mechatronic engineer

Still collecting the full alphabet of the “live, laugh, love” variants if anyone has some good examples.

🌞 sun + 😡 extremely-angry

23.04.19 | 17:24

This past semester, I failed two classes: CE 205 (Analytical Mechanics I: Statics) and MATH 224 (Calculus 3). Yep. It happened. My GPA dropped from a 3.0 to a 2.53. It sucked!

But guess what?

Its okay to fail! Failure is part of learning, and as long as you are learning, you are not failing. When I found out I failed, it was a slap in the face at first. I tend to correlate failure with wasting time and money (especially in college). Coming from a household where my dad was very hard on me academically (he has changed since), I set unrealistic expectations for myself. I also put a lot on my plate because I know I can do a lot, but sometimes, I overdo it. This semester reflected that in my academics.

I was sad for like 2 hours and then I realized, being sad is okay. But being sad won’t help me correct my mistakes. So, I made an advising appointment, and got my life back on track! Everything is okay.

I hope you read this and realize that if you fail a class, a test, or just mess up, its okay. As long as you learn from it and tried your best, you did amazing! And the brightside is when you retake it, you will do SO much better because of prior exposure!

There is always help out there. If its related to school, remember that your advisors are there to help you and don’t be afraid to reach out. You are not alone.

I just went through people I follow and unfollowed everyones who’s been inactive for over a week and only follow 93! people now!

I’m always getting stressed out by things happening so here are some resources I find helpful

Music

I don’t know about you but I find piano music are really relaxing and soothing

Piano music playlist

Peaceful piano Spotify playlist by @spotify

Piano background music Spotify playlist

Rainy sounds

Burning fireplace sounds

Wave sounds

Chopin - Nocturne op.9 No.2 suggested by @whitewildflowersblog

Videos, movies, dramas

Buzzfeed Celeb

Food

Buzzfeed Worth It Season [1/2/3/4/5]

Movies

Free movies/tv

Marvel movies masterpost by @girlintoomanyfandoms

Classic chick flicks by @jamescookjr

Cinemasins

Studytubes

Studytubes by @memorisu

AmandaRachLee

Cheyenne Barton (@studyrose )

Music

The Voice Kids [Australia/Germany]

Video games

Buzzfeed Multiplayer (eg. Until Dawn, Dead by daylight, Cooking Mama)

True crimes and supernatural

Buzzfeed unsolved

Comedies (old but gold)

Friends

Mind your language

Bewitched

Dr Ken suggested by @akydemics

Exercise

Fitness & health for student by @abby-studies-art

Deep breathing exercises

Sleep

Guide to sleep by @educatier

Tips for balancing sleep & education by @brbimstudying

The perfect night sleep by @paintitbright

How to go to bed early and actually fall asleep

Night routine and sleeping tips

Tips and tricks for getting enough sleep by @candydsgn

Meditation

Meditation and focus by @studyquill

Put a thought in the star

Treat yourself

Simple ways to treat yourself by @anitastudy

Guide to treating yourself by @pennyfynotes

25 No/Low cost self care acts by @gaygirlhustle

Water

How to drink more water ft printables

Hydration masterpost

Breaks

Use the pomodoro method where you study for 25 minutes and rest for 5 minutes to allow your brain to re-energise itself.

Take a break

Types of study breaks by @samsstudygram

Tips for getting better rest by @overstudies

9 things to do on a study break by @studyzine

Study break ideas by @gomedorgohome

What to do during a study break by @emmastudies

Things i do when taking a study break by @produitivity

Meals

Study break snacks by @gentlysoft

15 food to ease your study life by @studybowie

Easy recipes for students by @aestudier

Broke college kid masterpost by @dumplinghead-usagi

Bullet journal

Start a bullet journal

Apps

Apps that help me destress by @gracelearns

Forest

Overdrive

Positivity

My positivity tag

@chibird

@cwote

@lovelysuggestions

A website that compliments you

Who is the cutest

Quizzes

Buzzfeed quizzes

Pottermore quizzes

Others

Learn coding

All you need for high school

Math help and advice

How to take notes

Mental health masterpost

Ace your essays

Ace your exams

How to be productive

Free printables masterpost

Stationery masterlist by @architstudy

Other masterposts

Being asked how I improved my writing is one of the most frequently asked questions on my blog! This post I wrote a while ago details some of my key tips and tricks. As I mentioned in there, I like to use a font to trace as an attempt to change my handwriting! Here are a few fonts which you could do so with (or just use for your notes!):

Cursive style

Unicorn Calligraphy

Lilly Mae

Winter Calligraphy

Quintus

Vampire Calligraphy

I Love Glitter

Affectionately Yours

Rough Notes

Beautiful Creatures

Daydreamer

Eyes Wide Open

Learning Curve

Unicorn Sparkles

Halo Handletter

Walkway

Always In My Heart

A Perfect Place

Fox In The Snow

Sanies Script

Jenny Sue

Run Wild

Lauren 

Melinda

Print style

Paper Daisy

A Little Sunshine

Always Forever

Miss Kindergarten

Angelina

Talking To The Moon

Throw My Hands Up In The Air

Handwriting CR

Simplicity

Covered By Your Grace

Drops Of Jupiter

Behind Green Eyes

Dear Joe

Youthing October Fourteen

Heartwarming

Orange Blossoms

When Oceans Rise

Piece By Piece

Super Renewables

Ways To Say Goodbye

A Year Without Rain

Begin Again

Comic Type

Love And Sunshine

Hello Casual

I hope these suggestions help! Wishing you and your writing the best :D

My paternal grandfather was born in 1906 (I have older parents). He and my grandmother came through Ellis Island.

My vocal coach’s grandparents survived the 1906 San Fransisco earthquake and fire. 

My great-grandfather lived to the age of 106. He often spoke of how strongly he remembered his nursemaid’s taffeta skirts rustling as she walked when he was a child. He was born in the 1870s. My grandmother recorded him on video in the 1980s talking about those Victorian bustle skirts he grew up with.

On my mother’s side, we tracked down a marriage record for her 17th-century English ancestors, their signatures still crystal-clear and confident on the yellowed parchment. The church where they were married still stands in London.

Samuel J. Seymour was born in 1860 and at age five, he witnessed the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Almost 100 years later, at age 96, he went on live television and recounted his firsthand account of the death of the president. You can watch the interview here.

The last survivor of the sinking of the Titanic, Millvina Dean, died in 2009. 

The oldest person ever, Jeanne Calment, lived to age 122. She died in 1997 after recording a pop album, the same year The Spice Girls were topping the charts; but she remembered that as a child, Vincent Van Gogh once visited her father’s paint shop. 

1. start studying a week before every quiz/test. seriously.

2. watch youtube videos/ted talks on the topics you are learning about.

3. get lots of sleep! sleep helps you process the day’s events, including what you learned.

4. write out your notes. it’s proven that handwritten notes help you learn better than typed out notes.

5. don’t just read what your professor gives you. find academic journals, books, etc. that correspond with your subjects.

6. read the news! especially in the social sciences/humanities, connecting concepts with current events helps you understand and process more easily.

7. exercise! this doesn’t have to be going on runs or lifting weights, it could even just be going for a 20 minute walk. just get your blood pumping, it’ll help you focus.

8. study at your desk. it may be tempting to study in bed, but your brain connects your bed with sleep, so you’ll get tired more quickly.

9. reviewing notes doesn’t have to be something you sit down and do for an hour. skim through them and test your memory while eating breakfast!

10. expand your study time throughout the day to avoid burnout. for example, rather than studying for 5 hours straight, study for an hour here and there in between your activities.

11. make your notes organized and easy to read, but not distracting. bright colors and flashy notes may seem better, but can sometimes distract from the purpose of the notes.

12. use apps such as quizlet. this way, you can go through definitions while waiting in lines or walking to class.

13. it’s more important to know concepts rather than facts. for example, you should be able to take what you know and apply it to different situations, not just the situation the textbook gives you.

14. just because the professor doesn’t require you to read textbook, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. it helps explain concepts in a different way than your professor, and a lot of times hearing two different explanations for the same concept helps you understand it.

15. read in advance. read the textbook before your professor begins going over the chapter, so when he/she does, you can easily follow what they are saying.

16. do any extra credit work that comes your way. even if you don’t need the extra boost now, you might later.

17. go to class!! if you always skip class and show up at office hours completely lost on the concepts, they’ll laugh in your face. they’ll take you 100x more seriously if you show up.

18. however, if you are sick, take a day off. it’s more beneficial to you in the long run. 

19. learn how to say “no”. if you have an 8 am the next day, don’t stay out until midnight with your friends. 

Give yourself a specified grieving time. You’re going to feel absolutely miserable after you fail - disappointed, angry at both yourself and your university/professors, emotionally drained and you’re probably going to convince yourself that you ARE a failure, so why do anything, ever again? You’re going to lie in bed all day and wallow in your own negativity for a while, and you need to let yourself do this! But - after a day or two, you’re also going to need to have a stern talk with yourself, have a cry if you need to and make yourself physically move on from this. Get up, take a shower, have a cup of coffee and go for a walk. Make yourself feel like a human being again, and then have another talk with yourself - this time, focusing on “ok, so what can I do about this?”

Identify the reason behind your failure. Did you procrastinate it to death? Why? Were you scared of failure? Were you scared of success? Do you feel like it’s too big, too much for you to handle? Did it stress you out to the point of being paralyzed to even begin? Do you simply just hate that class so much you’d rather feel like this for failing it than face it? You didn’t have the time? You didn’t make the time?

Forgive yourself. Personally, I could answer yes to all of those questions. I was a mess during my second year of uni, and I just couldn’t dig myself out of the hole I was in. Everything piled up, fast, and I just didn’t have the energy to deal with any of it. I’m not proud of myself, but I also no longer resent myself for this. Even if you didn’t have any “real” reasons for failing, you still need to find it within yourself to allow yourself to move on from this. Otherwise, you’re just trapping yourself in a loop of guilt and self-flagellation which is only going to stop you from actually doing anything to make it better.

Make a game plan. Sit down with your notes, and skim over everything. Determine what you need to do in order to get this done and WRITE IT DOWN. Find online resources that will help you when you get stuck. Find someone to explain the things that are still flying over your head. If your professors/assistants are approachable, ask them for pointers. Look for blogs or ask your classmates how they dealt with this class. If you get stuck on something, move on and come back to it later, but DO COME BACK TO IT. Maybe research what study technique is best suited for this particular exam, try to get some past exam papers so you can see what your prof focuses on - in short, try to make it as easy for yourself as possible to do the work and get payoff!

Once you make a plan, do your best to stick to it. It’s hard to get back in the studying game after a long rut. It’s even harder when you know you’ve already failed this once, and the fear of that happening again is constantly looming over your head. But, the only way you have any chance of beating this is by trying. Get up in the morning, look over your game plan, do things over and over again until they finally stick, allow for it to take time. If you fall back, that’s ok, you’ll do better tomorrow. Take breaks, but don’t let them last a week. Get some sleep. Go for walks. Try to eat healthy. Even if you don’t put as much work in as you’ve scheduled for that day, that’s ok too, you did something - and that’s always better than doing nothing!

Give yourself scheduled break-time! Prevent burnout at all cost! If you’re anything like me, you have now achieved a delicate balance of productivity and PANIC, and it’s very prone to tipping on either side depending on your frame of mind. Do anything you can to keep it in the productive zone, which includes giving yourself time to recharge. Take “activity breaks”- don’t let yourself just sit and stare at the material on your screen all day, get up and move around, wash the dishes, make yourself a snack, play some music and dance around… whatever works for you! Also, set an “ending time” to your day and STOP THEN. All-nighters fueled on the panic of “I didn’t do everything I needed to do today” are the absolute worst thing you can do to yourself. Get some rest and try again tomorrow.  

Find a commitment device. Either it be an app, a studyblr, a classmate, a friend, your mum - whatever works for you! Find a way to keep yourself accountable for what you’re doing and it’s going to help to keep you actually doing it.

And, finally, the thing I wanted to share the most:

Try the 5-second rule to keep yourself motivated.

This is a life-saver for people like me, who procrastinate as a reaction to stress. The “5-second rule” was invented by Mel Robbins, who used this method and is now a successful business-woman after her life literally fell apart. If you have time, please do yourself the favor of watching this video (x). In short, she has found a scientific way of beating procrastination, (even reigning in the symptoms of anxiety and depression) which is this: Every time you catch yourself thinking about doing something, be it as small as “Oh, I should probably take out the trash.” or “Oh, I really should study for this scary exam.” count down from 5, breathe in, and GO. This is going to stop your brain from having the time to talk you out of it.

She did her research and found out that, by counting down 5,4,3,2,1 you are actually not giving your brain the chance to react in a way that’s going to stop you from doing whatever it is that you know you need to be doing, because it’s going to shift to the prefrontal cortex, which is the decision making part, from the basal ganglia - which is where your habits live. Procrastination is actually a habit your brain has developed in order to protect you from emotional hurt - of fear of not being good enough, or failing, or being laughed at, etc. It also works for intrusive thoughts, I’ve found - every time you can feel yourself sinking down that hole, when your mind goes “Why are you even doing this, you know you’re not good enough, so why bother?”  try counting down from 5, take a deep breath, imagine yourself succeeding and go back to it. So, if you have done all of the above, made plan after plan and scheduled everything to death, but somehow just can’t make yourself do it - give this a try, it might just be the thing to get you going.

As I’m writing this, I legit have just three days left till my winter break ends. However, by the time this post goes live on my blog, I’m hella sure that this challenge will be completed on my side and I’ll be ready to slay at school. With that said, if you want to know the secret of how I get ready for school after a break, then keep on reading. Next semester? Get ready to be conquered.

I would recommend downloading and printing off the PDF file of this challenge if you want a proper checklist that you’re about to slay.

To note:

This is a challenge. Don’t simply read through this post. I dare you to get all of these things done before your break ends.

It doesn’t matter if you’re reading this while it’s your spring/summer break. Just because this post was made during my winter break doesn’t mean that you gotta wait till winter to try this out. All your need for this challenge is a few days to get your shit together and a break gives you the time to do that.

I’ve purposely put a few more things than needed in this list because - a) It’ll encourage you to get your lazy ass off the couch and hustle more (I see you) and b) Long Is the New Black (ok, I stop).

Obviously, if your break ends in like two days and you legit have no time, go ahead and get those tasks done which look important to you.

I’VE  DARED YOU! Let’s do this (always remember, actions speak louder than your words).

clean the living crap out of your room

I mean it. Look around and you’ll probably find your test papers from 3 years ago. You can play the clean up song while you do this, I won’t judge you.

Change your bedding.

Do the damn laundry.

Sort out all papers - assignments, test papers, maybe even old grannie letters to your homie, all go to their places.

Dust yo’ desk, cupboards and drawers - I know you have like one inch of grime on every math book because you haven’t touched them in years, lmao.

Give! Your! Space! A! New! Look! So important. I’ll hands down say that this one is the game changer. You can go ahead and give your room an entire makeover (shift your music to Mr. Kate’s theme song now, lol) or just simply rearrange the pen stands on your desk.

Bathe in the glory of having a clean room, like, yay you.

clean the living crap out of your computer

Downloads folder. Holy heck, sort that ish.

Delete files that are not needed.

Make sure your screen isn’t full of small files. Folders were created for a reason.

Make new folders for the next semester’s classes. Go further by making sub-folders for different units too, so that the next time you gotta save something, you don’t leave it in the downloads folder next time (hasn’t that folder suffered enough?).

clean the living crap out of your online stuff

Clean your inbox down to zero.

Reply to emails, if any.

Social media accounts. Delete the unnecessary ones. You probably still have your vine account, lmao.

Reply to social media messages and delete those pesky spams while you are at it.

If you run a blog, clean out the inbox and messages too.

You just killed it! Let’s move on now.

kill your academic work

ah, the good ol’ learning.

MAKE YOUR NOTES, YOU DUMBHEAD.

Check your school’s website to see if Miss Honey sent any surprise (so annoying, I know!) assignments.

Complete your homework on time because you probably just chilled on the Friday school closed and left it for the weekend (and didn’t do it then too, lol)

If you have any exam coming up, start prepping!!

Make sure everything’s ready, whether it’s your notes, assignments, whatever. Realizing you have a mock test on the last day (also probably set by Miss Honey) is the quickest way to get a heart attack, scientifically proven. (And you thought your ex breaking up with you was bad? Oh, hun).

other stuff to try out

Try learning new things! Being off from school gives you a lot of free time (seven hrs, precisely) so instead of playing Mario Kart, use it well.

Try out projects you’ve always wanted to try out. Maybe it’s a crazy idea like starting a YouTube channel or just beating your friend at Mario Kart (I mean, a lil Mario Kart does no harm..), it’s worth a shot.

Make a badass playlist! (btw, you can also check out my soundcloud account, #plug).

Do a booty pop! You’ve conquered this challenge, and boy, you should be damn proud. Conquer your next semester and make yourself even more proud.

Well, that’s it, it’s a wrap! If you have any questions/suggestions regarding anything I said up there, feel free to send in a message! My other og posts are here and to request one, leave your question in my ask box!

I hope you all are well, stay strong and conquer life, you conqueror.

hey guys, on my instagram i asked if people wanted to see videos that motivate me studying, pushing my limits, and most important help me stop procrastinating. so here is my top 5 videos, hope you like them!

video number one: The ABCs of SUCCESS - Amazing Motivational Video for Students, Studying & Success in Life

video number two: Grey’s Anatomy, Cristina Yang: “Be unstoppable.”

video number three: Legally Blonde - I’ll show you how valuable Elle Woods can be!

video number four: Michaela Pratt | That’s My Girl (How To Get Away With Murder)

video number five: From FAILING STUDENT to ROCKET SCIENTIST - The Motivational Video that Will Change Your Life

bonus video: Rory’s system to study her finals (Gilmore Girls)

I have lurked around for a few years and I have finally decided to make a studyblr account in 2019! I have an Instagram page with the same handle: irinstudies. I will be posting mostly bujo planner spreads, study notes & drawings I make, and reblogging anything related to studying!

About me:

17

Canadian

IB student with a Health Science focus

Speak English, French, Mandarin, Shanghainese, and Latin (fluency in decreasing order XD)

Learning Japanese, Russian, and Spanish

Love Milk Tea, dislike bubbles

My interests:

Drawing (watercolor & digital art)

Feeling productive (being productive is another matter)

Fencing (a sport where you can legally hit other people with swords while connected to an electric current) 

Currently into Marvel, Supernatural, Fantastic Beasts, Harry Potter & various Sci-Fi works

My Quirks:

Left-handed

I Physical Can’t Stop Pointing Out Fun Facts About Irrelevant Things

Master Shitposter

Blogs who inspire me:

@academiix

@athenastudying

@lawyerd

@elkstudies

@littlestudyblrblog

@quietpinetrees