poisonacademia

welcome to my studyblr!

i am a masters student documenting my journey in academia :)

some facts about me:

i am 26

i use she/they pronouns

graduated with an HBSc in anthropology

i am a practicing witch (my witchy account is @poisonnxkki)

starting my masters in sept 2025

As someone who graduated with an honours bachelor of science degree (with distinction) and got into my top choice for my master's, I can tell you these tips work. They made all the difference when I was completing my undergrad and are what I'm going to be using in the future as well.

Go to class- everyone tells you to go to class and as a serial skipper, I never did until my last year. My last year I decided to experiment and see if it would make a difference. I brought my attendance up to 95% and it brought my grades up. Classes I expected to get 80s in, I finished with 90s and it was all because I actually showed up.

Treat it like a 9-5 job- a friend told me to try this and it's seriously effective. She would wake up every week day and get to school around 9am. She would sit in study spaces and work until 5pm or until she finished everything she needed to do (with breaks of course and she also attended her classes). She was routinely a week ahead and had a 4.0 gpa.

Schedule your breaks- I don't do any school on Sunday, and unless I have a major exam or an assignment I've forgotten, I almost always stick to it. I schedule breaks because otherwise I won't get them. It's now going to become my meal prep day when I move. I also try to set limits on how late I work as well.

Know what to focus on- keeping up with everything is hard. It's important to learn how to be discerning with your time. If you are assigned 8 readings across all your classes each week and those readings are 30 pages each, its not possible to get to them all (that's 240 pages a week!). Get good at deciding what's most important and find good friends to share summary notes with.

Get good at balancing- school, work, gym, cleaning, relationships, and eating all take time. Find a method to balance it all before you feel like you have to give up something. Develop a solid routine that allows you to check multiple boxes easily, schedule your days in advance, or find a buddy to keep you accountable. Whatever you do, make sure it's something you can do consistently.

I start my first year of my master's degree in September and on top of starting this new journey with new expectations, I'm also moving to a new city. I've signed up for a lot of changes in a short period of time. So I came up with a plan (because I'm very type A) to prep for everything that was to come.

I updated anything that I used daily during undergrad including tech, backpacks, outwear and more. I use things like my iPad everyday for note taking. It was really starting to lag so i bit the bullet and purchased a new one. My backpack, shoes and winter coat had seen several harsh winters and were in need of retiring.

I contacted everyone. I reached out to my supervisor, department and even other grad students in my program in order to get an idea of what the next 2 years of my life were going to look like.

I completed admin stuff. I went to the bank, applied for additional funding, picked my courses, applied for different TA positions and did pretty much anything I didn't want to have to worry about during the year.

I went shopping. Even though I've lived on my own during my undergrad (in residence), this is the first time I'm going to be living completely on my own. I went shopping for all the essentials like cook wear, additional storage, bedding and anything else I'll need.

I learned how to food prep. The hardest part about living on your own is learning how to balance taking care of yourself and taking care of everything you need to do. I have professional goals but I also have personal goals that I want to accomplish and being able to feed myself with minimal hassle will help me achieve them.

I'm shifting my mindset from one of anxiety to one of excitement. I really hate change. So being thrust into a new environment alongside more work and more pressure sounds like my personal hellscape. However, comfort stifles growth. I have to change my attitude from being worried about the future to being excited about it. This is a work in progress but it's keeping me from going mildly insane.

back to school

- will be moving back to school soon

- will be an RCA again

- picked my courses for the year

apr 29/24- day 64/100 days of productivity

more cleaning and painting

painted the last wall

sorted through more stuff

apr 28/24- day 63/100 days of productivity

more cleaning

sorted through my books

sorted through my clothes (donated about 1/3)

apr 27/24- day 62/100 days of productivity

room reno officially begins!

went through half of my things to decide what i am keeping and what needs to be donated (the first of many rounds)

took everything out of my room including furniture

apr 26/24- day 61/100 days of productivity

move out day

moved out all my things from residence

travelled home and brought them all in

apr 25/24- day 60/100 days of productivity

3/3 exams done

did my anthro exam (+ took a breath for the first time in 2 weeks)

cleaned my whole house

apr 24/24- day 59/100 days of productivity

2/3 exams done

ended up being about 90% packed by the end of this day

did my forensics exam

apr 23/24- day 58/100 days of productivity

packing day

packed most of my things

studied for my forensics exam