My Masterpost | My Studygram | Ask Me Anything

my masterpost | my studygram | ask me anything

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[transcript under the cut]

Other advice posts that may be of interest:

How To Stop Procrastinating

How To Study When You Really Don’t Want To

Unusual Study Tips

How to Focus in Online School

Keep reading

Around November a kid in my class got the chickenpox. This caused our class to be quarantined for a little more than 2 weeks, which sucked even more because it started on the day before our over-night field trip. And it was pretty chaotic since we’re seniors. I didn’t see the need to post this before since not many of us on here lives in China, but now that most people are going through the same thing I decided to post some of the tips I have on staying at home and staying productive. Enjoy~

1. Set an alarm and wake up on time

I cannot tell you how many times some of my classmates missed homeroom (for us it’s mandatory cause they take attendance and it affects whether you graduate or not). Setting an alarm makes you wake up on time and prevents you from oversleeping. I admit there were times where I forgot to set my alarm, hit stop and contined to sleep, or literally slept through it. It happens. But you can’t let it keep happening. This messes up your whole day and might causes you to procrastinate even more because ‘everything is ruined anyways’ (though this may have smt to do with my mental health..). So remember to set an alarm to get started on your day on time!

2. Have a schedule and (try your best to) stick to it

Routine helps. When you literally have nothing to do, having a scheduled saves you from boredom and also from wasting your time thinking about what you have to or should do today. It doesn’t have to be packed, just a simple list of chores and activities would do. This also refrains you from delaying schoolwork for ‘tomorrow’.

3. Exercise!!

Yes. Staying at home and not moving much will not make you feel good. Especially to those who live in dorms or apartments. So move around, exercise a bit. You could do yoga, stretch a bit, or just freestyle jump around to music. Anything to get you moving, do it. It’ll help you from feeling cramped, stop you from gaining weight, and also make you feel better. Why? Because exercise=endorphins=happy people (and happy people don’t kill their husbands) . Doing some chores would work too! So get up and start moving!

4. Open the windows

For all those who grew up with your mothers opening the windows, you get it. You need to ‘change the air’. Right now you’re not getting any fresh air. And you can’t just go out to take a walk, right? Open your windows for half an hour in the morning, and you’ll feel a difference.

5. Have something to look forward to each day

This one is kinda related to the second point. I strongly recommend you to have something new to look forward to everyday. It could be eating a slice of the cake you decided to bake, an episode of your favorite tv show, or trying to achieve your goal of touching the ceiling idk. Having something to look forward to motivates you to get up everyday and keeps you from having your days mashed up together till you don’t remember whether you ate the bananas on Tuesday or Wednesday. Personally, I look forward to what I’m having for breakfast, that way I have another incentive to get up early and enjoy it before the rest of my family wakes up. So create a list of things you like to do (or would like to try), go over it right before bed, and choose one for the next day.

6. Change your clothes

Staying in your pajamas is really really tempting. However, your brain associates your pajamas with sleeping. So staying in it the whole day will make it question whether you should sleep or do something productive. This could also mess up your sleeping schedule. So lay out an outfit before you go to bed, and change into it when you start working.

7. Shower, please. And do your chores.

I don’t mean to sound like your mother, but just because you didn’t go outside, it doesn’t mean that you don’t need to shower. If you are staying in your pajamas the whole day and for a few days now, go shower and get a change of clothes. And chores? Yes you still need to do them. It is your job to keep the area you live in clean and tidy. Plus, cleaning it would get rid of germs. Take care of yourself, please.

8. Journal

Last one, stay with me kids. This was a habit I developed during the chickenpox quarantine. Although it was solely for my mental health, it helped a lot to just sit there and write about my thoughts, feelings, and what happened during the day. For those of you who are alone and have no human interaction, this might help you when you feel like ranting. Just sit down at the end of the day, and pour your heart out. If you don’t feel safe having a physical book lying around containing all these intimate and vulnerable parts of you, download a journaling app. Some have locks, and worse case you can just delete it to never see it again.

9. Human interaction

Wait no, this one’s the last one sorry! Contact your parents or friends once in a while. For those of you who often see them physically yet don’t have a habit of holding conversations with them online, call them. It helps with the loneliness that creeps In sometimes. Catch up with them, make sure they’re ok.

So far these are all that I can remember, I’ll reblog this if I have more. Thanks for reading! I hope it helped~

Are you applying to graduate school this year (or maybe in the future)?

I went to a grad school application workshop last week, and they recommended that we make a master spreadsheet to help keep track of app deadlines, as well as completion of all the various parts!  This one is based off of the one they gave us at the workshop & the one I used when I was applying to undergrad. If you think that sounds like a good idea, I made a blank one you can download below! I partially filled in some cells so you have an idea of how it’s designed (though obviously, you do what works best for you).

Download as Excel file (.xlsx)

Download as Google Spreadsheet (.ods)

The idea is you keep a cell red until you complete it, then you fill in the date of completion (in case you need to check when you turned something in) and change the background color to green!  That way, it’s easy to tell at a glance what you still need to do for each school.  If a school doesn’t need that part at all, I recommend you write something like “not required” when you turn that cell green so you know for sure you didn’t miss something.

The extra nice thing about this spreadsheet is you can share it with your advisor &/or letter writers!  Then, your letter writers can see exactly what schools you’re applying to, what the app deadline is (and potentially a different deadline for the letters), and what letters they still have to submit, which is much easier for them  to keep track of.  As they submit their letters, they can add the date and turn the cell green themselves, so you don’t need to go hunting them down constantly to remind them of upcoming deadlines or to ask what they’ve submitted so far (or at least, not quite as much).  Everyone wins!

Further details below the cut:

Keep reading

How to remain productive with online classes:

A few tips from a broke neuro-divergent academic

Try and wake up early, and go to bed early too. I’m not saying get up at 5 (unless that’s you’re thing) but sleeping into noon is a productivity blackhole. I go for 8 or 8:30, generally, but that’s just what works for me.

Get dressed for the day. I’m not talking like, jeans and a business casual outfit, but a clean pair of sweatpants, fresh underwear, and a new shirt can really put you in the mood for a new morning.

Have a workspace. Whether it be the kitchen table, a desk, a spot on the floor with a lap desk, have a place that’s dedicated to your work. Have items that signify that workspace too, like your book, planner, laptop, lamp, whatever. It can help you get into the zone, being in that space.

Have a morning drink. I choose earl grey tea with honey and cream, but black coffee, herbal tea, lemon water, whatever works for you is awesome, as long as itll wake you up and start your day.

To do lists. To do lists and to do lists and more to do lists. I have three. One is a post it weekly planner deal (3.99 at a local grocery store). it’s a weekly spread already set up, and if you’re anything like me, its really hard to set up a weekly spread. Then I have an app called Ike. I have a daily to do list I write on that app, and then I have four more to-do lists of what I have to for each specific class.

Spread out your assignments. Don’t overwhelm yourself. If you’re professors are like mine, and have the due date for each module as Sunday at midnight. What I do is spread out all my assignments from Monday to Saturday, and I leave Sunday blank, so anything I didn’t do that week, I finish on Sunday. It works for me, it might work for you.

Have a folder for each class, and a notebook for each class. I hate spending money, I’m broke as hell, sono al verde as the Italians say, but a 0.99 cent folder and a 0.25 cent notebook can do wonders for motivating one to fill them up.

Study with a drink. Tea, water, coffee, whatever, but my go to is generally a warm drink. I cannot study if I’m cold, I get tired and groggy, so warm socks, a robe, and a hot drink really keep me going.

Take breaks. Make time for your hobbies, for something fun. Working without stopping absolutely destroys my motivation, and let me tell you, when I feel like that, an episode of Avatar and a snack gets me right back on the wagon.

Do self check ins. Does your back hurt? Are you sad? Stressed? Do you have to pee? Are you hungry? Never put your homework over your health. You won’t be able to get anything done well anyway if you’ve got those blocks.

Most importantly, get enough sleep. I beg of you. Sleep is so important, and it’s the game changer, at least to me. We as students have such an amazing opportunity to get more sleep than we ever have before during the year. Take advantage of that.

how i use google drive for university - pt 1: digital notetaking  by kkaitstudies

idk about you but i’ve tested a bunch of note taking methods. in my last few years of university, i was indeed lazy and rarely referred back to the professor’s slides in the course shell. i opted to read off the slides in lecture and take notes. while MS OneNote is great, i found myself enjoying Google Drive much more. so here is a quick overview of how i take notes using Google Docs. 

folders are your friends

make separate folders for each of your courses. google drive even gives you the option to change the colours of the folders. in these folders, add any relevant coursework such as the syllabi, readings, and your notes document.

use one doc for notes per course

once you receive the syllabi, take some time to take note of required readings, and assignment deadlines. i have created a free template you can save to your own google drive that you can access here. fill out:

- course code & name - prof’s name, office hours, and email - date(s) for each week of class - weekly readings (tip: if you have online readings, you can link them in the doc!) - & open the document outline (view > show document outline)

you also don’t have to use all these features. T B H, i didn’t do weekly readings. a lot. oops. BUT i did always pay attention in lecture. i simply deleted the “reading notes” header every week i didn’t bother to read.

make use of early access to lecture slides, headers, etc. 

some profs (bless their souls) post the slides sometime before the lecture. if you have the time, copy the lecture slides into your notes. and if they don’t…type real quick to get all the info as it’s happening (or go back to slides online after lecture to see what you missed out on). i separate lecture topics with headers, with the bullet points underneath (see above). if there is anything that the prof says during class that isn’t in the lecture slides, i will change the colour of the text to a different colour. any important concepts or testable material are highlighted.

…and that’s how i take notes! everyone is different. not all note-taking methods work for everyone. this is what worked for me in my last 2 years of uni. hopefully a similar structure works for some of y’all! also, let me know what you think and @ me if you end up using my template. have a great semester!

coming soon: [ part 2: grade tracker | part 3: gmail and gcal ]