles, I might have my article notebook with me, but not always. However, my practice notebook is always in my bag!

How do you organize your notes and all? For those of you who might be struggling to get your notes together, I hope this helped!

Have you ever been listening to Rainymood and thought, “Yeah, this is good … but it would be nice if I could customize the sound more, or if there was a little more choice.

Let me introduce you to MyNoise.

MyNoise is a customizable sounscape looper with so many options, even within each soundscape.  So say, for instance, you really love rain sounds when you write or study or relax.  Anything.  I know I’m a big fan of rain sounds.  They have a page for that.

But say you like really high, pattery rain, and LOTS of low thunder.  Here’s where MyNoise really stands out: you can customize that.  See those sliders with all the cute colors?  That is your equalizer. You can adjust the levels based on what you want to hear more and less of.  Here’s how it looks when you want high, pattery rain and low, rumbly thunder:

But say rain isn’t really your jam.  Say you want something a little more ambient, a little more background noise-y.  Something with people.  Well, they have customizable coffee house chatter that even has the levels listed for things like “kitchen,” “babble,” and “table”:

Or say you miss the ocean.

Or say you miss your cat.

Or say you miss your spaceship.

Or say you miss the dungeon where you and your team of scalawag adventurers used to explore and face off against, say, dragons.  In the dungeon.

This site is seriously so helpful, and those are just a fraction of every kind of sounscape the site has to offer.  The best part is that if you want to layer it with music (for instance, I’ll layer a playlist + rain + coffee shop if the scene I’m writing takes place in a coffee shop), you can adjust the master volume, meaning all of your layers stay at their respective volumes, just louder or quieter.