Note Taking Masterpost:

My exams are rapidly approaching (just 9 days left!!) and amongst all the study tips posts that are popping up, I wanted to do a post about those days when things don’t go as planned. Be it that you walk out of an exam and feel like you bombed it, or that you get back a disappointing score. We all know the feeling. So here are some things that I like to do to make the day suck a little less!

Have some chocolate (light/dark/milk, hot/cold/whatever as preferred)

Have a bath, or a long shower

Go for a walk or a jog, preferably surrounded by nature

Find someone/something to cuddle

Even if you have things to do, give yourself a break

Tidy your room/flat/whatever to get a fresh perspective

Open all windows and air out your room

If you have things that need to be done, make a to do list and sort your brain out

Organise your clutter/notes/room/whatever

Do come colouring in a colouring book (these are awesome)

Try your hand at painting, even if you’re terrible at it

Make yourself some tea

Bake something (and eat it without feeling guilty afterwards)

Light a nice-smelling candle

Spend time with the positive forces in your life, be it parents, friends or pets

Watch your favourite movie (preferably with someone who loves it as much as you)

Go on spotify, pandora, soundcloud, 8tracks or wherever and look for new music

If you find some really good music, have a dance party

Put on your favourite outfit (+ makeup look if you’re into that)

Paint your nails, shave, moisturize, wash your face and pamper yourself

Check out universityandme​‘s “You are a force of nature” tag

If you need someone to talk to, send me an ask, either here or on my main blog, saturdaystudying

Organization

How to Take Notes from a Textbook

How to Write Long Papers

Organization Tips

How to Choose the Perfect Planner

Bullet Journaling How-To

Keeping Your Cool

Focus and Energy Management for Students

Sending Emails to Teachers

Waking Up Early

Achieving your full academic potential: Things to Avoid Doing

Study Playlists

College

tips for college freshmen

How to study like a straight A student

College Tips

42 College Tips I Learned Freshman Year

College tips: Advice from a professor

10 Commandments of Dorm Shopping

AN EASY GUIDE TO BE HEALTHY IN COLLEGE

How to Write the Perfect College Essay

COLLEGE SHOPPING LIST

10 Tips for Getting Along With Your College Roommate

High School

33 Things High School Seniors Wish They Knew As Freshmen

Expert nutrition tips for high school athletes

16 Studying Hacks For Finals Week

School Tips

High School Advice

Survive high school with our how-to guide

Back to School: Tips For Surviving High School (Video)

JUNIOR YEAR ADVICE

13 Incredible Back-To-School Hacks You Won’t Believe You Survived Without

Senior Year Advice

“I’ve been living alone so long, everything about me’s private. I’m surprised anyone’s able to understand a word I say.”

— Kurt Vonnegut, from Mother Night; “Werner Noth’s Beautiful Blue Vase,”

This is how heart works <3 <3 <3

How to mind map.

Some handsome revision notes on liberalism, even if I say so myself.

More biology notes. Reviewing my old notes on Ecology, Evolution and Population Ecology for my Biology final exam.

How to make an awesome study guide / make notes on your computer

Writing by hand can be great in class or for jotting down notes from skimming through the text book. A great way to combine those notes are typing them up on your computer, and then print them out. Neat perfect notes with less paper wasted. Well printed out you can work with them even more to really get that information to stay. 

Go from 100 pages in the text book + a pile of handwritten notes to just a couple of pages of typed notes.

When typing them:

Layout. For each paragraph I make a headline in bold text. After that I use bullets and italicize terminology. I format the body text to be in two columns to save space and easier reading.

Keep it short. I  never write full sentences or grammatically correct. Write as short as possible while still getting the important information through. Making up abbreviations are an easy way to keep things short. It doesn’t have to look pretty, just make sure you understand it.

Simplify. Use arrows, dashes, colons, equal signs to indicate how different subjects and explanations are connected. Avoid “unnecessary“ words like "meaning…”, “such as”, “is the same as”. Use symbols instead. 

Tables. Making tables is an excellent idea for comparing things with different parameters. In your word processing program you can make your own pretty table designs or use pre-made ones. Sometimes simple ones are better though.

Paginate. Obvious but extremely useful!

Print on both sides of the paper. With half the amount of paper it kind of psychologically feel that you have less material to learn. 

Example:

What not to write:

Different species have different niches. You can define a niche as a species specialty, like its job.

Instead, try to remove unnecessary words that don’t contain much information.

Niche = a specie’s specialty, job.

When you have them on paper

All freshly printed and done? Great! Take your pens, pencils and highlighters and let’s go through the material. The first time I go through it I let it take a good while and I read it very carefully with my highlighters and pens handy.

Highlighting. If you’re into highlighting I have some tips for you. Don’t use one colour. Use several and assign each colour a different task or role. For me it really makes a big difference and I can see what’s what. Here’s an example of how I do it:

Pink: Headlines and headings Blue: Terms and words Green: Definitions and meaning of the term. (Green explains blue) Yellow: Examples and misc

Drawing. It’s helpful if you couldn’t draw said thing on the computer. What I like to do though is to make small doodles related to the terms, definitions, examples or the paragraphs in them selves in the margin. 

Notes. Take notes or mark off things you find extra hard or confusing.

When you’ve done all of that and your notes are a colourful clusterfuck I read them through again and again. You can also hold over the paragraph and try to either write down or explain verbally what the paragraph is about. Try not to completely memorize the paragraphs, instead really try to understand the concept.

I hope that was helpful for some of you :) I know exams are coming up and this can be a fun thing to try out. After I’ve made my study guide I almost exclusively study from it. I don’t use the textbook from that point on except for answering practice questions. 

If you have any questions, feel free to send me a message.

Good luck! ♥

film scores playlist for studying to

wants to work through your essay with the instrumental sounds of your favourite movies in the background, perfect to calm and focus your mind? then this is the playlist for you

view the full thing here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/75T4VhthKFdSnvZ2Llhpwx

‘Married Life’ by Michael Giacchino from Up (2009)

‘Time’ by Hans ZImmer from Inception (2010)

‘The Shire’ by Howard Shore from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

‘Romantic Fight’ by John Powell from How To Train Your Dragon (2010)

‘Mr. Fox in the Fields’ by Alexandre Desplat from Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)

‘Lady Bird’ by Jon Brion from Lady Bird (2017)

‘Dance on the Porch’ by Alexandre Desplat from Little Women (2019)

‘The Imitation Game’ by Alexandre Desplat, London Symphony Orchestra from The Imitation Game (2014)