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I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Martin Luther King Jr.

January 15, 1929 - April 4, 1968

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A Stash of Tiny Study Tips

STAYING MOTIVATED

Create realistic goals: get ___ grade on next ____

Manageable let down; get back on track

Keep track of grades: focused, know where stand, no surprises

Start small

Low risk confidence builders

Take time to relax/give self rewards

Days off, breaks, rewards

All work & no play =/= living

Little organization goes a long way

Reward achievements!

Keep balance with exercise, clubs, friends

2h/d: friends and exercise

Remember that hard work pays off

Isn’t a breeze to try to get a 4.0 GPA; but it’s possible

You’re smart enough and can achieve it

90% there with these tips, 10% is just pure hard work

Only chill on weekends

Monday-Friday: school mode

Have time for some fun

If work as hard as should during week, will need weekends to blow off steam

Be self-motivated

Grades can matter, not everything, but follow through on what needs to be done

Not most important part of college but underperform? You will regret it

GPA cutoffs exist and matter to employers

College is full of distractions and opportunities

Nobody will hold hand and the work will suck but all the prouder of yourself to be

Suck it up, buckle down, get it done

If think need break, probably don’t

Turn off the little voice

Realize not alone in questioning ability

Avoid people who tend to burst bubbles no matter what 

Physical triggers to stop

Incentive to get something done when know have something else during the day

Don’t have a gaping abyss of study time

Work has to get done, in the end

Books, examiners, and especially your future self isn’t going to care about your excuses for not doing the work

Take the first step

It will almost be fictional how hard you thought the task was going to be

Just keep going because you simply can’t afford NOT to do anything today, nonzero days

Leeway, don’t give your perfectionism control over your life

MUNDANE HABITS

Sleep! Think and function, mind & body

CAN sleep if keep up with coursework instead of procrastinating

Will miss out on some fun stuff

Need to stay awake in class

Figure out what need for full speed

Stay relaxed

Stay physically healthy

Diet and exercise

1 hour exercise during week

Weekends off

Traditional breakfast not necessary if value extra sleep

Systematic habits: neat, prepared

Master material

Look for real world applications

Learning is a process: be patient, don’t expect to master off the bat

Designate study area and study times

Do trial runs

Practice tests

Ask a TA to listen to your oral performance

Study groups

Don’t copy other people’s psets and solutions

BEFORE SEMESTER

Spiral bound notebook, can color code with folders/etc if need be

Lecture notes: front to back

Reading notes: back to front (if fall behind on)

Seminar notes: mixed in with lecture notes, different pen color/labeled

Outline format

Bullet points for everything

Same NB for one set of class notes, separate notebooks for all classes

5-subject notebook

Midterm and exam material in it

Mesh sources, study guide

All study material from week/month in one place

Pick the right major

Indulge in favorite hobby feeling

Pick professors & classes wisely

Take a small class

Pick classes that interest you so studying doesn’t feel torturous

Want to learn

GRADES SPECIFIC

Prioritize class by how can affect GPA

More credits: more weight

Work enough to get an A in your easy classes: take something good at

Don’t settle, don’t slack off, don’t put in minimal effort to get that B/C. Just put in a tiny bit more effort to ensure A

Will have harder classes and need to counteract

Take electives can ace

Anything but an A in an elective is kinda mean and an unnecessary hit for your GPA

FIRST DAY/WEEK/HALF OF CLASSES

Get to know teaching style: focus most on, lecture/notes

Pick and follow a specific note taking format

Outline

Date each entry

Capture everything on board

Decide productivity system

Google Cal

Todoist

Agenda: remind meetings, class schedule, important dates/midterms/quizzes/tests, no homework 

Always wanted to be prepared

Rarely last minute

Have plan, stay focused

Homework notebook

Good redundancy

Study syllabus

Know it thoroughly

Plot all due dates after class

Penalize if fail to abide by

Study the hardest for the first exam

Seems counterintuitive

Hardest/most important test

Pay attention to content and formatLess pressure: just need ___ on final to keep my A 

Easy to start high and keep high

Go into crunch mode at the beginning

End softly

Get plenty of sleep, exercise, and good food in the finals days before the exam

DURING SEMESTER: PEOPLE

Get to know professors: go to office hours, care about grades/course/them

Easier ask for help, rec letter

Get to know interests and what they think is important

Figure out their research interests, 60% of their job is research

Learning is dynamic

Discussion helps

Get feedback early when not sure what doing

Take comments constructively

Consistent class participation: ask questions, give answers, comment when appropriate

Understand material

Find a study buddy in each class: don’t have to study with

Somebody can compare notes with, safety net

Pick somebody who attends, participates, and take notes regularly

Make some friends

Participate as fully as can in group activities

Be involved

Learn – not be taught

Be punctual

Good impression, on human professors

DON’T BE LATE

Skipping class =/= option: It’s “cool” to get attendance award

Make all the classes: it’s hard to feel confident when missing key pieces

Get full scope of class, everything will make a lot more sense and save a lot of time in long run

Mandatory class: higher graduating cumulative GPA

Go to class when no one else does/want to show up, reward

Get to know professor, what’s on test, notice, r/s build, material not in reading

Unless optional and super confusing professor

Sit in one of the first rows

Don’t fall asleep

Fake interest if you have to

Tutors

DURING SEMESTER: THINGS TO DO

Take notes! Provided is bare minimum, accessed by students who aren’t attending lecture

Based on lecture and what read –> test; it’ll be worth it

Write it down

By hand

Bored? Doodle instead of going online

Read all assigned–even if need to skim

Seems cumbersome and maybe impossible

Figure out what’s important

Look at the logical progression of the argument/what’s important/what trying to prove

Understand everything that you do read–even if don’t read everything

PIck 2 examples from text per topic

Complete course material on time

DO NOT WAIT UNTIL DAY BEFORE IT IS DUE

Begin as soon as possible

Sometimes it’s just straight up impossible

Have it look attractive

Library doesn’t just mean = study

Social media in the library is still social media

Confusion is terrible

Read other textbooks, review course material @ another uni/by another professor, google the shit out of it

Review

Do not wait, do throughout semester

Exam prep

Ask for model papers, look at style & structure, thesis, how cite

Get old tests

Look at type of questions (detail level and structure)

Can solve old exams cold

If give out paper exams in class: probs won’t repeat questions, focus more on concepts but still learn the questions

Have class notes and psets down cold

Do all the practice problems

Read through notes a few times; rewrite into a revision notebook

Highlight major topics and subtopics

Different highlighter for vocab terms

Overall picture, go from concept to detail

Look at overall context and how specific idea fit into whole course

Ideas, don’t memorize all your notes

Better understand = more able to use and manipulate info and remember it. Understand = manipulation.

Charts, diagrams, graphs

Lists

Practice drawing labeled structures

Flash cards for memorization

Every school requires some degree of grunt memorization

Say it aloud, write it down

Get friends to quiz you

Self-test: severely challenge self, have a running collection of exam questions

Explain difficult concepts to your friends; force yourself to articulate the concept

Never pull an all-nighter

Do not spend every hour studying up to the exam

Eat, shower, sleep

Don’t wait until night before exam to study

Prep takes time even if reviewed throughout semester

Ask about format–don’t ask the professor to change it for you

Law of College: it will be on the exam if you don’t understand it

Ask professor, internet, textbooks

Night before exam

Jot what want to remember/have fresh

Read through in morning/before exam

Physical prep

Sleep, have test materials

Day of exam

Don’t cram every single spare minute

Go to bathroom before exam

Never miss an exam/lie to get more time

You won’t be any more ready 2-3 days after when supposed to have taken it

Slay exam. Get A. 

WEEKLY 

Friday morning: go through each syllabus, write down in HW notebook

All hw during weekend; study/reading assignments during week

Save everything

Divide big tasks into small pieces to help propel self

Standard study schedule: block off lectures, labs, regular commitments

Note the weeks that have assignments and tests that will require extra studying

Don’t oscillate too heavily every day with study times (i.e. don’t study 2-3 hours for weeks and then 10-12 hour days right before an exam)

Eat and sleep to make more extended work periods liveable and enjoyable

DAILY

Set an amount of time would like to study every day

Try to study most days

Avoid vague/zoned out studying –> waste of time

Do a little bit daily but don’t let studying be your whole day

Review notes: 30mins/day, each class from that day

Look at important ideas/vocab

Prioritize new vocab because language is most fundamental and important tool in any subject

Circle abbreviations and make yourself a key somewhere so you don’t forget what the hell that abbreviations meant

Check spelling

Rewrite/reorganize notes if necessary

Format of ideas is just as important as the concepts themselves, esp. when it comes time for exam review

This helps you retain the material so you’ll be ahead next time you walk into class

Chance to ID any knowledge gaps that you can ask about for next class

Keep up with reading

Skim text before lecture or at least main topic sentences

Jot down anything don’t understand; if lecture doesn’t clarify, ask the professor

After lecture: skim again, outline chapter, make vocab flashcards

Highlight similar class and lecture notes

will definitely be tested on

Review and make study questions

Study

Disconnect from anything irrelevant to study material: help focus and your GPA

Don’t limit studying to the night

Study whenever, wherever between classes

Variety helps focus and motivation

Especially if tired at night and can’t transition between subjects

Try to study for a specific subject right before/after the class

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Yosemite in the fall

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a chill in the air

instagram

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Villadero + Ferris Wheel Kisses

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relax, wild one

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moodboards: ravenclaw wlw

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ig: @wowsz

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Hey guys! This post has been coming for a really long time, I’m sorry to have kept you all waiting but university readings have kept me very very busy! I have compiled a list of books which are classics (in their own way, some even being modern classics). Books that I’ve read and loved or other people in my life have loved have been italicised and this list includes links to my favourite covers/the edition of the book that I own since you all ask me where I buy my books from on my bookstagram (and that is from book depository!). I hope you enjoy this, stay bookish 📚

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee 

The Great Gatsby; Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger 

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck 

A Tale of Two Cities; Bleak House; Great Expectations; Major Works by Charles Dickens

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury 

Dracula by Bram Stoker

The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer 

The Four Tragedies and The Four Histories; The Complete Works by William Shakespeare

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas 

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy 

The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien 

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley 

Les Misérables by Victor Hugo 

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett 

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

Northanger Abbey; Persuasion; Pride and Prejudice; Emma; Sense and Sensibility; Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway 

A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare (*cough* my name is mentioned here *cough*)

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville 

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll 

Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery 

Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson 

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller 

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad 

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier 

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut 

Tess of the D'Urbervilles; Far from the Madding Crowd; Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

Middlemarch by George Eliot

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy 

The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis 

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

The Stranger; The Fall; The Myth of Sisyphus; The Plague by Albert Camus

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Beowulf

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

Candide by Voltaire

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Bhagavad Gita

Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

Paradise Lost  by John Milton

The Divine Comedy by Dante

The Awakening by Kate Chopin

The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

To the Lighthouse; Mrs. Dalloway; A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

The Trial; Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

The Picture of Dorian Gray; The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

Antigone by Sophocles

The Republic by Plato

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

Utopia by Thomas More

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

The Epic of Gilgamesh

The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Atonement by Ian McEwan

Harry Potter by JK Rowling

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

The Brothers Karamazov; Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Confessions by St Augustine of Hippo

The Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

A Passage to India; A Room with a View by E.M. Forster

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins

The Plays by Christopher Marlowe

Norwegian Wood; Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

The Secret History; The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

[other links]

all my masterposts

my study/book instagram @ aristotelian

my goodreads @ mitochondrions [also snapchat if u wanna]

I hope you guys enjoyed it! Feel free to message me if you want me to add one of your favourite books or something, happy reading 😙❤️

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Palm Dreams - Hayley Kiyoko

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hayley kiyoko.

like or reblog if u save it

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PRIDE MONTH (Gay)

like/rebog if you save/use

enjoy and don’t repost

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❁.˚ lockscreens by me ✧ *

• if you use it, please like or reblog. • i don’t need credits but it will be nice if you give them to @TYLERFORR0 on twitter. • don’t redistribute or claim as your own. • requets are open!

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I wanted to cry But No one Is here Who can Hug me and give me time To simply be Here and not to talk And just Exist... ©️ @dlstone

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made with canva

Links: burnout measure weekly study schedule printable

Sources: Student Burnout Dealing with Study Burnout