How to study effectively and have a great school year

A few weeks ago I uploaded an evaluation of my study habits during the first semester of 2015 and, since then, I have received a few messages from people that have the same or similar struggles.

The purpose of this post is to help those people with the mistakes that are not easily fixed. I will approach other common mistakes and bad habits, too.

So… How to study effectively and have a great school year?

1. Have a progress journal, not a planner.

I have spent way too much time trying to keep up with a planner. One hour every Sunday trying to figure out what to do during the week, only to have my entire schedule messed up by a single event.

Instead, try to create a more effective system:

For homework, projects and other things that you have to present to the teacher: try to do everything on the day you are given it; if you can’t, write it on a post-it note, stick it somewhere in your room where you’ll see it and make sure to finish it within a week. Sounds extreme, but it’s actually the best way to get things done.

For personal goals, things that require constant effort or that need to be done on a daily basis (self-studying a language and exercising, for example): literally graph your progress. Every week, write down what you need to do on a piece of paper and draw seven squares next to it. Colour a square whenever you finish the task. 

2. Stop obsessing over perfection.

Getting your perfectionism under control doesn’t mean you have to start bs-ing your academic life. It means your notes have to be neat, not pretty. It means you have to give your best, but not freak out when irrelevant things go wrong.

I get we all want our notes to look like the ones we see on tumblr, but we need to understand that spending three hours summarizing a 50 minute lecture is not reasonable. Your blog aesthetic is not more important than your education.

Don’t be so hard on yourself. I used to think this was a quality, but being so anxious you puke and crying for a whole afternoon because you messed up a little bit is counterproductive and unhealthy.

3. For real, don’t be so hard on yourself. Have some self-esteem.

I have lost count of how many times I cried/felt bad because I wasn’t as smart as others or because I didn’t do well on a test. I’ll not even go into why this is unhealthy.

Don’t waist time you could be using to improve yourself to depreciate yourself.

4. Be reasonable and have control over your life.

Sure, we’re young, but this doesn’t mean we have to be immature. A lot of mistakes I made were due me not taking action and waiting for others to notice wrong things and fix them for me.

If you are mentally unstable, go to a doctor asap. Have daily moments of introspection and seek help when something feels wrong. You have to take care of yourself, this is nobody else’s job.

Same for your physical health.

You shouldn’t be drinking so much coffee and you know that. Stop.

You should be eating healthier and you know that.

You should be sleeping more and earlier and you know that too.

Don’t wait a small problem become a big one to take action. Fix things as fast as you can, always.

Stop neglecting yourself.

5. Some final tips

Don’t hate any of your teachers. Do your best to like all of them, pretend for a while if you have to.

Don’t skip class just because you think it’s not important. I lost a lot of important classes because I thought I would be able to study the subjects by myself.

Exercise often.

Don’t ignore your doubts, you’ll probably have to deal with them later.

ASAP is your new goal. Do everything as soon as possible.

Hello! This masterpost is aimed towards AP calculus classes, but many of the links apply to any calculus class. Enjoy!

Study Sheets (AB and BC calc) 1//2//3

Calculus Calculators

Derivatives/integrals/limits/series

Euler’s method (with slope fields!)

Implicit differentiation

General equations

Tutorials and Explanations 1//2//3//4//5//6

AP Exam Study Tools and Tips

Note-taking

Tips

How to ace calculus

AB FRQs with answers

BC FRQs with answers

AB practice test with video review

AB review

BC review I

BC review II

Ways to Avoid Burnout at University

Ok, I’ll admit, I seem like the worst person to give advice on this as around exam times I regularly burnout. But because I’m not as cold-hearted as I pretend to be, I don’t actually want to see anyone else fall into the same traps I do (regularly). First, here are a few of the bad habits burnout brings for me:

Heightened emotions – so much crying. Revising Latin from a textbook, I once cried because they’d introduced a new noun without giving the definition a chapter early. If you find yourself crying because of no reason (eg. you left your teabag in too long, your tutor has taken longer than 10 seconds to reply to your e-mail etc.), it’s probably burnout.

Apathy – on the other end of the scale, if you simply cannot find the motivation to sit down and study, if accompanied by other symptoms, it’s most likely burnout. Often a few days before exams I’ll find it almost impossible to keep revising with thoughts like ‘What is the point? I’ll fail anyway - why am I pushing myself so hard?’ floating around.

Disturbed sleep – I have sleep issues anyway but exam time only exacerbates the problem. Often I’ll find myself worrying about things to the point of feeling physically sick which isn’t exactly conducive for a good night’s rest. This leads to tiredness, lower quality of work and only further promotes things like heightened emotions.

Changes in diet – this can go two ways. You can find yourself barely eating anything at all due to all the work you’re doing or find yourself scoffing biscuits, chocolate, crisps and pizza in stress eating. Sometimes you may not even necessarily eat more unhealthy foods, but simply up the quantity tenfold. I usually swing between the two, barely eating anything during the day, then pigging out at around 2am on anything and everything I can find (a whole box of Cadbury’s Milk Tray for example).

Physical illness – all of the above does not a healthy student make. Lack of sleep especially lowers your immune system’s defences and makes you more susceptible to catching something, especially in a university or school environment. I usually end up with some kind of cold or chest infection around exams purely because I’ve run my body to the ground. Yes, I become that person who’s sniffling and coughing through exams (I’m sorry!).

But what can you do to prevent this?

Plan realistically – If you’ve left all of your revision until quite late, you may have to accept that you cannot feasibly revise it all to the standard you’d like. For example, for a language exam you may want to complete every exercise in the textbook in full but if there’s 130 exercises with an average of 20 questions in each, you may have to accept that it ain’t going to happen. Instead, try halving the amount – instead of answering all 20, pick the 10 most challenging to you and do them. You’ll half the time but still revise in a challenging way.

Find other sources available to you – By this I mean if you’ve read the books for your English Literature exam over and over, think of a different way to revise. Maybe a CrashCourse video while you have a cup of tea, or quizzes available online at places like Bitesize and Sparknotes? All of these are low-stress activities that are still engaging you without driving you down.

Break it up – The Pomodoro Technique of working for a set amount of time then forcing yourself to take a short break is fantastic, but sometimes 10 minutes simply isn’t enough. You may need a full day off revising. This is incredibly hard, especially for studyblrs, because I know I generally spend any time I’m not actively doing work panicking about the work I feel I should be doing. Unfortunately, you just have to force yourself. Your work quality will improve and your body will thank you for it. Maybe spend your day off trying to be extra healthy – go for a run, do some yoga, only drink herbal tea and lots of water, go to bed early even if you have trouble sleeping – you’ll still be forcing your body to rest.

SLEEP – This can be a bugger sometimes, not always through any fault of your own. Try ASMR or meditation videos, a Sleep Time tea and a nice shower before you go to bed. However sometimes other things are outside our control – other people in my block finished their exams much earlier than I did and obviously went out to celebrate. Good for them! However when they’re still screaming and slamming doors in your thin walled hall at 4am the day of your exam, it can get irksome. Earplugs or headphones, my friend. Or failing that, if you have friends in other halls, as a drastic measure ask if you can sleep in their room tonight. Probably won’t be as comfortable, but at least you’ll get some rest.

Hate to state the obvious, but look after yourself – University is hard for staying healthy, especially around exam time. You’re late in the library and the only things available are the sweets vending machines or the late night pizza delivery place, how on earth do you stay healthy then? Answer - prepare ahead. While I’m guilty of binge stress eating when it’s exam time, I generally try to stock up on healthy things so whilst I’m eating, at least I’m getting my 5 a day. If you have a fridge in your hall room, a pantry in your hall block or you live in self-catered accommodation, some great snacks are hummus, carrot sticks, feta cheese, cucumber, pitta breads, nutri-bars and nuts, besides the obvious fruit. When you start to feel mentally exhausted, go for a walk around campus – mine has a lake that’s good for an afternoon walk. Or force yourself to exercise at a set time – I’m part of my uni’s yoga soc, so I try to schedule in lessons as a way of forcing myself to take a break, relax and still exercise.

At the end of the day, you are more than your grades – You can’t do more than your best. Talk it over with your friends and/or family, they care about you and will listen and hug you until you feel better. My mum and my best friends have seen me burnout all the way through AS and A Levels and now they’ve seen me burnout at uni, and I can still say out of all of these techniques, ringing my mum and listening to her rant about the historical inaccuracies of the latest episode of The Musketeers and joining in with her, or discussing my friend’s new girlfriend with her, these are the most helpful. They calm you down, take your mind off work for half an hour and remind you how loved and supported you are.

Hope these were at the very least a little bit helpful!

A data structure is a group of data elements associated with one another in different ways. These data elements or set of variables, can have different types and lengths. Data structures have been classified in several ways:

Linear Data Structures: is one in which, elements are arranged linearly, in sequence. Arrays, Linked list, Stacks, Queues are examples of linear data structures in which values are stored in a sequence. 

Non-Linear Data Structures: is one in which a data item is connected to several other items. Trees, Graphs, Tables and Sets are examples of non-linear data structures. 

kimmcheee:

ATTENTION ALL GIRLS: We ALL know that the lower stomach is one of the very hardest places to burn fat and tone.

These are some terrific exercises to do in the morning and at night to burn those hard to tone areas!

Do this every morning when you wake up, and every night before you sleep. I guarantee you’ll see results in a week flat!

Liking and reblogging for future reference!

I’ve said this to my non-techie friends countless times. It’s no secret that being able to code makes you a better job applicant, and a better entrepreneur. Hell, one techie taught a homeless man to code and now that man is making his first mobile application.

Learning to code elevates your professional life, and makes you more knowledgeable about the massive changes taking place in the technology sector that are poised to have an immense influence on human life.

(note: yes I realize that 3/5 of those links were Google projects)

But most folks are intimidated by coding. And it does seem intimidating at first. But peel away the obscurity and the difficulty, and you start to learn that coding, at least at its basic level, is a very manageable, learnable skill.

There are a lot of resources out there to teach you. I’ve found a couple to be particularly successful. Here’s my list of resources for learning to code, sorted by difficulty:

Novice

Never written a line of code before? No worries. Just visit one of these fine resources and follow their high-level tutorials. You won’t get into the nitty-gritty, but don’t worry about it for now:

Dash - by General Assembly

CodeAcademy

w3 Tutorials (start at HTML on the left sidebar and work your way down)

Intermediate

Now that you’ve gone through a handful of basic tutorials, it’s time to learn the fundamentals of actual, real-life coding problems. I’ve found these resources to be solid:

Khan Academy

CodeAcademy - Ruby, Python, PHP

Difficult

If you’re here, you’re capable of building things. You know the primitives. You know the logic control statements. You’re ready to start making real stuff take shape. Here are some different types of resources to turn you from someone who knows how to code, into a full-fledged programmer.

Programming problems

Sometimes, the challenges in programming aren’t how to make a language do a task, but just how to do the task in general. Like how to find an item in a very large, sorted list, without checking each element. Here are some resources for those types of problems

Talentbuddy

TopCoder

Web Applications

If you learned Python, Django is an amazing platform for creating quick-and-easy web applications. I’d highly suggest the tutorial - it’s one of the best I’ve ever used, and you have a web app up and running in less than an hour.

Django Tutorial

I’ve never used Rails, but it’s a very popular and powerful framework for creating web applications using Ruby. I’d suggest going through their guide to start getting down-and-dirty with Rails development.

Rails Guide

If you know PHP, there’s an ocean of good stuff out there for you to learn how to make a full-fledged web application. Frameworks do a lot of work for you, and provide quick and easy guides to get up and running. I’d suggest the following:

Cake PHP Book

Symfony 2 - Get Started

Yii PHP - The Comprehensive Guide

Conclusion

If there’s one point I wanted to get across, it’s that it is easier than ever to learn to code. There are resources on every corner of the internet for potential programmers, and the benefits of learning even just the basics are monumental.

If you know of any additional, great resources that aren’t listed here, please feel free to tweet them to me @boomeyer.

a guide to educational but fun-ish things to do during the summer while school’s out!!! 

learn to cook up some tasty tidbits 

be super-duper organized and make a bullet journal

start a rock collection and learn about the planet!!!!!

hone ur algebra skills

dive into college profiles and find out what’s the best 4 u 

essays aren’t fun but money for tuition sure is

learn how to make a paper crane and other rad stuff 

go camping and practice ur photography skills

destress by learning some yoga 

write a killer short story and become famous

take a free online course and maybe earn some college credit!!!!!!

fill out a practice college application 

create ur commonapp account and be ready for application season

study for the SAT in 1 month!!!!! 

study for the ACT in one month!!!!!!

create a study schedule for ur AP/IB/any exams

organize your old paperz

do your summer hw :(

create a summer reading lists of all the books u said u were gunna read but never did!!!!!

start learning or honing a new language 

learn html

learn css

learn how to photoshop (including urself beside ur fav celeb)–like rly well

teach urself how to code!!!! 

watch some super interesting documentaries for free

-have a wonderful summer!!!!❤️  

some sites i’ve found useful when studying for the ap exam!!

multiple choice questions from 2005 - 1999

intro to programming with java, 7th ed. 

georgia tech practice questions 

converting base 10 to base 8, base 16, and base 2

methods

data types

strings

classes and objects

more on objects

more on classes

exceptions 

arrays

15 types of sorts [video]

sorting shown with dancing [video]

recursion examples [video]

logical operations 

inheritance

because i spend 90% of my day online i’ve managed to compile a giant list of helpful school-related resources!! (◡‿◡✿)

planners/printables/etc

how to bullet journal (2)(video)

bullet journal inspo

bullet journal page ideas (2)

form your habits

giant daily planner

tons of calender printables

more printable planners

more printables

medication-taking schedule

motivation/time-management

behind in school?

stop procrastinating

studyblr community list

time management hacks

more time management

taking notes

effective reading/note-taking

note-taking styles

visual notes

how to take lecture notes

reading and note-taking

note-taking tips

making organized notes

how to mindmap

efficient note-taking

more tips

phone/laptop apps for school

momentum (chrome)

microsoft onenote (pc download)

evernote clearly  (chrome)

stayfocusd (chrome)

save to pocket (chrome)

highlighter (chrome)

top 14 productivity apps

hemingway (website)

google keep

best iphone study apps

mindmeister

rogerhub final grade calculator

photomath (iphone)

finals/tests/studying

finals survival guide

dont freak over finals

how to multiple choice

make your own flashcards (2)(3)(4)

how to make a study schedule

how to study

exam lifehacks

how to win at finals

how to remember better

study hacks

studying for visual learners

how 2 study

studying for auditory learners

condensing info method

homework help

what is that word im thinking of???

10 common essay mistakes

reading strategies

accurate citation site

didnt read that book?

strategic reading

crashcourse (videos)

khanacademy (learn anything relating to math/science)

solve math problems

how to read shakespeare

change small words to big words and vice versa

“how to write good”

google scholar

scholarpedia

essaytyper

mental health is most important

stress relief

cute/happy things tag

test anxiety coping

the dawn room

how to get a good sleep

comfort spot

dealing with depression and good grades

Hello! A lot of you have been asking me where and how I’ve learn multiple languages and well, after a few hours of digging through my browser history and bookmarks, I was able to collect all of these resources. I have personally used all of these, so I can assure you they are useful! If there is something wrong with a website or a link, please let me know. Also, if you have any questions or if you want a learning buddy, my ask box is open. (I speak English and Spanish. I’m learning Korean, German, Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, Italian, and Esperanto)

Note: Learning a new language requires a lot of dedication, more than you actually think! Especially if you’re learning multiple languages at the same time. It isn’t impossible, but it will take time. And by time I mean months and/or years! So please, be patient. Take your time. Don’t rush. Keep in mind that you will mess up and that’s okay. Practice as much as you can. Practice out loud. Talk to yourself if you can. It doesn’t matter if people think you’re crazy. They won’t be thinking the same when you become a polyglot, so don’t mind them. This is for you and your future.

Get started:

Everything listed below is FREE! Some sites do require you to sign up, but that’s for you to keep track of your own process.

Tips to get you started

Language Hacking tips (blog)

More language hacking tips (blog)

The Polyglot Project (Library with foreign books that lets you translate while reading)

How to Learn Any Language

Effective Language Learning

Ankidroid (flashcard maker)

Multiple languages, one website

Duolingo (Latin American Spanish, French, German, Brazilian Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Irish, Danish, Swedish, Turkish, Norwegian (Bokmål), Ukrainian, and Esperanto)

BBC Languages (40 languages)

Learn A Language (18 languages)

Conjuguemos (French, German, Italian, Latin, Portuguese, Spanish)

L-lingo (21 languages)

101languages (167 languages)

Languagepod101 (31 languages)

Foreign Services Institute (44 languages)

My Languages (95 languages)

Surface Languages (43 languages)

Lingualia (Spanish)

Linguanaut (16 languages)

OmniGlot (All languages [basic info for some of them])

Memrise (Various languages) (flashcard system)

Livemocha (Various languages)

Polyglotclub

Sharedtalk

Interpals (specify in your profile you only look for language exchange because there can be some creeps in this one)

Couchsurfing

Babbel

Specific Languages

Korean:

Learn to read Korean in 15 minutes! - Really helpful as well

Learnkoreanlp - Focuses on grammar

k-is4korean

Talktomeinkorean

Learn-korean

korean-flashcards - Focuses on vocabulary

Easytolearnkorean

Korean.go.kr/ - Focuses on pronunciation

Lang-8 - Community to correct your entries

Dongsa - Conjugations for verbs

Howtostudykorean- EXTREMELY helpful when it comes to learning hangul and writing structure!

hangulpractice - This blog has some useful posts.

letstteok-korean

Talktomeinkorea (YouTube channel)

fluentkorean

sweetandtasty

seoulistic - For culture lessons

GenkiKorean

Korean Word Game

English-Korean Vocabulary Quizzes

Hangul Keyboard - This is also EXTREMELY helpful with Hangul/romanization. It also converts any romanized syllables into hangul

Korean - Reddit threat

Chinese/Mandarin:

Hackingchinese

Chinese-tools - Pretty helpful with pronunciation.

Chinese Open courseware

Chinese Language - Reddit threat

Chinese Textbook

Chineasy

Learn Mandarin

Chinese Hacks

yoyochinese

How can I learn Chinese

Why is Chinese so damn hard?

Japanese:

Learn Japanese I / II - YouTube

Guidetojapanese

Free Japanese lesson

Japaneseclass.jp

thejapanesepage

Japanesepod101

Tofugu

Erin’s Challenge!

Jplang

Yesjapan

Marugoto - Includes culture lessons

Kana Invaders - Fun game for learning Kana

Another great masterpost for Japanese - So many resources!!!

Esperanto:

Note: I did a research and supposedly Esperanto is an easy-to-learn language that helps you with other languages.

Esperantofre

Esperanto “library”

Esperanto Grammar

Esperanto (Duolingo)

German:

Learn German Online

German Language Guide

Mission Berlin - Mystery adventure game

Basic German

Deutsch Lernen

Slow German

Kids’ Games - For vocabulary

Italian:

MIT Open Courseware

Italian Language Guide

Italian Grammar

Italian For Beginners - YouTube

Latin:

Some Latin grammar

Latin Course - YouTube

Portuguese:

Oneness

Ta Falado

Portuguese (Duolingo)

French:

Learn French Guide

Coffee Break French

University of Texas: Francais interactif

Podcastfrancaisfacile

French Language Guide

Lingopolo/french

Le Journal en français facile

News in Slow French

Francolab

Cliffs Notes

Native French Speech

French Podcast

Spanish:

Spanish - About.com

@spanishskulduggery

Study Spanish

Cliffs Notes

Destinos

One Minute Spanish

One Minute Spanish (Latin America focused)

Thai:

Learn Thai Podcast

Woman Learn Thai

Let’s Talk Thai

Thai 101

Lingopolo/thai

Arabic:

Books to Learn Arabic

Mandinah Arabic

Arabic Verbs (PDF)

al3arabiya

Arabic Pronouns (PDF)

Arabic Alphabet / Also Here / And Here!

Arabic For Language Exchange

Peace Corps

Hindi:

A Door Into Hindi

Learning Hindi

NYU Hindi Course

Quillpad - Great for typing

Namaste Dosti

SU Hindi Course

ispeakhindi

Hindi Script

Vietnamese:

VietnamesePod101

Survival Phrases

seasite.niu.edu

Learn Vietnamese Online

Greek:

Some Greek Grammar (New Testament)

Romanian:

Rolang

One Minute Romanian

Welsh:

Say Something in Welsh

Welsh Vocab

Dutch:

Lingopolo/dutch

Learn Dutch

Russian:

Speak Russian

Russian Alphabet

Taste of Russian

Master Russian

Russian Open Courseware

Russian Handwriting

Swedish:

Klartext

SwedishLingQ

Survival Phrases

1. you ace tests by overlearning. you should know your notes/flashcards/definitions basically by heart. if someone asks you about a topic when you’re away from class or your notes and you can answer them in a thorough and and accurate answer, then you’re good, you know the material. 

2. if you don’t understand something, it will end up on the test. so just don’t disregard and hope that this specific topic won’t be on the test. give it more attention, help, and practice. find a packet of problems on that one concept and don’t stop until you finish it and know it the best. 

3. sometimes you just need that Parental Push. you know in elementary school, they would tell you “ok now it’s time for you to do your homework! you have a project coming up, start looking for a topic now!” ONE of your teachers might be like this. be thankful for it and follow their advice! these teachers are the best at always keeping you on track with their calendar. if not a teacher, then have one of your friends be that person that can keep you accountable for the things you promised you would do. 

4. you just need to kick your own ass. seriously. i know it sucks and its hard to study for two things at once. BUT. I DONT CARE IF IT’S HARD. you need to do it and at least do it to get it over with because you can’t keep putting things off. If you do, you will eventually run out of time and you will hate yourself. force yourself to do it. i made myself sign up for june ACT even though there’s finals because if i didn’t, i probably never would. like do i think i’m gonna be ready in one month? probably not, SO I BETTER GET ON IT AND START STUDYING! 

5. do homework even if it doesn’t count. if you actually try on it, then you will actually do so much better on the tests, it’s like magic.