#spoonieengineer

And here I thought I’d never write an actual article of my own, and limit myself to posting pictures and reblogging other people’s stuff. But from what I’ve seen there isn’t much stuff out there for STEM students, so I guess I’ll leave here my little grain of sand.

.*DURING CLASS*.

Just the usual. Pay attention. If you have that subject’s book or powerpoint slides, print them out so you can annotate on those during class. Or if you’re like me, lacking in the attention department, disregard this tip and take your own notes. Write constantly. It helps you keep yourself engaged and not fall asleep. (Not always works. Spoonies are spoonies for a reason.)

.*TACKLING SCHOOLWORK*.

And by schoolwork I mean the practice of those more math-based subjects, since whatever involves lots of reading or essay writing, already has several guides on Tumblr and all over the Internet. 

See how your homework guide is structured. If it involves lots of practice exercises from the lower level difficulty to the hardest, and specially if you’re short on time, I’d do one of the easiest first, to get familiar with the formulas, one of the middle difficulty ones, to get some thinking involved with those formulas, and then the difficult ones, because they tend to be long and use the highest amount of formulas, and incorporate important concepts that will give you a deep understanding of the subject. Plus if you know how to solve the harder ones, the rest should be easy.

If instead of following a pattern of increasing in difficulty, your exercises are splattered all over the place or are of similar difficulty, well, feel free to skip, or do them all in a row, but do as many as you can.

.*METHOD FOR SOLVING A MATH-BASED EXERCISE*.

This is useful if you’re new or got un-used to it, but most of the time you get the hang of it, and don’t need to do ALL of this so strictly:

-Read the WHOLE exercise. Sometimes important information will be at the end, or you’ll find answers in there to previous questions.

-Divide a space in two columns. In one of them, put all of the information you have. In the other one, put down all the information the exercise is asking you to find (you have to find the X? The X goes in this column. That’s what I meant.)

-FOR PHYSICS BASED SUBJECTS: if you can, make a small drawing/diagram of your situation, together with all the information you have gathered so far.

-Write down all the formulas you have to use for this part of your subject. You might not use them all for the exercise, but the act of writing them over and over again makes memorizing them easier.

-Start using those formulas, replacing the data you have in them, and all that jazz.

-IF YOU END UP WITH A BIG-ASS, LONG-ASS EQUATION: do yourself a favour. Put all the terms that have the X on them (or whatever you have to find) to the left, and all the terms that can be calculated without having to find any Xs to the right. Do it before you being calculating things to shrink the equation. This will make clearing that X so much easier, and you won’t put an X in the wrong term by accident.

.*TACKLING THE THEORY*.

For text based stuff, your usual methods for text based subjects. Pay special attention to:

-Graphs. They’re very useful visual representations of what you’re learning.

-In long demonstrations, THOSE SPECIFIC STEPS. You know them. Math demonstrations are pretty logical in nature, and easy to explain and develop out of common sense, until you reach that specific step that was pulled out of the mathematician’s ass. There’s no specific reason for it, other than adjust the dimensions of the equation, make it more neat, use a trigonometric identity they needed to put in there... The likes of “add +X sin(alpha) to both sides of the equation”. Sometimes these terms are quite long, so it’s all more important to memorize, so you don’t get lost in that specific step.

-Fall in love with mindmaps. Explain them verbally while you draw them. It helps retain information.

.*OTHER TIPS*.

-If applicable: always write down your units. If you clear your X and end up with the height of a building being 380lbs/seconds... Something went wrong.

-Keep in mind how exact you have to be in your calculations. For designing a batch of concrete, calculating everything in grams without decimals might be fine. But if you want to find out the permeability of the ground, you’ll need several decimals to get a value that actually means something.

-Use graph paper. Really.

-Have two scientific calculators if possible. One for homework, one for carrying at uni. Otherwise at some point you’ll forget your calculator for your exam.

-Fall in love with Excel.

-AutoCAD, in its official website, offers a free version for students, that is extremely complete and so far has been perfect for my engineering college career.

Finally got around to making an intro post. I’d love to say I’m making this just to procrastinate, but I’m actually doing it trying to get the ball rolling after recovering from a 5 hours long depression session.

Why am I telling such a sad thing? Well, because it kinda fits the theme of my studyblr. Don’t worry, I have zero intention of filling this with depressive quotes and self deprecating rants. But it’s a fact that I’m a SPOONIE engineering student, and while anxiety and chronic pain are a bitch, lately my main problem with keeping up with college is depression. I made this blog to keep myself motivated, show myself that I’m actually able to *do* stuff, and lust after other people’s journals.

Currently taking Geotechnics, Buidling of buildings (lol) and installations, and Science of Materials. If this doesn’t sound like anything familiar to you, probably something was lost in translation. Now, about me:

-I’m from Argentina. 

-I enjoy reading, writing, drawing, playing videogames, roleplaying and esoteric stuff.

-Sun and rising sign cancer, moon sign aquarius... I think.

-I’m 23.

-My pics won’t be the most aesthetic, because I just want to be able to look back and see myself being productive. For being pretty, I have my drawings.

Always up for chatting, specially if you’re feeling sad or need to practice your spanish skills. 

My inspirations: 

Some days ago, in my entries for the 100 days of productivity challenge, I mentioned I was studying for a final exam.

I failed.

To make it worse, I had decided to absolutely NOT cry if I failed. But after my teacher explained all the flaws in my exam (that's ok, great learning opportunity there) she said 'Be honest. You didn't really study much for this exam, right?' and I fucking lost it, because I've been preparing for this exam for MONTHS.

But something good came from my breakdown. My teacher said I shouldn't cry over a failed exam. I explained that wasn't the case. I was crying in frustration over how my health affects my performance. My depression gives me fatigue. The fatigue also gives me mind fog. My depression/anxiety/dissociation give me memory holes. I've lost entire days I could have dedicated to studying to lack of spoons and executive dysfunction. And all this while trying to juggle my other subjects and being an entrepreneur.

The worst part, I think, is my memory. This subject is simply too long. It's not a math based subject relying on logic. It's books upon books of information on building materials. And my brain can't keep it all in. I forget about stuff, and completely mix other stuff because I can't remember which information belongs to which material. Ugh, and don't get me started on remembering information with specific numbers and specific names.

Anyway. After my explanation, my teacher said that if I have memory issues, then she'd take my exam in parts. I'll study a few units at a time, she'll grade it, and when she considers I've passed, she'll grade my final as passed.

I'm very grateful for this opportunity (which I accepted) but also deeply embarrassed. I don't like accomodations. I don't want to need them. It makes me feel weak. Needy. I want to be able to perform the same as a completely healthy person.

And more.

I need to be perfect.