Strong Tea & Stronger Will

Here’s an easy resolution: This stuff is all free as long as you have access to a computer, and the skills you learn will be invaluable in your career, and/or life in general. 

1. Become awesome at Excel.

Chandoo is one of many gracious Excel experts who wants to share their knowledge with the world. Excel excellence is one of those skills that will improve your chances of getting a good job instantly, and it will continue to prove invaluable over the course of your career. What are you waiting for?

2. Learn how to code.

littleanimalgifs.tumblr.com

Perhaps no other skill you can learn for free online has as much potential to lead to a lucrative career. Want to build a site for your startup? Want to build the next big app? Want to get hired at a place like BuzzFeed? You should learn to code. There are a lot of places that offer free or cheap online coding tutorials, but I recommend Code Academy for their breadth and innovative program. If you want to try a more traditional route, Harvard offers its excellent Introduction to Computer Science course online for free.

3. Make a dynamic website.

You could use a pre-existing template or blogging service, or you could learn Ruby on Rails and probably change your life forever. Here’s an extremely helpful long list of free Ruby learning tools that includes everything from Rails for Zombies to Learn Ruby The Hard Way. Go! Ruby! Some basic programming experience, like one of the courses above, might be helpful (but not necessarily required if you’re patient with yourself).

4. Learn to make a mobile game.

If you’re not interested in coding anything other than fun game apps, you could trythis course from the University of Reading. It promises to teach you how to build a game in Java, even if you don’t have programming experience! If you want to make a truly great game, you might want to read/listen up on Game Theory first.

5. Start reading faster.

Spreeder is a free online program that will improve your reading skill and comprehension no matter how old you are. With enough practice, you could learn to double, triple, or even quadruple the speed at which you read passages currently, which is basically like adding years to your life.

6. Learn a language!

With Duolingo, you can learn Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, or English (from any of the above or more). There’s a mobile app and a website, and the extensive courses are completely free.

Full disclosure: BuzzFeed and other websites are in a partnership with DuoLingo, but they did not pay or ask for this placement.

7. Pickle your own vegetables.

Tired of your farmer’s market haul going bad before you use it all? Or do you just love tangy pickled veggies? You too can pickle like a pro thanks to SkillShare and Travis Grillo.

8. Improve your public speaking skills.

You can take the University of Washington’s Intro to Public Speaking for free online. Once you learn a few tricks of the trade, you’ll be able to go into situations like being asked to present at a company meeting or giving a presentation in class without nearly as much fear and loathing.

9. Get a basic handle of statistics.

UC Berkeley put a stats intro class on iTunes. Once you know how to understand the numbers yourself, you’ll never read a biased “news” article the same way again — 100% of authors of this post agree!

10. Understand basic psychology.

Knowing the basics of psych will bring context to your understanding of yourself, the dynamics of your family and friendships, what’s really going on with your coworkers, and the woes and wonders of society in general. Yale University has its Intro to Psychology lectures online for free.

11. Make your own music.

Step one: Learn how to play guitar: Justin Guitar is a fine and free place to start learning chords and the basic skills you’ll need to be able to play guitar — from there, it’s up to you, but once you know the basics, just looking up tabs for your favorite songs and learning them on your own is how many young guitar players get their start (plus it’s an excellent party trick).

Step two: A delightful free voice lesson from Berklee College Of Music.

Step three: Have you always thought you had an inner TSwift? Berklee College of Music offers an Introduction to Songwriting course completely for free online. The course is six weeks long, and by the end of the lesson you’ll have at least one completed song.

Step four: Lifehacker’s basics of music production will help you put it all together once you have the skills down! You’ll be recording your own music, ready to share with your valentine or the entire world, in no time!

12. Learn to negotiate.

Let Stanford’s Stan Christensen explain how to negotiate in business and your personal life, managing relationships for your personal gain and not letting yourself be steamrolled. There are a lot of football metaphors and it’s great.

13. Stop hating math.

If you struggled with math throughout school and now have trouble applying it in real-world situations when it crops up, try Saylor.org’s Real World Math course. It will reteach you basic math skills as they apply IRL. Very helpful!

14. Start drawing!

All kids draw — so why do we become so afraid of it as adults? Everyone should feel comfortable with a sketchbook and pencil, and sketching is a wonderful way to express your creativity. DrawSpace is a great place to start. (I also highly recommend the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain if you can drop a few dollars for a used copy.)

15. Make your own animated GIF.

BuzzFeed’s own Katie Notopoulos has a great, simple guide to making an animated GIF without Photoshop. This is all you need to be the king or queen of Tumblr or your favorite email chains.

16. Appreciate jazz.

reddit.com

Have you never really “gotten” jazz? If you want to be able to participate in conversations at fancy parties and/or just add some context to your appreciation of all music, try this free online course from UT Austin.

17. Write well.

Macalester College’s lecture series is excellent. If you’re more interested in journalism, try Wikiversity’s course selection.

18. Get better at using Photoshop.

Another invaluable skill that will get you places in your career, learning Photoshop can be as fun as watching the hilarious videos on You Suck At Photoshop or as serious as this extensive Udemy training course (focused on photo retouching).

19. Take decent pictures.

Lifehacker’s basics of photography might be a good place to start. Learn how your camera works, the basic of composition, and editing images in post-production. If you finish that and you’re not sure what to do next, here’s a short course on displaying and sharing your digital photographs.

20. Learn to knit.

Instructables has a great course by a woman who is herself an online-taught knitter. You’ll be making baby hats and cute scarves before this winter’s over!

21. Get started with investing in stocks.

If you are lucky enough to have a regular income, you should start learning about savings and investment now. Investopedia has a ton of online resources, including this free stocks basics course. Invest away!

22. Clean your house in a short amount of time.

Unf$#k Your Habitat has a great emergency cleaning guide for when your mother-in-law springs a surprise visit on you. While you’re over there, the entire blog is good for getting organized and clean in the long term, not just in “emergencies.” You’ll be happier for it.

23. Start practicing yoga.

Most cities have free community classes (try just searching Google or inquiring at your local yoga studio), or if you’re more comfortable trying yoga at home, YogaGlohas a great 15-day trial and Yome is a compendium of 100% free yoga videos. If you’re already familiar with basic yoga positions but you need an easy way to practice at home, I recommend YogaTailor’s free trial as well.

24. Tie your shoelaces more efficiently.

Mendeley is the greatest program ever

I want to weep with joy every time I use it

Just click a button when you pull up an article and it will automatically save it to your library

And cite it for you

And you can use it on your mobile devices

And it’s free

You can use it to highlight, write notes, mark up, etc. What I do is I highlight all the important jazz, use the comments to write notes on the document, and on the side bar, I write an annotated bib for it for future me. It save everything you write on it forever for you and you can put the articles in folders and organize it.

[25/12/2016] 🎅 Merry Christmas Everyone 🎅 I hope everyone to have the most wonderful time of the year!

How was your week? I spent my time on doing things that I love like reading, watching movies, playing guitar, painting and hanging out with friends! Most importantly, having some time with my family 🌼

I dedicated a few of my bujo pages on things about Chirstmas I am posting it later today so be excited if you want to lol

the past couple of days have been very lovely xx

Spread from early this month.

I actually coloured the things I have done with a very light pink colour but the filter and the lighting erased it so it seems like I did none of the things I’m supposed to 😅.

December 27, 2016

First spread of my bullet journal, it was really hard to make the months fit correctly and my OCD was killing me! Who else suffers from this? Let me know 😊

hey guys!! it has been a while :’))

however, i have finished my first semester of chemistry (pre-ib) and i felt as if that i did pretty well in this subject even though i had minimal background knowledge on it. i initially struggled with the concepts we did, but after studying hard and trying my best i have gotten used to it and have been improving so here are my tips and tricks for chemistry!

please understand that i have not been through all the topics in chemistry, i have only learnt about atomic structure, periodicity and bonding so my links and tips may only help you for those topics but they should help with the other topics also. (this is most likely a general chemistry masterpost btw)

important study tips:

ask questions in class!!!!!! this is incredibly important, as also for every subject but if you don’t understand the concept you will struggle like how i did in the beginning :( if you are too shy to ask your question in front of the class, go up to the teacher when you have some time or even email them. even just ask your friends or classmates who may have a better understanding of the concept, it definitely helps having different explanations on the same topic, having different perspectives and all

find good resources, go through past tests, past exams and worksheets so that you can have good practice of what may come in your tests and exams. my teacher was very organised and had plenty of resources for me to use to revise and learn in my spare time out of class. it also gave me the experience of the ib tests and exams so i knew what was to come

as said in my maths masterpost, try teaching others when they need help (if you understand the topic and they don’t) because this really seems to help me when studying for tests, i helped my friend with her questions about atomic structure and found myself learning and revising at the same time because of this

repetition!!! you may not get it right the first time, or even the second, but after lots of tries and times you will get there!! trust me :’))

if you don’t have resources, go search for some. there are plenty of studyblrs who do chem as a subject and im sure they are more than happy to help you (me too but i haven’t through many of the topics lol) once you have been through all the past papers you own, go google for some, especially ib kids, theres some out there for you!

have a periodic table with you at all times when studying chem! its a bit obvious but you would most likely need it

apps + websites: 

periodic table apps (there is loads on the app stores but here are some i found)

periodic table [ android | ios ] very indepth and informative (glad i just found this one, im downloading it rn)

periodic table (this one is different) [ android | ios ]

there is plenty, so find the app which suits you and your learning needs

molview (this website allows you to draw molecules!!)

ibchem.com for my fellow ib chem students, this website has notes and other resources to help you with your studies

2016 ib data booklet (there is probably going to be a 2017 one soon but anyways this will be useful

khan academy chemistry (honestly this website is a blessing to all students, so helpful !!!!)

sparknotes chem

other chemistry masterposts:

chemistry by @areistotle​ 

ap chemistry by @etudiance​

chemistry resource masterpost originally by @physicnerd

general chemistry masterpost by @ellielearnsthings​

my other masterposts:

chinese masterpost

app masterpost

bullet journaling

maths masterpost

advice for new studyblrs

physics masterpost

i hope that these resources and tips will help you in your chemistry studies c: