2018 Student Guide

With the start of 2018 well underway, I wanted to make a masterpost full of links on how to adjust your perspective with studying. Perhaps you want to become a better student overall, improve your focus or get into your dream college, there is always something we want to do better! Hopefully these tips will make 2018 your best academic year yet!

Organisation

Productivity

Motivation

Studying

Self Care

Printables

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its kinda scary how your whole life depends on how well you do as a teenager 

oh my god No it doesn’t don’t put this kind of pressure on people?? you can absolutely fuck up in your teen years and continue on to a good life just fine. you can drop out of school, get a GED, still go to college and finish your degree as late as you want. i know people in my school who still haven’t graduated and they’re 26. some older. you can always transfer someplace else, always build yourself up from the ground. after a certain amount of college credits, a lot of schools really don’t care about your high school GED or your SAT scores anymore. if you fuck up in your teenage years you are not a failure!! you can ALWAYS re-invent yourself, always start over. there is always a second chance.

Reblogging this for my followers freaking out over art school/college. I dropped out of high school and never thought I’d get into college as easily as I did. You will be fine!

Fun story my biology professor just told us:  When he was 23 he was married to his wife and worked two jobs to support them since she was in college: gas station attendant and construction worker.  He worked these two jobs because that was the only work he could get since he was at the reading level of a third grader.  

One night he was writing something and his wife noticed he was writing from right to left.  Since she was studying occupational therapy she realized he had a learning disability and started working with him.  He slowly began to learn to read, and at 26 got his GED and went to college.

His first year of college he took the lowest level math course he could take, 001.  Over the years he worked on learning what he needed to, ended up graduating with a biology degree.  He then went on to get his masters and PhD, graduating at the top of his class.  He is now an extremely accomplished biologist and professor.

So don’t let anyone tell you that you’re future is based on your choices as a teenager.

Seriously.  Do not believe this.  You aren’t even stuck with your choices you make in your 20s.  I didn’t start working in my current field until just after my 30th birthday.  It has nothing to do with what I went to school for in my 20s.  My husband has a political science degree, and he’s a sports journalist.

You are not tied to anything.  Go.  Be.

My day job did not exist when I was a teenager. And the idea of trying to be an author was a distant thing on my radar. I thought I was going to be an English teacher. And then I thought I was going to be a music teacher. And then I thought I was going to be a drama teacher.

Also in there: therapist, early childhood educator, then finally: web developer–because by then it was an actual thing that existed. I didn’t actually figure out what I “wanted to do when I grew up” until about eight years ago, when I was 36. I tried pursuing writing when I was 30, stopped, then started pursuing it seriously again when I was 40. 

There is always time to change. And don’t let anyone tell you that high school is “the best time of your life” either, because that’s bullshit too.

Reblogging for my followers. My high school teachers didn’t know what to do with me, and I failed everything but a low photography grade. I thought university wasn’t for me, and settled for marrying a mediocre man who spent all day on Warcraft. Then I went to community college. Now I’m in uni doing a double English and philosophy degree, just back from America. I am also single.

Also important: College is not the only option. Don’t let anyone try to tell you it is. If you’re not academically inclined, the trades are an option and they are a good option– if the only thing you think you’re good at is make-up do that. There are people who can live comfortably just doing make-up. We have this idea planted in our heads as teenagers (and younger) that not fitting into an academic mould of some sort means you’re failing at life and this is bullshit. There’s no reason to feel like you’re “failing at life” because you don’t like school or were never good at it. We need skilled workers in the world, and the thing they don’t tell you is all work is skilled work. If it’s work, it takes skill. Yes, this encompasses “service” jobs, it encompasses all jobs. Please don’t think that what you do, or what you have an interest in doing is of less value than something that requires a college education. This coming from the college-educated white girl who is a seamstress because it’s what I enjoy. If college isn’t going to get you where you want to go, than you don’t need to go! It’s that simple. Take whatever path you need to get to where you are happy and comfortable and fufilled. If you’re doing what you love you are sucessful.

i didn’t graduate with my bachelor’s until i was 26 and life took a few turns along the way but now, at 37, i have a job that makes me genuinely happy. and it’s got nothing to do with how well i did in high school.

This! This make me cry… I’m 23 and I really don’t know where I’m going, so reading this kinds of storys makes me feel hope!

I love all this support and inspiring stories, but what I think op was getting at was that our teachers/parents/elders ingrain this idea in us that if we fuck up in our teens, we fuck up everything. So don’t ever let adults make you feel less for needing/spending more time to achieve your goals. You’re still amazing if you get a degree at 24 or 44 or even not at all

for everyone needing this as much as i do right now

exactly what i needed??? aaAAAAH

time management tips !!

i’ve been getting a lot better with my time management skills. my assignments are done in advance, way earlier than due, or at least on time, and my sleep schedule has been BLESSED with 8 hours so here are a few things i have done to improve this aspect of student life.

* i take 5 classes, play a sport, and have plenty of time to hang out with friends/ watch netflix and youtube. 

My favorite moment with my D&D group so far

They met a Demon at a crossroads, he said they had to make a deal with him or he would steal their souls. The Fighter was like, “Hey can you just wait for 5 seconds for me?” 

Demon’s like: “Alright.” 

Five seconds later the Fighter says “Alright our deal is complete” 

???

“What do you mean our deal is complete?” said the Demon

“Well I asked you to wait 5 seconds, then you agreed. Since you waited 5 seconds, that means our deal is complete right?”

The Demon is in shock, and so am I, the DM. This fighter just out-tricked a freakin’ demon deal by telling the demon to cool his heels for a moment I couldn’t believe it.

And this is when the demon decides to becoming a recurring pest to the party, or a legitimate threat

He actually did, he sent a “bounty hunter” chain devil named Gnev after the party.

The Bard seduced him.

17 Things I Learned My First Year of College

1. Find all tutoring centers and their locations. Use them.

2. Laundry takes a long time. Don’t sit for an hour on your phone while you wait for your clothes to dry. Take this time to do some homework, do your readings for next class, or catch up on some work. 

3. Your schedule needs to suit your needs and your lifestyle. If you can’t bring yourself to open your eyes, get dressed, eat breakfast, and walk to your 8:30 AM class, don’t take an 8:30 AM class. If you have club meetings in the evenings, try to take classes earlier in the day. If you like taking 3 classes back-to-back, do it. 

4. Do not spend time rewriting your notes if they’re not going to help you get the information in your head. You don’t need two copies of the same exact words. If your notes are messy or incomprehensible, use this time to make condensed summary sheets instead. 

5. Find the gym. Go to the gym. Stay healthy. If you don’t like the gym, you can go running, go biking, play a sport, jump rope, play frisbee, anything. Make sure you are doing something active at least twice a week. It is so easy to get caught up in studying and being busy that you forget to take care of your health.

6. You don’t need to be super good at something to love it. If you’re worried that you’re not in the right major because other people seem to understand everything so quickly on their own while you need to work harder at it, you need to stop worrying. Work hard and do your best. Just because your classmate doesn’t need to study as much as you do, does not mean that you are not intelligent. Stop comparing yourself. There is no shame in getting tutored, there is no shame in failing an exam if you gave it your all. Pick yourself back up, learn from your mistakes, write out your Plan B, and move on. You can do it.

7. Use lysol wipes for your dorm/apartment and hand sanitizer for on-the-go. Wash your hands when you get back from class, before you eat food, after you use the bathroom, etc. You don’t want a runny or stuffy nose during exams, trust me.

8. You look fine. Stop stressing over yourself. No one cares what you look like taking the trash out.

9. You’re going to feel alone sometimes. You’re going to feel like you haven’t talked to people in three weeks. You’re going to miss your friends and your family and you might cry because of how overwhelming everything might get. Drink some cold water, get out of your room, call a friend, doodle, read, watch a movie. Don’t forget about your hobbies.

10. If you have a hold on your university account and cannot register for classes until it has cleared, do what you need to do to clear it before your registration time comes around. Do not wait until the last minute only to find that you can’t register for classes because you didn’t schedule a meeting with your advisor. 

11. Go to career fair, even if it’s your freshman year. You’ll get a feeling for what it’s like to dress and talk professionally. There will be a lot of people, and it will be crowded. Take your updated resume with you. Talk to some recruiters. This will prepare you for when you actually need to find an internship or job.

12. Make at least one friend in every class. Not only will this help you talk to new people, but it will also save you when you’re stuck wondering at 11 PM whether or not your professor wants that essay double spaced. 

13. Set some goals for yourself and plan how you’re going to accomplish them. Write out what clubs you want to join, if you want to get an internship, find an on-campus job, etc. Know what you want and go get it.

14. You’re going to need to learn how to deal with bugs on your own. 

15. Back up your files.

16. Always carry water with you. Always.

17. Time will fly. Make good friends, spend your time wisely, and study hard.

note: This masterpost is mostly made for new studyblrs, but anyone can grab ideas from this post if you are having trouble. 

The most common thing studyblr’s think when summer starts is that their tumblr or instagram will get really inactive because well um there’s no school. But don’t worry! Here I have a few things that you can post during summer that will keep your account active, and help motivate yourself during summer.  

It’s not for the followers or anything, it’s mostly because of what my school calls the “ Summer Slide,” It’s important that you keep on reading and studying during summer so you can be prepared for what is to come next year, which I think is rlly important!  

If you don’t already know about this, Khan is a website where it teaches you through videos not only math, but some science, history, and even music! A super great website and this goes from elementary to high school math, so in my case, I will be finishing the 8th-grade math course, and finish algebra I and algebra II. If you are a college student, try mathtv (ap math teacher recommended this website!)

Post ideas:  

        2.  Reading  

This is what my literature teacher was talking about!! Make sure to read read read!! My goal is to read 8 novels this summer! ( create a realistic goal for yourself as well! And remember! Make a short term goal because surpassing this small goal feels better than not surpassing a larger goal )

For elementary – high school students, use this website to find books!  You can filter the results to find something that suits you!  

Post ideas:  

         3.  Bullet Journal  

I feel like this is the most obvious one aha, but share your bujo!! With summer now here, you can have that extra 30 minutes to make your bujo look so extra. (actually me all the time aha) but srsly, here are some ideas for your bujo instead of the regular spreads because there is a 99.9% chance that you will end up posting bujo pics anyway!

For Instagram and tumblr, you can just post these as pictures, and add a nice filter, but with youtube, you can create bujo inspo ideas or the regular “monthly bujo spread”  

        4.  Food  

Okay, sooooo food is life guys. Share some healthy but yummy foods that will get people who see your posts be super super motivated to eat healthy.  

Check out some fun quick recipes here from my fave, that will motivate you to cook! (take advantage of the time you have now!) Make sure to make your pictures/content look nice!  

Post Ideas:  

        5. Queue  

It’s understandable that the stuff I mentioned might be almost impossible for some people because you either have sports, music lessons, etc. So posting original content might be difficult. If you don’t already know about this, meet your best friend queue !!  

Take 5 minutes out of your day, follow blogs that are going to be active in the summer (maybe even ask?) and queue their posts. In your tumblr setting, you can set up how many posts you want to post from your queue every day, and the time. Since I’m posting original content and stuff every week, I limit my queue for 2 posts every day. During the summer, I’m increasing it to 5 posts every day.  

This will help keep your account pretty active, and you can occasionally post your original content! This is totally a solution if you are limited in time  

Things to keep in mind:

I hope everyone who read this got something from this and gave you some good ideas on what to post during summer because I see a lot of people just having no idea, so I hope I helped!  

Also, if you do any of these ideas or you post videos of reviews or book reports, or make character bujo spreads please please please let me know!! I would love to see inspo on stuff like that, and it would really help me!  

Ps: If you want to follow an active account for the summer, I’m all open!  

Make sure summer vacation isn’t a barrier from you to keep on motivation others on your account!  

-graphics creds here

school starts for me in a little over a week so i thought i’d make a quick back to school masterpost! this is a compilation of tips that i found helpful from youtube study channels, as well as things that i’ve personally done to make school easier. 

ok that was a lot crammed into one post, but i have one more important point: be excited for school!!! it may be stressful at times (most of the time) but school is a place where we learn things and better ourselves and open our minds to new perspectives! i am personally so psyched for 10th grade and i think having that attitude will make back to school a lot easier :)

i hope some of these tips help you, and as usual feel free to drop me an ask about anything! i’ll be writing more of these “quick tip”-type masterposts for back to school because they’re a looot less time consuming for me to make (being honest here). let me know what you think of this format! and if you have any requests for masterpost topics i’m always open to those. 

Keeping a journal or planner, or both, is a great habit for organizing, stress management and creativity. Also its fun getting to actually fill all those notebooks you’ve been collecting and hoarding isn’t it? I put together this masterpost to get you started planning and journaling and for improving and learning new things!

Remember there is no ‘right’ way to use a journal or planner and if you fall out of the habit you can always pick it up again whenever you want! 

Journaling and Planner Resources for 2015

Getting Started

Calendar Printables/Make Your Own Planner

Productivity and Journaling Systems

Goal-Setting

Creative Journaling and Prompts for Journal Writing

Other kinds of Journals

More Printables

Tips for Beautiful Pages

Customize your notebook or planner!

Blogs for Inspiration

paper vs computer notes!

heyoo! so i see a lot of people on studyblr saying “written notes are better” and “it’s scientifically proven that you remember more when you write” and while those claims are true in most situations, life has way too many variables to be that black and white. personally from my experience, i use both and i can tell you that i remember things just fine and i use computer notes a majority of the time. but writing does help me remember some things so let’s look more closely at the specs for both:

A big bang of “how to” stuff

There I was again tonight forcing laughter faking smiles so I made up this long ass post for y'all!

So you a potato. Me a potato. World conquered by we potatoes. But potato need survival tips. So your bro potato help you out. Yay potato. Go go potato.

Study related stuff :

1. Get good grades

2. Be more productive

3. Manage your time

4. Avoid procrastinating

Appearance related stuff :

1. Look more put together

2. Feel beautiful

Mind related stuff :

1. Deal with burnout/slump

2. Study with slumps/mental illness

3. Strengthen self control

4. Deal with stress

Life related stuff :

1. Drink more water

2. Be more healthy

3. Be more happy

4. Find your true calling /figuring tf out what you wanna do with your life

And that’s about it for now folks, hope this helps. See y'all laterz~

Etudaire ♥

Thank you!!

it’s interesting learning which homophobic ideas are confusing and unfamiliar to the next generation. for example, every once in a while i’ll see a post going around expressing tittering surprise at someone’s claim that gay men have hundreds of sexual partners in their lifetimes. while these posts often have a snappy comeback attached, they send a shiver down my spine because i remember when those claims were common, when you’d see them on the news or read them in your study bible. and they were deployed with a specific purpose — to convince you not just that gay men were disgusting and pathological, but that they deserved to die from AIDS. i saw another post laughing at the outlandish idea that gay men eroticize and worship death, but that too was a standard line, part and parcel of this propaganda with the goal of dehumanizing gay men as they died by the thousands with little intervention from mainstream society.

which is not to say that not knowing this is your fault, or that i don’t understand. i’ll never forget sitting in a classroom with my high school gsa, all five of us, watching a documentary on depictions of gay and bi people in media (off the straight and narrow [pdf transcript] — a worthwhile watch if your school library has it) when the narrator mentioned “the stereotype of the gay psycho killer.” we burst into giggles — how ridiculous! — then turned to our gay faculty advisors and saw their pale, pained faces as they told us “no, really. that was real” and we realized that what we’d been laughing at was the stuff of their lives.

it’s moving and inspiring to see a new generation of kids growing up without encountering these ideas. it’s a good thing. but at the same time, we have to pass on the knowledge of this pain, so we’re not caught unawares when those who hate us come back with the oldest tricks in the book.

Even in the 90’s I met people who believed, with the utmost sincerity and a sense of sheer terror, that gay people were agents of Satan who chose to become gay so they could deliberately spread STD’s, deliberately die of AIDs as part of their “fetish” and deliberately offend god into accelerating the end of the world. This does sound like absurd cartoonish nonsense to most people just a little younger than me but I heard it and worse growing up. Millions of people completely, totally believed that kind of thing with the most dire certainty. Today’s lizardman hollow earth anti-vaccine theories actually kind of pale in comparison.

That is what LGBT people were up against not long ago and the remnants of that fantastical-sounding hysteria and fanaticism are not only still here but regaining power again in the U.S. pretty rapidly.

…and I don’t think people should forget that for all I just described and all OP just described, the hatred for trans people was several times worse. Their very existence was treated as UNSPEAKABLE by even the Satanic HIV Apocalypse theorists. This is why it’s so bizarre and ridiculous to see people today whining about “PC culture” like that’s the problem, like people who were condemned as loathsome hellspawn within most of their own lifetimes somehow have it “too good” practically overnight.

do you have any idea what the AIDS funerals were like back then

I will harp on this until the day I die. It’s not information that people have nowadays both because it’s not really needed - thank GOD - and it’s been erased - not so cool.

pastors would take payment to perform the ceremony and then not show up. crematoriums would sometimes refuse to handle the bodies; funeral homes were no better, and my dad once walked in on a mortician dumping rubbing alcohol all over himself after he’d BEEN IN THE SAME ROOM as the body of one of my father’s dead friends. the funerals were held in people’s basements, the very very few churches at funeral homes willing, meeting halls, and in the homes of lesbians, who were some of the most steadfast allies during that time period. The few straight allies pitched in where they could – like that one woman who buried a lot of them herself, in her own cemetery, because their families wouldn’t come claim the bodies – but it was awful.

my dad was a reformed catholic but he knew the words and twice he had to perform the funerals to lay these people to rest because he was the most qualified. I stood next to him as he tried not to cry over his dead friends and to let them rest in peace. I watched my mother, at the back of wherever she was, quietly sobbing, and her lesbian friends who had ACTUALLY watched the person in question die, still comforting her. 

I got told by other adults that my entire family was going to hell because we deigned to care for queer people (and my dad especially, as a nurse, deigned to “waste” his knowledge and time and energy on easing suffering).

I was six years old. Freddie Mercury hadn’t even died yet.

recently a friend and I formed a queer social group/activism group and some older gay men came. And they cried, because, and I quote

“This is how it started, back then. we just got together, ten or twelve of us, and decided we were going to do something about it. And we made it out, despite everything, despite AIDS, despite the stigma. And you will too.”

And I had to respond, because I was little, but I was THERE for that, and I grabbed his hands and told him that his history is our history and we need to learn it.

we need to remember. the dead, the living, and their stories.

if you know an older queer person, inquire if they’d be interested in writing down their memoirs. If they’re not writers but want to tell the story, hit me up – I am, and I am absolutely willing to do a living memory.

they’re the only history books we have.

THEY ARE THE ONLY HISTORY BOOKS WE HAVE! It’s so important to record them at last.

Because lgbt+ history hasn’t been recorded, nor told forward by others. What we learn we learn from morgues, criminal records etc. Only ‘unlucky’ persons have been recorded in any ways and most of happy couples, lives and tales have been lost to history as they were not spoken about. 

okay listen, i get what you guys are saying about the importance of listening to older lgbt people, obviously, that’s very right!

but you guys gotta know… they are NOT “the only history books we have.” because… we have actual history books. just because they are rarely taught in schools does not mean they don’t exist!

i’ve been keeping a list of all the lgbt books i want to read or reread, which are mostly history, and it is, at this moment, 239 books long. and that’s excluding quite a few that i was less interested in.

obviously, it can’t cover everything; obviously, it is skewed toward white american experiences; obviously, we should always be supplementing it by talking to older people in our community as much as we can. but it does us no favors whatsoever to pretend that all the knowledge in these books is lost to history, existing only in individuals’ minds, when actually so many people have taken great pains to write it down and make it available for us to explore!

so yes, meet older people and talk to them and take them seriously! but also please, i beg of you, read a book.

p.s. a note because i regret not making this clear enough in my original post: there is absolutely nothing wrong with gay men having many consenting sexual partners! homophobes’ statistics are obviously falsified for bigoted purposes, but that doesn’t mean those gay men who do have large numbers of partners are any less deserving of dignity and life, and they too deserve our defense.

I agree with all the above, but also if you are someone who wants to record history or hear more oral histories there are a few oral history archives dedicated to doing this already! It’s possible to engage in that history right now:

How I got better grades significantly because I transformed a complete 300 pages textbook in 13 pages (visual learner)

On the following picture, you’ve got a complete textbook before your eyes. On 13 pages. Yes.

The thing that saved me everytime was this: “Know the structure of the textbook and know the textbook”. It can also be about lessons, but I know a lot of people work with textbooks.

(I did it from 5:30am to 19pm with only 2 hours of sleep because my second finals are in one week, so please don’t be mad about my handwriting)

“A new method? I already have one.” I know we all have our methods. If you like yours and have the results your want, that’s good, keep doing it! But if you’re searching for a new one or like to improve your learning skills, and if you’re a visual learner, I suggest you take a look at mine!

<font color="#0B0B61"> The structure of my post: </font>

Open the following line to see my post.

Keep reading

{november 16, 2017} | throwback photos from last week to my favorite cafe and the MET ✨ (and thanks for 1k! 💗)

how to: study groups

Study groups can be a wonderful or diastruous experience, but regardless, we all at least think about them from time to time. This post mainly focuses on studying with classmates by your own volition (not under the pressure of study projects)

→ okay SO i see loADS of posts with self-care tips, health tips, dealing with mental illness as a student, little reminders, etc. and to make it easier (hopefully) for some people, i wanna combine eveRYTHING that i’ve found in one place!!! so here we go this took so long lmao but it was worth it also i like the header i’m loving using photoshop also this is ridiculously long but i hope that’s okay

[+] my masterposts | my posts | my self-care tag

little reminders

mental health + being a student

find balance!!!

self-care galore

my masterposts

and, as always, my ask box + messages are open 24/7!! much love, xx grace

@phctcsynthesis thanks for the mention, and this is such a helpful masterpost!!!

i am returning to uni soon and i desperately need to focus on stress management lmao i’m a wreck. this was also highly requested so i thought i’d make it my first one so that it could be useful for those students who are going back to school soon!! this took me way too long rip

tips:

what is anxiety? what is stress? how do i deal with them?

school + stress + time management

exams + stress

using apps to help with organization

self-care 

i hope this helps at least one person. i struggle with anxiety, so if anyone ever needs to talk, my asks are always open!!