성민지

Hi! My name is Seung Min (성민) and I am currently studying in an international system outside of Korea. This blog is entirely personal and I don’t think I’ll receive much attention.

Through the years I’ve lived abroad, I’ve discovered many good things about the western studying system and also aplying some of the techniques I used to do back in Korea!

 Simple is always better. Using many colors may make your notes look very nice and neat, but when you have many pages to do, it can become unbearable. I discovered this on my first year, I used to make very pretty and clean notes but I ended up despising them because of how many hours I would spend decorationg those. That same summer I discovered muji and all their stationery, and let me tell you it was a game changer. I decided to get more into minimalism and this helped me with my note-taking skills so much. I use black gel pens for everything, using thicker ones on the introduction and parts I consider to be more important, after that I do a pretty but simple title using midliners. I have a color code for everything and my notes have looked the same ever since I started applying this method. The material I use is linked in other blog so if you are curious check it out!

Routines. Motivation can be great, we all love to study in a state of flow, but it is not the best long-term wise because it is volatile. I recommend creating routines in the first month of school, in which you will probably be very motivated. I have a schedule for finals and other one for mid-terms.At the end you’ll see my mid-term season daily routine. Total studied hours: 11 hours 15 minutes. Total slept hours: 4 hours. This schedule is quite extreme, but my friends in Korea are studying 14 hours a day, this motivates me a lot. Please, remember that rest is important, and soemtimes excesive studying can lead to poor performance. 

Planning ahead: Please, always have a study plan on hand and make sure you know your syllabus, making sure you know what contents you’ll be studying per smester. Make a study plan and prioratize on certain subjects depending on your chosen major. I a plan with my subjects and the grades I expect to get form each one of them. This is a link to my goals per class taken. I haven’t started with my study plan yet, because school is a long way to come (I’m in vacation) but when I finish it I’ll put a link to it as well.

Motivation: As I already said motivation is not the best when it comes to studying, but a little will walways make routines easier to follow. That’s why planners and study time trackers are so great.

This example does not belong to me and I don’t know the original source because I got this image form Pinterest (I link the website of the image, it’s in Japanese and gives good study advice too! google translate works for this part). In the left upper corner we see the date. On the right upper corner, we see the days left until the test. You should write the goal of the day. E.g: Finish chapters 7 and 8 and maths practice tests. Then a ‘To do list’ with everything that you will do in order to achieve your goal. The time table is very simple, going from 4am to 3am on the next day. The color code this person uses is: Gray for sleeping, blue for school, orange for studued time and pink for free time. She also marks other activities by writing them with a black pen. Usually the time table has 6 squares horizontally, each one being 10 minutes, let’s say you studied 1 hour and 20 minutes so you would highlight a whole row (60 minutes) and two squares form the next hour. In this person also added something they have to do and a song they’ve listened to that day as well as a task for the next day. You can also buy the pre-made version of it. Koyoko campus and 10 minute planner that is a more expensive verion but it it cuter I have to admit. I recomend giving it a first try hand made first before buying something you don’t know if it will work for you. You can use this planner to plan ahead as well as keeping track of your study time! But remember the study time must be actual study time.

Measuring study time: You can use anything you want, but a cooking timer works the best for me (look for study stopwatch on amazon, this one is my personal faourite and the one I’ve been using) and stop it if you are not focused! That way you’ll know how much actual time you studied.

4:00 AM- 4:15 AM Waking up.

 4:15 AM- 7:00 AM Study (2 hours 45 minutes). 

7:00 AM- 8:30 AM Get to school (20 minutes). 

8:30 AM- 11:45 AM Classes. 

11:55 AM- 1:00 PM Study (1 hour 5 minutes). 

1:00 PM- 4:00 PM Classes. 

4:00 PM- 6:20 PM Study (2 hours 20 minutes). 

6:20 PM- 7:00 PM Transportation (20 minutes) 

7:05 PM- 7:30 PM Study (25 minutes). 

7:30 PM- 8:00 PM Night routine and dinner. 

8:00 PM- 12:00 AM Study (4 hours)