dianadockors-blog

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Старое сэлфи, но оно мне нравится #saintpetersburg#salfie#weekend#girls#cosmetics#summer#spb #kaliningrad

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Царское Село. Екатерининский дворец. Золото-золото-золото!!! #спб#saintpetersburg#walking#кафе#бакенбарды#пушкин#loveit#likeforlife#likeforlike (at Catherine Palace)

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#saintpetersburg#mommy#spb_live#river#may#spring#sunday#suny#loveit#lovelife#walking речная прогулка по Петербургу. Северная Венеция (at Nevsky Prospect St.Petersburg / Невский проспект)

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#doggy#kokerspaniel#englishdog#mylove#mypuppy#Korri#spring#timeforchange#xoxo (at Kaliningrad)

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#theatre#spb#saintpetersburg#friends#bestfriend#culture#russia#girls#aleksandrinskytheatre#from#spb#with#love (at Александринский Театр)

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A post shared by Даяна Корсакова (@dayanakorsdoc)

Thank u, guys! This night was unforgettable! Thanks for good mood, for such amazing feelings! Love u! #tfk#thousandfootkrutch#tfkarmy#tfkarmyrussia#night#amazing#show#lovemusic#warofchange (at клуб Космонавт)

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#spb#housetops#vintage#beautifulplace#photo#romantic#inlovewithmytown#town#urban (at Исакиевский Собор)

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Колоннада Исаакиевского собора #saintpetersburg#angels#lovemytown#spb_live#spb#roofs#breathtaking#view#beautifulplace (at Saint Isaac's Cathedral)

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Favorite building in Saint Petersburg.#saintpetersburg#spb_live#academia#lovely#spbbuildings#melancholy#walking#lovemytown (at Художественно-Промышленная академия)

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#saintpetersburg#march#impressive#building#spb#walking#russia#lovemytown (at Saint Petersburg, Russia)

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What to Do When School Gets Hard (for the first time)

Total honesty time: I was a slacker in high school. I don’t mean that in the sense that I got bad grades, or that I didn’t do extracurriculars. I mean that in the sense that I was the kid who got good grades without having to try, so I never did. Try, that is. This meant that when I got to college, I got a surprise: professors want you to actually study! Like, with the textbook and everything! Needless to say, I had a rough time figuring out how to do this “studying” thing, and I know I’m probably not alone in this boat. The good thing is, I’ve figured this out, for the most part, so now you can learn from my mistakes.

Assume every class is going to be your hardest, going in. The day you don’t assume you’re going to have to put in five hours minimum studying for the first real test in a class is the day you will really regret. Until you get a feel for a certain professor, treat it like it’s super hard.

Schedule in studying time and STICK WITH IT. DO THIS. Or else you will end up like me, making friends with the other lone person who inhabits the study lounge at 1 am. Don’t be me, guys.

Never underestimate the power of teaching others. Seriously, I definitely have kinda taken advantage of my classmates, because I’m the person who tries to explain stuff and writes out the impromptu study guides. By teaching them, though, I’m actually prepping MYSELF to wreck the curve. Basically, once you know it well enough to explain it to others, you’re golden.

Do ALL the readings. The professor that assigns the most readings is also the professor who expects you to have learned the most from them, in my experience. Also, don’t just highlight stuff: write important points that you would want to highlight in your notes. Highlighting is just coloring for grownups - it’s fine, but it’s not going to help you learn. It’s just going to catch your eye later.

Don’t judge a professor’s tests by their lecture style. Imagine: a sweet little 5 foot nothing professor, dressed to the nines every day and super kind to everyone. My professor who fits this description causes about a third of her students to retake her classes every year. Bigshot business guy with a ridiculously high consulting rate and a weird robe he always wears? 98% pass his classes. Focus on the material, not the prof.

Save your homework assignments. It turns out that in college, homework is 95% of the times something that you can actually study from. Do it, do it well, then hang on to it.

Know your preferred study habitats. Do you like to study around a lot of people or by yourself? Are windows a distraction or a necessity? Is the library great or just too far away to bother with? Keep an eye on when you study best and then try to replicate it later.

Get rid of unnecessary distractions. Turn off your phone. Notifications are Bad for concentration. Close your email unless you absolutely need it. Have a drink and someone to nibble on if you use that as an excuse to avoid studying. Maybe avoid studying with that one person if you are distracted by existing near them.

Plan out regular breaks. Tell yourself every half hour you can go on Facebook, or wander down the hall and talk to someone, or read a chapter of that thing you’ve been working on. Just have something planned out that you can actively work towards. Not just having an abyss of time to fill with studying can be really useful.

As for studying itself:

Notecards, re-writing notes in a different format, having someone quiz you, making study guides, and writing practice essays about stuff have all been super useful for me in some respect or another.

Other studying help:

Seven 

Study

Moods 

Rain generator

Coffee shop chatter

How to Study

How to Study pt. II

Bullet journal guide

You’ve got this. We can study together.

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You have to continue to work even when you’re not being praised. You have to dig deep and go the extra mile because breakthroughs don’t happen when you do the bare minimum. It has to come from you and be for you. It all comes down to you.

a reminder to myself when I get frustrated and defeated

(via

runningmandz

)

Things you have to remember when you’re on a tough service.

(via modernathena90)

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Making your own personalised guides is quite different from your normal note-taking. Study guides are more exam-oriented, instead of merely summarising and organising information. It is a tool to help you to study for your exams, and to guide you through answering exam questions. This how-to guide is a summary of my learning experiences in both high school and college, so I hope this can help everyone here.

Goals for the study guides

It has to include everything on the syllabus for the examination

Omit things that are not going to be useful/helpful in exams

There are things that may be very informative, but if they have no relevance to the exam, it’s better to take them out of the study guide

Basically, the goal of making this study guide is to have one booklet/notebook that contain things you have learnt in that course, and most importantly, everything you need for the exam.

That means you (supposedly) wouldn’t have to refer to any other materials unless specified in the study guide 

Making this booklet will help you to summarise and analyse information - a great way to study

Materials that you need

If you are in college, lecture notes are usually the most important material you should refer to when studying for exams. If you are in high school, textbooks are more likely to prevail. It depends on your course structure and the way your teacher/lecturer teaches.

Past papers / practice papers are great guidance for you when making study guides, because they help you to understand what will be on the exam paper, and most importantly, how you could answer the question.

Important tip: while making your own summary of the knowledge is useful, write down the model answer from the past paper in your study guide instead. That’s the way you should answer the question related to that topic in the exam, so you shouldn’t waste time putting in and memorising information that is not helpful.

For college students: tutorial questions usually offer great guidance as to what is going to appear in the exam. Putting those in the study guides is usually very helpful.

Organising the study guides

Here are a few tips when organising your notes:

Put a red star next to topics that you think are going to come up in the examination

Circle topics that you don’t understand / fail to grasp when making the study guides

Definitely use bullet points if possible

Highlight key words with definition in one specific colour, or anything that requires direct recitation

Because this is what you will study for the exam, also put down tips that are going to help you with the exams. (You can either draw a box to alert yourself or use a post-it note for these).

Answering structure / attack plan for common exam questions

Some common mistakes previous students made in the exam (which is usually brought up by the teacher / lecturer)

Important concept / clarification of misunderstandings

Remember to leave a page for each chapter and write a summary of it during revision

This will help you to understand the flow of the chapter and it is a great way to recall the information you have just organised

If you want to know more about how to take notes, here are some of my other posts:

A summary on how to take good lecture notes - #13

Type or write?

Type or write? updated + my approach

Should I take notes right now?

How to take outline notes?

Consolidating lecture notes and textbook notes

How to get better handwriting?

How to incorporate colours into note-taking and studying?

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Achieving your full academic potential: Things to Avoid Doing

Things you may want to avoid doing in the future. 

 Doing, wait, not doing these things always works for me. 

Staying up late. 

 Sleep is yes.  And as my speech coach puts it “there are only so many all nighters a person can pull before they just can’t”.  Not only will staying up uber-late make the next day a battle between you an a surprisingly pillow-like desktop, if you’re tired, your work probably won’t be the your best.

Over-scheduling. 

 It’s easier to look at a schedule with 3-4 assignments than it is to look at one with 9-10.  When scheduling, if you have a plethora of assignments, prioritize.  Write down the most important assignments, and leave any others off the page or in the margins.  You only have so many hours in the day and it’s better to complete the most important tasks than none at all.

Pro-tip: The Pareto Principle.  The Pareto principle revolves around the 80%-20% ratio.  Allow me to explain, if you have 10 pieces of work, there are probably only two of them that will take up 80% of the work.  And 8 of them that will take up 20% of the work.  The key to prioritizing is finding those two assignments (or however many = 20% in your workload) and doing them first

Working in bed or laying down.

 NONONONONONONONONONO.  This is how “cat-naps” happen.  You swear that you’re going to get straight to work and then your phone on the bedside table lights up.  It’s too hard to organize a book, a notebook, and a laptop on a bed without moving the laptop off of your lap.  So why not check it?  

Working in bed helps the boogeyman grow under it.

Over-working.  

If you take on more than you can handle, you will not get the results you want.  It’s perfectly alright to challenge yourself.  In fact, it’s great.  But, there is a difference between being ambitious and stressing yourself out.  If it’s too much, go back to the Pareto principle and prioritize. 

Drinking excessive amounts of coffee and energy drinks. (Especially in the afternoon.)  

One (maybe two, if you ordered a tall) cups of coffee in the morning is fine.  But in the afternoon or the evening, stick to exercise, healthy snacks, and naps.  Sugary energy drinks as well as coffee that contain caffeine can speed up your heart rate, cause stress, and irregular breathing patterns.  If you become addicted to caffeine these things will accelerate and can end up hurting you detrimentally.

Over-using productivity apps.  

Productive apps are awesome, if used correctly, don’t abuse them.  It was difficult for me to use productivity apps on my phone at first because the other things on my phone would distract me.  If you plan to use productivity apps on you phone and computer make sure that you have the self-control needed o use them properly.

Tumblr. - I’m only half kidding

Those are the general ones, these are a bit more subject specific

Math/science

Falling behind. 

 In other classes falling behind is not recommended, but is usually fixable by reading a few chapters or asking a friend for notes.  Because of arithmetic’s complex nature that relies not only on facts, but applying them it is very difficult to master one a concept while you’re supposed to be mastering another.  Often, learning one key concept can help you with many other assignments, not learning key concepts can make those other assignments 10x harder.

Receiving low homework scores.  

In all of the math classes I’ve been in, the homework scores were more of your grade than your test homework.  Always turn in your homework, even if it feels impossible, try your best, and never leave your paper blank.  Even if you got all of the answers wrong, many teachers will give you serious credit for trying and failing rather than just failing.

Learn everything from the teacher. 

 There are a plethora of online math resources that are awesome, and math teachers usually only teach one method of solving a problem.  Try Khan Academy , For Dummies, or IXL.  Or look around a bit, there are a lot of other great sites, those are just my favorites.

Learn everything. (This is usually for science.) 

 In science (especially in biology and Earth sciences.) you are introduced to a myriad of concepts and vocabulary words that might seem like too much to memorize.  Don’t.  Look at what your teacher puts emphasis on and memorize that. Also, if you are using a textbook, there is a good chance that the textbook is filled with notes on the ‘key concepts’ or learning requirements for each chapter.  These are also things that you should attempt to memorize.

English/writing/history/ other humanities

Not develop an opinion. (Especially in history) 

 If there’s anything a english/ writing/ history teacher loves, it’s an opinionated student.  Textbooks give you facts and figures, and you can interpret them however you want.  So, do just that.  This will show your teacher not only that you are interested in his or her subject, but that you are engaged in the material that they gave you.

Ignore teacher comments. (No matter how small.) 

 It isn’t fun to read nit-picky comments about your work.  Especially on your writing.  But look at them.  Even if you receive a good grade on a paper, applying corrections on your next one will ensure that you get a better grade the next time.  

Staying quiet in class.  

I understand that for some people this one is hard, for some people this one is practically impossible.  But teachers love it.  If you can, voice your opinion and answer questions in class as frequently as possible.  I’ve even received extra credit for being verbally engaged in class more than other students.

Not trying to learn everything.  

This one is a lot like the ‘not ignoring teacher comments’.  A lot of information slips through the cracks (especially in english)  that pops back up on exams.  Because most of what is learned in an english class is not drilled into you like it would be in a math or science class, to do well, you have to drill yourself.  I’ve been told the difference between ‘affect’ and ‘effect’ plenty of times, but I didn’t truly learn it until this year when I had to study it for an exam.

Pro-tip: Don’t challenge your teachers.  They determine your grades.  Momentary satisfaction is not worth a bad grade.

Hope this was useful!

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Typical studyblr post, Valentine’s day edition!

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Studying Pharmacology Be Like