class of 2020

hi everyone ! the world is scary and chaotic right now, and as a black student i’m torn between feeling afraid and feeling like i could be doing more. that’s why i decided to team up with a few friends and create Students for Black Lives. sfbl is a completely student run, not for profit project where students — mainly matriculating college freshman — from top schools will help other students reach their goals through essay, standardized testing, and extracurricular advising, and resume advising in with one ten dollar donation to a blm organization.

the goal of this project is to raise as much money as we can for blm organizations. as high aiming students who met our goals, we want to use whatever power we have to help the heartbreaking, incensing state of our world right now. my friends and i from stanford, harvard, upenn, princeton, columbia, cornell, berkeley, caltech, and many more schools want to do more than we’ve already done. i want to help my community in any way i can.

if you’re interested in our services, please follow our instagram and look at this document with more information. if you’re a student who wants to help but can’t donate or doesn’t need college help, sharing our platform is essential to maximizing our effect. 

as the editors of anthropocene magazine, we are thrilled to announce that submissions for issue one are officially open ! you might remember that we previously had opened rolling/early submissions for those who for whatever reason wanted to get their work in early, but as of monday, december 9 submissions are open to everyone.

we accept submissions of poetry, prose, short fiction, short creative nonfiction, essays, photography, digital art, or physical art. we’re going to officially open submission after editors are chosen, but you can submit now and they’ll be archived until editor applications close

–– submission guidelines:

you can submit as many as 5 pieces at one time, and you can send in a mix of any type of work. submit by sending us an email at [email protected] with your work in a file and your first name & last initial. name the file “work name,” “type of work” (example: sunsets on a beach, poetry). the subject of the email should be issue 1 submission, “number of pieces” (example: issue 1 submission, 3)

–– what’s the theme?

issue one’s theme is keystones !! a keystone is something that everything else depends on. for example, a momentous occasion, the most important step in a process, and an important realization are all keystones. (this is a very loose theme–more of a formality–so don’t worry at all if you don’t think your piece fits the theme~please submit it anyway !!!)

hello !! i’m tobi (@ssehuns), and i was recently inspired to create a space where young people can share their art with a community of likeminded people after attending a creative writing camp with logan (@reckless-emotion), my co editor in chief. it was such an amazing, emotionally charged experience that we found ourselves wanting to hold on to that atmosphere for as long as possible

–– what is anthropocene?

anthropocene magazine (@anthropocenemag) is a submission based online literary zine and community focused on sharing writing and art !! our goal is to make anthropocene a monthly/quarterly/annually publishing magazine filled with work created young people for young people inspiration for anthropocene came from a lot of different places, but we chose the name because above anything we want our community to be focused on growth and human activity

–– how do i get involved?

you can either apply to be an editor or graphic designer or send in advance submissions (you can send in submissions at any time, but they’ll be archived until all the editor positions are filled)

–– editors

right now we’re looking for editors to read all submissions that we get. each editor will read for one type of submission, and we need 2-3 of each. we also need a few graphic designers. to apply, just follow @anthropocenemag, reblog this post then fill out an application below !!

poetry editor application visual art editor application fiction/nonfiction editor application graphic designer application

–– submissions

we accept submissions of poetry, prose, short fiction, short creative nonfiction, essays, photography, digital art, or physical art. we’re going to officially open submission after editors are chosen, but you can submit now and they’ll be archived until editor applications close

–– submission guidelines:

you can submit as many as 5 pieces at one time, and you can send in a mix of any type of work. submit by sending us an email at [email protected] with your work in a file and your first name & last initial. name the file “work name,” “type of work” (example: sunsets on a beach, poetry). the subject of the email should be issue 1 submission, “number of pieces” (example: issue 1 submission, 3)

–– what’s the theme?

issue one’s theme is keystones !! a keystone is something that everything else depends on. for example, a momentous occasion, the most important step in a process, and an important realization are all keystones. (this is a very loose theme–more of a formality–so don’t worry at all if you don’t think your piece fits the theme~please submit it anyway !!!)

–– how do i stay updated about anthropocene?

after this initial post all updates and news will come from @anthropocenemag so please follow that blog for any future updates !

27th oct 2018.

Completing my AP World notes.

i’ve been really productive the past few months, which is actually quite rare for me bc i’m a slave to procrastination i get burnt out v easily. this time was a little different, i managed to keep my productivity levels really high for a whole 2 months all the way until exams ended, studying every single day without fail, around 10 hours a day, when i used to only do an average of 3 or 4. so here’s what worked for me and what didn’t!

what works: schedule your day

what happens when ur a virgo studyblr? u plan. i would write out everything i needed to accomplish for the day, the night before, and be really specific about it. i would then plug in the timings, this works for me, but u can choose to put the time in first and plan what u want to do around the time. 

a structured time plan pressures me and i end up getting everything done, especially when i set an alarm on my phone for all the timings!

what does not: cramming a lot of hours into a day

12+ hour work days are ideal, especially when u watch all the ‘study with me: 14 hour work day!’ youtube videos, but they are just tedious and unreasonable. 

let’s face it, even if u do complete one or two long study days, ur just gonna get bored and tired and have no mood to continuing this for a week or more. slow and steady wins the race!

what works: tweaking the pomodoro technique

i hate the pomodoro method. at the 25 minute mark, i’m normally on a roll and super focused on the task; and the 5 minute breaks were too short for me to actually take a break. 

that’s why i tweaked it to 45-minute study sessions with 10-minute breaks, and after 3 study sessions, a 30-minute break. longer study sessions meant i get a break when i really start to get restless, and longer breaks gave me more time to recharge. i suggest tweaking this to match what works for you.

what does not work; doing too many / too little subjects a day

1. u don’t want to cram all the same topics and subjects into one day. ultimately, it’s a choice of spending 8 hours solely on a subject / topic and not touching it for the next few days / weeks, OR doing just 2 or 3 hours of one subject / topic each day over a few days / week

2. just thinking about doing only one subject for a whole day already tires me out. i have tried it, but normally i get so sick and tired of it that after a few hours, i can’t bring myself to focus on it any longer. on the contrary, if i keep switching between subjects, i get super confused because i have to remember too much of very different info. 

what works: leaving the last portion of your day ambiguous 

i like to start and end my days early. but in the process, i found a benefit of ending them early: i end up w a chunk of time at the end where there are two scenarios:

i’m super motivated and want to continue studying

i’m rly tired and cannot bring myself to continue bc i need a break !1!!

surprisingly, option 1 does happen a lot. and i think this is a rly good work-life balance. u don’t get burnt out easily, but from time to time, u get a bonus extra few hours of work done! 

what does not work: forgoing sleep

sleep is so important omg. 3 hours of studying while sleepy = 1 hour of studying when ur refreshed and ur brain’s working. a tired mind is a slow mind, and an awake mind is a fast mind!

do not worry about that rly hard chapter that u must understand and complete! ur mind continue to works even when ur sleeping, i assume bc it’s rewiring and sorting through new information. after waking up, i find myself being able to better remember and understand information that i struggled on the night before!

what works: finding out ur energy levels and use it to ur advantage

some people work best at 6am and can’t focus after 9pm, some people can’t focus before 11am and work best at midnight. take note of and chart ur energy levels throughout the day for about a week or so, are u particularly refreshed in the morning? do u feel urself always dozing off at 4? are u the most productive at night? 

work ur body clock out and work around it! every body functions differently! like in the last point, 3 hours of studying at ur worst energy levels = 1 hour of studying at ur peak energy level! forcing urself to work when ur body refuses to do so will only lead to procrastination. 

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).