that-fyp - Tumblr blog

that-fyp · 2 months

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2024 Goal Setting for People Who Used to be Studyblr Queens and are Now Just Muddling Through Adult Life

I know you, you know me. I've had this account since I was freshly 16 and I'm 23 (and a half) now, and I can guarantee there's loads of you in the same boat right now.

Where did I go? What did I do? I finished my Master's Degree and realised (with some trepidation) at the end of it that I'd achieved everything that was on my list of things to achieve ever, and I didn't really have a plan on what I was going to do, so for what may have been the first time in my life I just...winged it. Started measuring progress according to how I felt about it. And it worked! Lots of good has come out of it so let me suggest some goal setting approaches to help if you're in a similar position (and given the studyblr -> chaos pipeline I might suggest there's at least a few people this might help)

Point 1 - Don't set yourself academic goals

"But Study Like You Mean It, I always set academic goals!" I hear you say. I appreciate the irony of my username in relation to this. Point is, you're not in academia anymore. You need to stop goal setting like you're in academia, and the easiest way to do this is to stop setting academic goals.

"But I like the pursuit of knowledge!" I hear you counter. So do I, but if you've just come out of a hothouse academic setting, you *really* need to consider who you're goal setting for. Do you like the idea of being a polyglot by the end of the year? Sure, fine, whatever, but consider who you're goal setting for. Do you want to be a polyglot because you like the process of learning languages, or because you want to show to others that you know languages? It sounds silly, but you're not working to a grade anymore, and it's absolutely essential that you reflect on why you like doing academic things. This doesn't apply to everyone, but I would kick off the process of self-reflection on this (because you know the Studyblr types are most likely guilty of performative learning) by refusing to set yourself academic goals.

If you don't hit a yardstick, what's the worst that will happen?

(nothing- the answer is nothing and you need to start getting comfortable with that)

Point 2 - Set Process-Based Goals

Building on the last point, if you want to have achieved something by the end of the year, how can you frame it in a way that's definitely not you trying to put down a point to show to others that you've improved, and instead internalise your sense of progress? Maybe the goal you set is "by the end of the year, I want to feel like I understand internalised growth and progress", and you'll know at the end of the year when you self-reflect if you've succeeded in that.

Otherwise, set a process-based goal. If you want to get better at something, but know you're guilty of holding yourself to externalised yardsticks, set yourself a goal that's about the process rather than the result. Scary, I know. For example, say you want to start playing a sport. If you go in without a process-based goal, you could end up saying to yourself "I want to put myself in a position where I qualify for a team two leagues above by the end of the season," which is a SMART* goal, but incredibly determined by outside reflections on your own ability, and very end-result focused. There's a time and a place for goals like this, but if you're coming off a high-intensity academic environment, I would argue that it's not the right place. Instead, what about "I will show up every week and be positive about the fact that I'm not perfect"? It's about the learning process, and I think post-university a lot of people fall out of love with the actual learning process, and become too mired in results.

*specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound

Point 3 - What happens if you don't hit your goal?

I love asking this question to people who've come out of academic environments.

Literally what's going to happen if you can't meet the goal that you've set for yourself when you set an end-goal focused goal?

Nothing!!!!!

It's so freeing. Embrace it! There are no time bounds on learning, so enjoy the learning! There's no exam to pass, no professors to wow, no applications to get accepted. It's just you learning how to be you, and remembering why you love to get good at things!

Part 4 - Habits =/= Goals

This one maybe is a bit tricky to explain. It's the difference between "I'm going to get into the practice of reading on my commute when I can" and "I must finish 10 books this year by reading on my commute when I can". One of them is about introducing something new into your life because it makes you feel good, and the other one is about setting limits on that because you feel you need to control the way that you enjoy things (this comes from academia putting constraints on learning, etc.).

Be patient with yourself, for goodness' sakes. Get into the habit and enjoy the process, don't automatically find ways to be masochistic about it.

My Goal Setting Approach

Now I've clarified the kinds of goals to set in this new and scary world, I'll run through my approach to implement them. First thing to note is I like setting lots of goals, but then those all get broken into little habits that I can focus on in my day to day, as well as timeline-less tasks to accomplish when I've got the time free.

I start with areas I'd like to improve myself in (again, not as a discipline thing, but towards the vision that I might be a more rounded and enriched person because of it):

Personal - how can I become more introspective/calm/mindful?

Financial - how can I become more fiscally responsible now I'm an adult?

Social - how do I make time for others?

Work - what does progress at work over this year look like?

Sport - this can be replaced by whatever your main hobby is

Intellectual - how can I enrich myself and learn about things that I'm interested in?

I won't run through all of these, but I'll create some examples:

Domain: Financial - how can I become more fiscally responsible now I'm an adult?

General points on this: I can save more money, I can improve my credit score, I can pay off some loans

Habits: for the first, I can maybe aim to save 20% of my takehome, by putting 10% in at the start of the month, and trying to put 10% in at the end if I've got enough, and I can set up the timelineless task of opening a high interest-rate savings account for money that I don't need for emergency access; for the second, I can set the timelineless task of setting up a credit card, and get into the habit of paying for my groceries with it; for the third, I can sit down and look at how much of my takehome I can dedicate to this, and then get into the habit of paying off a sustainable amount

Now, I have the timelineless tasks fo getting a credit card, opening a new savings account, and sitting down and looking at my loans, and then I have the two habits of tucking bits of money away and paying off some loans. Note that there's nothing that's made it too urgent (which I admit is a privilege) and there's nothing that tells me I'm a bad person for not being able to do it. Another example:

Domain: intellectual - how can I enrich myself and learn about things that I'm interested in?

General points on this: I would like to read more broadly, I would like to improve my French, I would like to understand more about world events

Habits: for the first, I can read on my commute when I can get a seat on the train, as I have half an hour each way so I can use that time to read. I can set the timelineless task of exploring the kinds of books that I'd like to read; for the second, I can choose to consume more French media when I feel like I have the mental capacity. I also have to speak French at work, so I want to get into the habit of not cowarding out and switching to English (scary but doable); for the last, I can get into the habit of watching the evening news (so it's contained within a time slot and I'm not being overwhelmed by the 24h news cycle) and I can set the timelineless task of picking up a copy of a magazine like the economist once in a while to get a deeper understanding.

So the habits to get into are reading on my commute, choosing to speak more in French, and watching the news when I can; the tasks are maybe picking up a copy of a magazine and coming up with a reading list.

The whole point of this approach is it breaks your bigger goals into a timeline-free to-do list, and then a list of small habits that you can get into. The good news is that there's no punishment for failure! If I want to listen to the Bongo's Bingo Greatest Hits playlist on the train one morning instead of reading about the modern history of Cambodia, nobody's going to come along and tell me off for not being serious enough, or clever enough, or "academic" enough about my approach to life. The to-do list aspect I find immensely helpful, as often I struggle to write larger-level to-do lists when I'm in the middle of the year, because I don't have the same kind of clarity over the types of progress I want to make when I'm in the middle of things.

Anyway, I hope this is useful, and a good counterpoint to the mindset that everyone who's ever been near Studyblr has. Learning now is only for enjoyment, so enjoy that aspect! Live your life! Understand that the process of betterment is all about enriching your personal sphere and nothing about other people because (drumroll) literally nobody else cares! In a good way! Nobody cares that you've not mastered Polish in 3 weeks or read the entire academic output of Montaigne in a week! And it's cool if you have, but the person you are is more important, and freeing yourself from external yardsticks is so so crucial!

Love to anyone who read this far ♥

#studyblr #studyspo #university #langblr #goal setting

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that-fyp · 2 months

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things I wish I had known when starting a studyblr - study-like-you-mean-it

It’s been a looong time since I made this studyblr; I started it in Easter 2016, which means it’s over 3 years old now (which doesn’t seem like a lot but going from GCSEs to having finished the first year of university is a long journey). I thought I’d share a couple of things I’ve learned along the way, through trial and error (mostly error), and hopefully this will help some of you out! :)

Experiment with your look: It’s great if you settle into an aesthetic straight away and want to stick with it for the whole time you have your blog, and if that works for you, that’s great! If like me you want to keep trying out different styles, go with that (I still haven’t settled on an aesthetic and that’s chill)- most of the time, people will see your posts in isolation anyway so don’t put too much pressure on finding aesthetic cohesiveness

Don’t think you have to buy all the stationery: You’ll see a bunch of brand names popping up over and over again in people’s posts, and whilst brands like MUJI and mildliners may work for some, you absolutely do not need to buy all of these things in order to keep up a certain ideal aesthetic. I, for one, have strayed from mildliners and use stabilo pastel highlighters now, as they are cheaper and last longer. My go-to writing pen when I work is a BIC biro, which I bought in bulk so it costs 24p per pen. I do have MUJI pens for working on my bullet journal and the B4 notebooks for taking to lectures, but it’s really not necessary to cash out on all the kit in order to be a “legit” studyblr. All you need is a phone camera, a pen, and a piece of paper.

You don’t need the “studyblr” handwriting: Scrolling through the myriad of studyblr posts, it’s easy to become convinced that you need this stereotypical ultra-neat “studyblr” handwriting, and whilst it does look nice, it’s not the only handwriting that looks nice. I used to take ages to try and write my study notes out so that they conformed to this aesthetic, and it ended up slowing down my studying to the point that I never finished the notes or the material I wanted to cover in a given day. I also ended up making notes for the sake of studyblr posts that ended up not being an effective way for me to study (I learned this the hard way). I’m quite lucky in that my regular handwriting is quite consistent, but to be honest, the overall aesthetic of a post is more important, and sometimes this studyblr handwriting fits into the aesthetic, but I can guarantee it’s not a necessity and you don’t need to spend your time on it if your handwriting doesn’t look like that.

Composition and lighting are most important: Long story short, you can’t take a good photo of your notes if the composition and lighting aren’t there. Take a look through the most popular photo posts and you’ll see what I mean: it doesn’t matter what the actual content of the photo is, just that it looks nice overall. Again, this is a case of what kind of a look you’re going for: some posts will have this super clean, neat look with no shadows, and other will tactfully play with the shadows for a different kind of image. However, if the shadows in the picture don’t match the aesthetic you’re going for, or you try and edit them out after taking the photos, I can guarantee this is a recipe for disaster.

Edit, but don’t overedit: Everyone with a studyblr edits their photos. I personally use a combination of VCSO and Snapseed, and have been doing this for a while, but even then I often make errors in judgement about filter strength and editing, and sometimes my photos end up looking overprocessed and frankly unattractive. I have 11.5k followers, and even now I get posts with 0 reblogs because my photo editing has been so bad. It happens (and the posts get deleted once I realise), and that’s just something you just gotta keep trying at.

Be inspired by others: See something that you like that someone else is doing? There’s no harm in trying to recreate something similar yourself, as long as you’re not plagiarising or downright stealing.

Regularity is important, but you are more important: Obviously, uploading and/or reblogging content regularly is important to your blog. However, it’s a studyblr, and if you find that it’s getting in the way of doing actual work, there’s no harm in taking a break. I rarely upload during term time, or even in the holidays, because I’m so busy trying to get my actual life sorted and enjoying my university experience. For me, I worked the most on my studyblr last summer after I finished my A-Levels, and that’s when I experienced the most growth through very regular uploads (and since everyone else was also on their summer break, they had more time to spend on tumblr and see my content). From there, it’s just been growing by itself, and it’s almost 10x as big as it was in January of 2018. Don’t feel pressured to dedicate loads of time to producing content if you simply don’t have the time. If you’re a studyblr who reblogs rather than produces content, it’s always possible to just queue up stuff so it’s released regularly whilst you are working.

Stick at it: It took me over two years to experience any real growth, and by that time I’d poured many hours of work into it. Growth doesn’t come overnight, and no matter how hard you work, you’ve gotta keep working. My first text posts got 10k notes and that did almost nothing to my follower count. Keep going and it will happen, and when this happens, you’ll be able to reach out to more people, directly and indirectly, and it becomes an even more rewarding experience.

I hope this helps some of you, and as always, you can access my Redbubble store here, and if you think what I’m doing is kind of cool (and want to request content that becomes top of my priority list/support what I do), you can find my ko-fi link here (it’s like patreon but they don’t take commission).

#good stuff

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that-fyp · 6 months

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Youtube channels for the girlies

Inspired by @prettypr1ncezz

Vlogs:

Adelala

Annika's Leaf

Daiz

Fernanda Ramirez

Isabela Juliana

mira daisy

Olivia Yang

Tips and Self-Improvement

Carolette Martin (spanish)

Elicia Gougen

Manifestelle

Pershephonesmind

Tam Kaur

TheWizardLiz

Academic tips and motivation

fayefilms

Galacsea

Isadora Vera (spanish)

studyquill

Study to sucess

Beauty

Dear peachie

Diana Gaby (spanish)

Isabel Lopez (spanish)

Jessica Vu

Vogue (Beauty secrets section)

Video essays and educational

Bailey Sarian

Jordan Theresa

Mina Lee

ModernGurlz

Psychology with Dr.Ana

Stephanie Lange

tiffanyferg

Exercise

fitbymik - Weight focused

Jessica Richburg - Yoga

Madeleine Abeid - Pilates

Btw, please recommend me more channels! I will aprecciate it 𑄽𑄺ྀ

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that-fyp · 7 months

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Ghost Embroidered Converse // Hoai on Etsy

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that-fyp · 7 months

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take care of yourselves♡

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that-fyp · 7 months

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self care = self love

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that-fyp · 7 months

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that-fyp · 7 months

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PROGRESS OVER PERFECTION

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that-fyp · 7 months

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How I want this school semester to look like

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that-fyp · 7 months

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Girly Comfort Movies

Little collection of my favourite comfort movies (take with a grain of salt lol) <3

Legally Blonde (1 and 2)

the devil wears Prada

The Princess Diaries (1 and 2)

Little Woman

Clueless

Mean Girls (1 and 2)

Pride & Prejudice

Roman Holiday

Uptown girls

Marie-Antoinette

The Virgin Suicide

10 things I hate about you

Lady Bird

Jennifer’s Body

how to lose a guy in 10 days

American Psycho

A Cinderella Storie

Emma

Watching the detectives

La La Land

Peters to Juliette

Bling Ring

Fight Club

13 going 30

The Notebook

Breakfast at Tiffanys

Sex and the city

Dear John

The breakfast club

Mamma Mia

Monte Carlo

Black Swan

Girl Interrupted

Pearl

If you guys have any more suggestions and/or recommendations (maybe some shows and series as well!!), please feel free to share them with me in the comments!! <33

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that-fyp · 9 months

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wonyoungism: a guide

wonyoungism is inspired by jang wonyoung and mixes a coquette, cute, pink pilates princess style with self improvement to help us become the best and healthiest versions of ourselves!

ways to express wonyoungism

have a morning routine

a morning routine helps set the tone for the rest of your day. while you can include whatever you want, typical wonyoungism morning routines include waking up early, stretching, skincare, drinking tea or lemon water, and doing your makeup and hair. do what works for you and makes you feel the best!

take care of your skin

research your skin type and find what products and routines will work best for you. no need for fancy or expensive products! in my experience, minimalism works best for my skin. a good cleanser and moisturizer are key, but you can also include things like toner, exfoliating scrubs, night cream, eye cream, and serums if you need or want them. wonyoung is an ambassador for innisfree skincare products, like these:

have a nutritious, balanced diet

having a nutritious diet keeps you healthy and energized, helps your skin and hair, makes you feel good, and has so many other benefits! focus on getting your daily servings of fruit and veggies and getting your protein and other nutrients and vitamins in, but don’t restrict yourself to the point of bad mental health. here’s a good chart to start with!

find a daily exercise regimen

most workouts you’ll find with wonyoungism are pilates, walking, and yoga (which i highly recommend!) but find a workout plan that YOU like! there are so many different types of workouts out there, and you shouldn’t force yourself to do something you hate. try out different things and figure out what works best for you. if you do want to practice pilates and yoga, here are some good channels on youtube:

move with nicole

dansique fitness

yoga with kassandra

eleni fit

sanne vloet

bailey brown

implement productive habits into your day

instead of mindlessly scrolling in your free time, try to implement productive and healthy activities. these things can include:

working out or stretching

drawing or painting

researching something that interests you

learn a new skill or a new language

read

write short stories

make a new playlist

go outside/go for a walk/spend time in nature

journal

make a vision board

be kind to yourself

sounds self explanatory, but it can be so much harder than it sounds for some of us. it may take some time, but realize that you are only human and you are doing the best you can. it’s okay to not feel as healthy or happy as you think you should, but you are absolutely valid and it is okay to be gentle with yourself. you are the only you there will ever be, embrace being you!

have an evening routine

evening/night routines are important because it closes out your day and gets you ready for a good nights sleep. it’s so helpful to have an evening routine that helps you wind down and get relaxed mentally and physically. this can include whatever makes you feel calm and happy, but it can also include things like stretching, lighting a candle, skincare, reading, meditation, and drinking a warm drink like tea!

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that-fyp · 1 year

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