#phoebe-does answer

no worries hon! SO !! hard relate because I was once you. Lesson learnt after studying so hard only to lose half marks everywhere due to simple mistakes!

Here’s what I did:

I stopped talking to ppl before exams. I now go off alone, turn off my phone and everything and just focus on my breathing. I do some light meditation, not thinking of anything in particular and I just slow down my thoughts.

When I get in the exam I spend 5-10 minutes just reading all the questions and HIGHLIGHTING the key points of what they want me to answer.

When I start my test, I FORCE myself to take it slow, focusing on one question at a time, making sure I’ve answered everything I’ve highlighting. Basing how much I need to answer on how many points the question is worth. 

I aim to finish with 10-15 minutes to spare and I NEVER LEAVE EARLY! I do all the questions again in my head, looking through each line of working/writing, making sure I’ve answered what they are looking for and simplified everything, rounded right, all that.

When I get it back, I go through my test in all the parts I lost marks or got wrong with my teacher to make sure they haven’t marked something wrong by accident (it has happened before) and I improve for next time!!

hello lovely! So not a medical practitioner in any way, shape or form but here’s what I do:

1. boost yo immune system!- I buy a natural elderberry extract called Sambucol and take that religiously. I also make a vitamin C crush! With lemon, grapefruit, orange, kiwi fruit, a bit of water and ice in a blender and have that with brekky

2. soup- Simple foods that are nutritious and filling! Take it easy hon and remember to have 3 meals a day!

3. fluiiiddds-Drink so much water. Seriously. Hot water with a bit of lemon and honey is great for a sore throat! 

4. Steam!- Have hot steamy showers and try and clear your sinuses! Salt water sinus rinses are great too :)

5. light exercise to clear your sinuses - Whenever I’m sick I try and walk, breathing mainly with my nose! Great for clearing your sinuses but don’t push yourself my love! This is the time to take it easy and let yourself recover.

6. SLEEPGET SO MUCH SLEEP! Sleep early and let yourself recover!

hi there lovely, sorry it’s taken a while for me to reply, I’ve been thinking about how I’ve been doing it and getting back on track to productivity. I do it in a variety of ways, the first is setting short deadlines for yourself eg. I will have done this section of the math assignment by tomorrow. Make them realistic and stick to them. You’ve got to develop a mindset where everything you’re doing, you’re doing for you. You’re drinking those 3 litres of water for you. You’re doing your english creative for you. You’re going out of your way to enter competitions for you. Do everything in stride and don’t stress about it, you’re doing it for you. 

One of the biggest things for me to develop discipline was self restraint, catching myself with unhealthy habits and finding alternative ones. Eg. I catch myself mindlessly snacking and watching hours of netflix. To resolve this, I move from the kitchen to my room, I turn off my laptop and read or journal. This goes for life and school.

To not feel overwhelmed, my advice would take a 20-30 minute walk each day to clear your head. I started doing this sometimes instead of riding my bike to and from school and I found not listening to music and just having a talk with myself each day, almost like a therapy session really helped to address how I’m feeling and everything going on in my life. Every time you start feeling overwhelmed, stop whatever you are doing, take a deep breath and ask yourself how will feeling this anxious help me get what I need to get done, done. Keep on breathing slowly until you calm down.

I would also recommend, if you feel you’re not pushing yourself hard enough, talking to your teacher, making sure each day you have some piece of work for math that you could work on and doing 45 minutes each day. I went from a 49% to 80%  and 4rth in my cohort in my math exams in the SAME TERM since I started studying RIGHT. I stopped listening to music while studying, I stopped treating it like I just wanted to get as much done as possible in that 45 minutes. I started doing half of each subtopic on one day and doing other sections and a few days later I would finish the subtopic to aid retrieval and have better storage of the knowledge. 

For time management, create a to-do list at the beginning of each day so you know what you need to get done. Next to each to-do, write how long it should take you and just get started! For every 2-3 things you do that will aid your long term, do 1 thing that will aid your short term. e.g. 2 assignments, going for a run then rewarding yourself by scrolling through tumblr for 20 minutes. Time how long you are on sites like facebook or buzzfeed so you dont get consumed and you can get back on track. Close all tabs other than work tabs while you’re working, you can come back to them.

Sure! here’s a list of some of the blogs I love in no particular order;

@cwote

@berecovered

@stillstudies

@nevill

@stargazer-studies

why did I decide to create this blog

i decided to start a blog because me and a close friend used to have a shared blog but I was the only person doing stuff for it, posting, creating pages, drawing the icon etc. And I knew I wanted our blog to be something more than it was but the other person wasn’t after that so I created phoebe-does. A blog to keep me motivated, document my thoughts and experiences as a young adult and student. I wanted to meet like minded people and hopefully help people through similar experiences. 

difficulties?

My blog was created in 2016 and only started getting ‘popular’? I guess? This year. I reached 200 followers this year, then 500, then 1k until now when I have over 5k followers. It was really really slow until now, not gonna lie. I guess because I was so focused on fitting the ‘studyblr’ mould that I didn’t post all the stuff I wanted to, not my poetry, not my words of inspiration or advice, I was stuck with the aesthetics. 

how to find your audience

Once I started posting all the stuff I wanted and tagging larger blogs in the community I was very fortunate to have some of my text posts picked up by larger blogs so my blog grew quite quickly. I love having all you guys to engage with but not gonna lie, with the growth and following comes hate. The hate commenters don’t realise that I’m a person? That I read what they say and it really does effect me when I’m already not in a good headspace? I legitimately thought of deleting my blog, not too long ago. I didn’t like how obsessive I had become and how much some of the words left on my blog effected me. 

TLDR