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2017년 12월  11일

If you’re reading this, chances are you fall into one of the two categories: 

Case #1: You’ve been a hardworking and diligent student. You’ve listened in class, created a myriad of mind maps AND kept detailed notes. Now, it’s all a matter of committing them to memory and doing some practice problems. 

Case #2: You’re kicking yourself because you’ve been procrastinating all week. Now, all your work has piled up and you don’t know where to begin. Should you start making notes now, or is it too late? Maybe you’ll just memorise your class notes. What about just reading and highlighting the textbook, surely that’s more effective? You have no clue, but you’re stressed af right now. 

In this guide, I’ll talk about how to deal with each case in more detail. My studying habits tend to fluctuate between the two cases frequently, but I’ll admit, I generally leer more towards Case #2 more… Here’s my one week action plan to tackle your studying before your big test! 

Disclaimer: These are methods that I have found to work. Obviously, this is not the only right way to approach things. Feel free to disagree. Experiment a little and find whatever works for you. If you do decide to give this a go, adjust it according to your needs. 

Let’s start with Case #1. 

Days 1-3: 

Read your syllabus. Know exactly what your test is on, so you don’t waste time covering other stuff. Make sure you understand what the command terms mean, if any. 

For each syllabus statement, write out everything you can remember from your notes that pertain to said syllabus statement. Once you’re done, cross-check them with your notes to see if you’ve forgotten anything. 

If you forgot something or got it incorrect, check to see whether it’s an issue of a lack of understanding, careless mistakes or poor memory recall

For the latter two, write down what you missed on a flashcard and review it whenever you have time (just make sure it’s less than 24 hours after you’ve revised). Keep on reviewing until you remember everything. 

If it’s poor understanding, try the Feynman Technique. The idea behind this is that if you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough. Just imagine you’re trying to teach a child that concept. When you’re doing this, it’s better to go from beginning to end, which will make it much easier to identify your gaps in knowledge. Then, go consult your textbook, notes, Google, professor, etc. for answers. 

Days 4 and 5: 

Do practice problems. Make your own or look up practice problems on Google using this trick. If you’re doing public exams, do past paper questions. This is super useful if you want to get used to answering exam-type questions. 

Replicate test conditions. Get the timing right and ensure you have the appropriate equipment with you. 

Mark your ‘test’. Think about how you can improve. Write this down on a flashcard or whatever you want, just make sure you look at it later. Then, re-do the same problem again (no more than 24 hours later), until you get it all right. 

Don’t do this for every single topic. That is, if your exam is testing you on many different topics and you don’t have a lot of time. This step is really time-consuming, and at this point you’ll already know your stuff. Prioritize according to which topics you find the most challenging and which topics frequently come up (i.e. most students screw up) 

Day 6: 

Look over your old tests. If you scored highly, think about why you did and aim to repeat that in the next test. If you didn’t do as well as you had liked, think about where you went wrong. Decide how you want to improve. 

Look over your flashcards/do more practice. Again, this step is subject to how much time you have. This guide is merely a template. Adapt to your liking.

Day 7: 

Don’t cram too much

Quickly flip through the flashcards you made during Days 1-2

Go on student forum sites if you do public exams. They’ll usually give you first-hand advice on how to deal with stress, quick reminders, things students frequently get wrong, etc. You could also read the examiner’s report to see where most students messed up on.

Ok, now onto Case #2…

Day 1-2

Read the syllabus. Explained above. 

Identify areas that you: 

Are completely unsure about

Are unconfident in 

Half-know

Are completely confident in

Have a quick read of your notes, starting with the topics you’re completely unsure about. Then, work your way down the list. If you have time, briefly read the topics that you’re confident in just to make sure you’ve got them right. 

Have a look through some practice problems. This step mostly applies to those who are sitting public exams. Note down which questions/variations of a question come up the most. 

Day 3-6: 

Do practice problems on the topics you’re completely unsure about first. Do these with the mark scheme right next to you so you have a brief idea of what they’re looking for and how in-depth they want you to go. Then, try to re-write the MS answers in your own words. Repeat this for that particular topic until you’ve gone through all the questions. Then, combine this with your class notes (if needed). 

Make a model answer that will fit different types of questions asking about the same thing (e.g. explain ___, describe ____, discuss _____, evaluate ____, etc.). Even if the question sis worth 2 marks, write out the full model answer. It’s better to be superfluous than to miss out something completely at this stage, and during the test, you can decide for yourself which parts need to be cut out. Plus, the act of re-writing it out will help you commit it to memory. 

If you forget something, re-write it out 3-5 more times before moving onto the next question. Yeah, it’s tough, but you have to suck it up at this point. Take note of what you’ve forgotten and review it on ‘Day 7′ 

Repeat these steps for topics that frequently come up. Then, the topics that you’re unconfident in, half-know, and if you have time, do a few questions in which you’re completely confident in. 

Day 7: 

Finish off everything from Day 6 if you haven’t done so already.

Review answers to the questions you forgot how to answer.

Go through your list of questions that frequently up and recite the answers from memory. Give your hand a break.

As you can see, there isn’t really much you can do if you’re super pressed for time. Definitely do not follow my guide for Case #2 if you’re studying for a final, because there’s just no way that you can cover that many practice problems in one week, whilst still being able to retain all that information. However, for smaller tests, this definitely does the job. 

Other tips for both cases:

Get enough sleep. I don’t need to tell you why this is good. 

Take breaks. It’s easy to get carried away, especially when you’re doing practice problems. You won’t even notice time flying by! Do yourself a favour and stay sane. Take regular, adequate breaks. You really don’t want to burn yourself out before the big day! 

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).

14th October 2017 —

a small guide on how i battle my essays! (click on an image to view it clearer) 

(keep in mind: i’m an english major so a majority of my essays are literature-focused!)

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The 100 Days of Productivity Challenge with EmmaStudies!

Productivity challenges are a fun way to help boost your motivation to get things done! ‘100 days of productivity’ is one of the most popular challenges when it comes to Tumblr and Instagram. As I am planning to start the challenge, I thought it would be a great opportunity to get more people involved! So, where do we start?

What is ‘100 days of productivity’? To put it simply, the challenge is to do something productive for 100 days. It comes from the idea that each day, we can do at least 1 thing that pushes us forward. The challenge is meant to improve your sense of accomplishment and show that with a bit of motivation, you can get things done!

What classifies as productive? This is entirely up to you and what you feel is worth recognition. Whilst the majority of study blogs do something study related each day that isn’t a set rule. Some examples could be:

studying for an accumulative time of 2 hours a day

decluttering your desk and study space

finishing all your homework

drafting an assessment you’ve been procrastinating on

organising your files

sorting through your emails and implementing a filter system

backing up computer files and phone

organising your monthly plan

going to study or read at the library

finishing a book you’ve been meaning to read

setting up a file organisation structure on your computer

creating a resume and cover letter

applying for jobs, internships, work experience

spring cleaning your bedroom and study space

organising your bookshelf

unsubscribing from spam emails

collecting account emails and passwords

sorting out your expenses and budgets

deactivating unused social media/email/etc accounts

Obviously, this list has just a few options. You can do anything which you find achieves a positive and organised result! Even if you do something small, you can count that :-)

Does it have to be consecutive days? It can be, but there isn’t a rule. Most people attempt to do consecutive days but that isn’t always possible. Doing something productive one day after another is great for building your self-discipline, however, you can skip days if need be. If you do, don’t feel bad! Remember to bounce back and continue the next day.

Who can join? Do I need to have a studyblr/studygram? It is open to anyone! There are no requirements for joining. You don’t need to have a studyblr or studygram! If you’re looking for a fun way to motivate yourself with the backing of other people, this is a great challenge to be a part of. 

When do I start? Absolutely whenever you want. Could be the start of a month, the start of your school term or for the new year. For this which I’m setting up as a collective challenge, I am planning to start on Monday 9th October. For anyone who has seen this post before then, you are more than welcome to start the same day! But if you see this afterwards, you can still join and be a part of it - but you’ll just be a few days behind, but that is not a problem! :-)

How do I track document my productivity? Most people document their journey through Tumblr or Instagram by posting a photo each day (or every few days). I will be doing this! I will be tagging my posts with #emma100dop which you should too. This way I can see your photos and reblog them too!! As a challenge which I am hoping lots of people can get involved in, having a specific hashtag is great for motivation.

Similarly, it is worth tracking your days on paper. I have created a printable set which you can download for documenting each day’s work. *Download link here!*

Do I have to share pictures? If you don’t want to, you don’t have to share. For studyblr and studygram accounts this is a good idea because you’re uploading original content but if you don’t have a study account, you don’t need to upload any. You can still document your progress with photos and make a gallery on your phone if you want. As mentioned above, I have a printable which you can download for free to track your progress. If you don’t want to take pictures, you can just cross off or write down what you did that day! 

I am really excited to start this challenge with you guys! :-) I think doing it as a collective group is a fantastic idea in terms of boosting and maintaining motivation through the whole challenge. With lots of accountability partners, we should all hopefully manage 100 days! Best of luck! Remember to tag me in your pictures on Tumblr and Instagram!! x

3/100 days of productivity ⋅ next week’s bujo spread

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