#study together

collab with @herlittlestudyblr

ellie's study time: 6hrs 54mins mari's study time: 7hrs 4mins

Ive been working on holding myself accountable for the past few days, I feel like im making progress but im worried im going to lose the progress as quickly as Ive gained it (¬_¬") I wanna start posting more frequently on tumblr js bc i like documenting stuff.

15/8/2024

Hello everyone! I haven’t posed for a while because I was preparing this post. I’m so excited to share it!!!

Here I collected everything I was able to think about study tips. Obviously these are things that work for me so it’s absolutely okay if different things work for you, maybe share them in the comments so we can help and inspire each other🌸

I’ll maybe update the list as I learn more tips, or if you prefer I can collect new tips in a part two or give each tip a post, again let me now in the comments what you’d prefer💕

Less is more when underlining. Do use highlighter for key words, than circle words of secondary importance and underline something else. Absolutely do not underline/highlight/circle everything you’ll study, just those words that will help you remember the rest of that paragraph. It can help to use different colours but only when there are lists or categories because it helps you remember things as distinguished from one another. But I wouldn’t go crazy with colours in other situations

Take notes during lectures just to follow the explanation. Unless the subject is really easy and it’s fast to summarise it (which is usually the case in high school but not really in university), do NOT turn those notes into the thing you’ll study from or you’ll end up summarising the whole book and rewriting your notes to make them more pleasant and understandable. Just let yourself be messy if needed and use them to pay attention during class and to write things you didn’t understand or connections you want to explicitly see on paper. Paying attention in class really does pay off because you’ve already been exposed to the material before you actually study it

Start as early as possible, do not procrastinate until it’s gonna be really hard to prepare the exam. The pain of studying is better than the pain of regret in my opinion. Plus, you’ll be at peace and relaxed during exam season too when everyone else will be panicking because you won’t feel behind in your work

Get ready to study. Make yourself pretty. You can have everything, if you’re dressed for it. You don’t need to be uncomfortable with heels or anything like that, but wear something that makes you feel confident and determined

Moving your body before studying or during a break can help you be more present and remove brain fog. A simple walk outside really does the trick for me, it doesn’t need to be anything intense

Do not set an amount of pages to study per day as a goal at first. The first days just study for a chosen amount of hours and see how many pages you get to do a day of that particularly subject. Than you’ll be able to choose a realistic daily goal of pages to study. That’s because not every subject is the same and maybe you’d be setting unrealistic daily goals that will just demotivate you. This is why it’s important to start early: you get to find your rhythm for studying that subject and if it’s just 15 pages a day you’ll be able to do so without stressing

Give yourself a week or two depending on you and the exam of just revising before an exam. It’s important so that if you have days where you can’t function because of anxiety or if you need to clarify things you can do that without stressing

If the exam requires exercising, start practicing as soon as possible

If you only have a multiple choice kind of exam, memorise through quizzing yourself and exercises if needed

If the exam is (also) oral, you should (also) practice talking from the start by studying out loud

Sit in front of the class during lectures to pay attention better

Paper>digital because digital screens cause bad eyesight, digital things can get you distracted and because as you proceed on paper you’ll turn pages and you’ll get the feeling of progressing while seeing yourself going further in the book

Do not compare. Not everyone has the same strengths nor experience to get the same performance. But with discipline you can still get the same results, or even better

Study with a friend. You don’t neeed to study out loud together, the company is enough motivation because you feel accountable for one another and that stimulates you to do better. Plus, breaks are much more fulfilling and actually resting because you talk to another human being instead of going on your phone

Removing distractions means out of sight out of mind. Do not just turn off your phone and let it on the desk. Move it to another room and leave it there

Discipline is like a muscle. Resist the urge to do something else (checking your phone, watching Netflix, going to eat something, …). Acknowledge the urge and just stop yourself from satisfying it. If you can’t concentrate either, that’s okay. Just sit still without doing anything until the urge passes, then you can go back to studying with more concentration

Kill the fear whilst it’s small. Don’t procrastinate, instead face your challenges as soon as you can. The only way out is through

Talk to someone if you need help. If you need someone to check in on you, ask your roommate or relatives. If you didn’t understand something, ask the professor or your classmates. If you need emotional support, talk to the people close to you. It really does help

Go to the exam. Even if everything tells you that you’ll fail. Because you never know if you get lucky and only get asked the things you know. It happened to me quite a few times. The worst thing that can happen is that you have to do the exam again, the best is that you passed the exam. You never lose

Positive attitude and responsibility are key. Find the positive thing in every situation and realise that you have a huge responsibility in preparing for exams. You can’t control everything, but you can control the work you put into the preparation and that’s amazing because nobody can take that from you

There’s not a right time for anything. There’s just time and what you do with it. If it’s 5:17 pm you don’t need to wait until 5:30 pm to start studying. Just count to three and start. Do not look for the best time to study on the internet. Some people will tell you it’s 6 am, others will tell you something different. Listen to your body and pay attention to your mind. When are you the most concentrated? Than handle the day according to that. When you are the most active and concentrated you should study new material. When you are still energised but less focused, you should revise previous work and/or practice it

Sport, friends, family, hobbies and sleep are not a plus but a must. They have been a plus for me for so many years and I’ve been burnt out for almost a year. You need to take that hour or half hour to workout, preferably outside so you get that vitamin D. You need to see friends and family to avoid isolation. You need hobbies to feel rewarded for your hard work. You need to sleep because during sleep you strengthen neuronal patterns about the things you’ve studied, and sleeping helps you lower cortisol which is the stress hormone and keeping high levels of it is really bad and counterproductive. You need to balance everything because you gotta avoid at all costs chronic stress

Fear of failure is such a useless thing. It freezes you and makes you feel like the world is gonna explode if you fail. That’s bullshit of course. You are so much more than what you fail in, especially if you put in the work anyway. Don’t worry about how many times you fall, because the real difference is made by how many times you get up and try again. Fail, then fail better. Until you get it. Who cares? And even if someone does care, it’s their problem. As long as you are trying, you’re doing progress because remember that little progress is still progress. To worry less about failing, do the things you’re scared to fail at. If you fail, you’ll realise nothing bad really happens. And if you succeed, you’ll surprise yourself. Doubt kills way more opportunities than failure ever will, remember that

Be careful who you surround yourself with. If you are already really well organised and following a balanced lifestyle, then stay with whoever you like. But if you’re working on your lifestyle and don’t feel really productive nor satisfied with it yet, surround yourself with people who do have the lifestyle you’re looking for. That’s because when you’re still working on it you’re more likely to pick up habits from those around you

Be honest with yourself. Was the professor really a dick or did you not study that topic? Do you really need to rest are do you just want to avoid the work? Will you be able to do the work you wanted to if you go out right now? Telling yourself excuses makes you accumulate feelings of rage and subconscious disappointment and you enter the victim mentality instead of taking accountability and realising you can do a lot to change a situation. If you tell yourself excuses you’ll end up not trusting yourself and that’s so hard to fix

Often what people say about a professor is completely subjective, usually because they’ve had a bad experience with her/him and therefore want (usually subconsciously) to scare other students by sharing it. So you never really know if they are lying so that you have a bad experience with that teacher too, or maybe they deserved that strict treatments because they were rude and unprepared, … You really never know until you experience it first hand. Do ask many students and go attend to other people’s exam if possible so that you get an idea of who the professor is and how he structures the exam, make sure to listen to more opinions and never take them for granted. Know that everything might be biased

Take advices, but remember that many people want to see you do good, but never better than them. This doesn’t apply for everyone of course, but to many people yes

Pomodoro technique or deep work? Who fucking knows honestly lmao. Not everything will have the same rhythm and difficulty. For some topics or subjects you’ll have a headache after one hour trying to understand two pages. For others you’ll study without stopping for four hours because everything will seem to just be clear to you and to be sticking to your brain. Don’t follow a rule, just start and have a break when you’re struggling to fit in other informations

What you eat matters. Light meals to avoid feeling sleepy right afterwards help you study right after eating. Water keeps your brain in shape. Proteins keep you full and carbs keep you going. Sugar is tricky because it gives you energy right away but after little time you’ll need more, leading you to eating too much sugar and feeling foggy. Prefer healthy carbs instead of sugar (do eat some sugary treats if you want of course lol) like rice to have a more sustained energy release and mental clarity. These are the things that work for me anyway, you can experiment and see if you work better when eating many small meals or fewer big meals. Everyone is different and I’m not a nutritionist so listen to your body and try to be healthy

Celebrate small victories

Realistic goals please. Wanting to study 100 pages everyday is usually pretty unrealistic in a healthy and even in an unhealthy lifestyle. Not achieving your goals makes you feel like you can’t trust nor rely on yourself and that demotivates you

To focus try to think about the material. Read a sentence and tell yourself what it’s explaining you. Associate it with other things you’ve studied or experienced. Create little stories into your mind to remember a series of events. Anagrams for lists of names. Highlight, circle and underline as explained in one of the first points. Even give titles to paragraphs if you need to. Do this things with your own words and if you need to write them, do it right next to the paragraph. If you do these things you can’t think about something else because these require effort and attention. This a called active studying because you’re not passively reading and highlighting or repeating word for word without understanding but you’re really absorbing what you’re studying

Revise things constantly. Not a week later, but the next day. And if the next day you still don’t feel like you’ve memorised it, repeat it again the following day. If you remember it, repeat it 3 or 5 or 7 days later based on how much you retain things and how much you feel like you’ve memorised it. And after you’ve reached one week, keep repeating based on your needs. This is absolutely a game changer otherwise one or two weeks before the exam when you’ll want to revise everything again, you’ll realise you’ll have to study again a lot of things because you haven’t revised then. Such a waste! This is called spaced repetition, but instead of telling you a specific technique, I believe you need to listen to yourself and realise how much you’ve retained something to understand when to revise it again. Not every topic is the same and not everything you’ve memorised is relevant to you, so some things require more repetition than others and it’s up to you to see when it’s more for. But be honest with yourself, don’t tell yourself you know something just because you don’t want to revise. Reading again something is not revising it because just because it will feel familiar, doesn’t mean you’re able to talk about it completely recalling from memory. It’s important for you to repeat from memory, even if you struggle and feel like you don’t remember. Give yourself more credit and try to remember for at least 10 seconds before peeking on the book

Have something you enjoy while studying. It can be music (only music that does NOT have lyrics like lofi music or rain), a cup of tea, a candle, …

Switch up the location if you can’t focus

You don’t need a thousand pens, notebooks and colours to be productive and organised, but I believe it’s not a bad idea to have a different notebook for each subject where you take notes and write diagrams or whatever you need to better comprehend that subject

1. Choose the Right Group: Surround yourself with motivated peers who share your academic goals and work ethic. Diversity in skills and knowledge is a plus.

2. Set Clear Goals: Clearly define the purpose of the group study session, what topics you'll cover, and what you want to accomplish.

3. Divide and Conquer: Assign specific topics or subtopics to each member to become experts in. This way, you can teach and learn from each other effectively.

4. Organize Your Session: Create a structured agenda for your study session with designated start and end times. Stay on track!

5. Active Participation: Actively engage with the material. Encourage everyone to ask questions, discuss concepts, and offer insights.

6. Share Resources: Pool your resources, textbooks, notes, and online references. Sharing is caring!

7. Teach Each Other: Teach what you've learned to your peers. Teaching is one of the best ways to reinforce your understanding.

8. Quiz Each Other: Use flashcards or ask questions to quiz one another. It's a fun way to test your knowledge.

9. Encourage Discussion: Foster a collaborative environment where ideas flow freely. Encourage healthy debates and brainstorming.

10. Take Breaks: Include short breaks in your session to relax and recharge. A quick breather can boost productivity.

11. Stay Organized: Keep track of assignments, deadlines, and study schedules as a group. Use shared calendars or apps for easy coordination.

12. Recap and Summarize: At the end of your study session, summarize what you've learned and make a list of action items for your next individual study sessions.

13. Mutual Support: Offer support, motivation, and encouragement to each other. A strong support system can make a big difference.

14. Be Mindful of Size: Keep your study group relatively small. Smaller groups tend to be more focused and productive.

hey best friendss

i found this studying website that's actually really cool where there's a lot of random people also studying

most of them have their cameras on too

and there's like a lot of different options for changing your background, ambient music/bianural/lofi beats

chance is ill use this for 2 days and forget about it, but it seems pretty wholesome :))

and this is the room i am in currently, at this moment, at this very time.

Thank you to everyone who voted on the poll. (here) we have a playlist now! For obvious reasons, I can't put the invite link in a post so please shoot me a DM to be invited as a collaborator on the community playlist! Playlist link is under the cut and feel free to add any songs you like!

My classes started again this week, and I was looking for new ways to study and found a very cool website called Study Together.

The goal of this platform is to provide you with a virtual room that you can choose to use individually or in a group. In this virtual environment, you can set the focus time according to the Pomodoro technique, add tasks and goals, choose images and background sounds. The platform itself offers various cool options like anime gifs, sounds of rain, etc., or you can also add a YouTube video. In addition to all of this, there's also a gamification system with badges and challenges. I will try to use it as a tool to try to increase my productivity.