Awesome Things To Look Forward To At College And University

If you’re not a morning person, you know the struggle. It’s not just about waking up, it’s about actually getting yourself to do stuff in the morning. While I usually recommend you adapt to your body’s own schedule, as you’ll work much better, school, work or other activities may not allow you to do so. Therefore, here’s a guide on how to get shit done in the morning.

The night before

Prepare whatever study materials you’re going to use that day. Open your notes and make sure you know where you should start (i personally lay a pen on the exact paragraph).

Put a bottle of water and some tea (with caffeine) or coffee on your desk so that you don’t have to go get it next morning. 

If you’re usually cold in the mornings, get yourself a blanket. I promise you mine has made me more productive than all the coffee I’ve ever had.

Write a to-do list for next day. Then distribute those tasks in a schedule (you can either use a printable or just scribble it on some piece of paper). Take into account you’ll need time for breakfast and personal hygiene. 

Other than that, don’t leave anything else on your desk, as it may be distracting.

Make an effort to go to bed at least an hour earlier. It makes a huge difference when you wake up 

Actually waking up

if you struggle to wake up, try the following:

Ask someone to wake you up (a parent, a roommate).

Put your phone accross the room and inside a glass to amplify the sound.

If your phone has an option for voice alarm, use it. Make it something really motivating or, even better, really annoying.

Combine all of the above for foolproof results.

Tips to get stuff done

Chug your liquids! - The very first thing you should do after your feet touch the floor is drink some water and drink something caffeinated (yes, in that order) (caffeine because it will kick in by the time you’re done with breakfast and water because caffeine can be dehydrating + water will also jumpstart your body).

Put on some fluffy socks - okay maybe this is just a personal thing but I’m personally much less likely to go back to bed once i have some socks on.

Smol workout - do something that will send blood to your brain. It can literally be ten jumping jacks.

Breakfast? Not yet - you’ve gotten up, you want food, understandable. BUT remember that book/notebook you put on your table last night? Well, get to work on it for 15-30 minutes. You may be sleepy and not able to comprehend much of what you’re doing, but the important thing is that once you come back from having breakfast, you will already have started, which is the most difficult part.

Avoid anything with a shit-ton of sugar - it will give you a sugar crash in about an hour and all you’ll want to do is go back to bed. (Personal rec is overnight oats with some fruit on top - delicious, fast af and super filling and energizing).

A big breakfast can make you sleepy. Instead, make it a little bit smaller and have some healthy snacks (like hummus) throughout the morning. Look at them as your reward for studying.

Stay off the internet. During breakfast, I find that social media (especially youtube) tend to put me off working afterwards, as they give me something more insteresting to do. Therefore I reccommend you either find something else to do (write your to do list, read a book) or limit your Internet time to 5-10 minutes.

Remember that you control your mindset. If after doing all of this you still don’t feel like studying, it’s perfectly okay to stare at your desk for five minutes and have an argument with yourself about how much you do want to study. Seems stupid but trust me, it works most of the time.

Other masterposts

How To Stop Procrastinating

Random College Tips

Skincare 101

Memorization Tips

Tips For New Studyblrs

Use Studyblr to Become Productive

𝔀𝓲𝓽𝓬𝓱𝔂 𝓪𝓬𝓪𝓭𝓮𝓶𝓲𝓪

Burning candles while you study. 

Watching storms. 

Wearing velvet. 

Singing poems to yourself. 

Writing calligraphy. 

Wandering the graveyard. 

Hidden coffee shops. 

Misty afternoons. 

Listening to the same songs on repeat. 

Herbal tea. 

Late night stargazing. 

Cloak like jackets. 

Feeling the presence of life in old buildings. 

Being quietly strong. 

i often ask myself why i am not sitting in a library in an old gothic building with a spiral staircase and ladders to reach the top shelves in a black turtleneck reading about vampires in the dark with only a single flickering candle dripping wax onto the aged wooden desk i'm sitting at to illuminate my surroundings even though it's the 21st century right now

Dark Academia Moodboard☂️.

language learning tip: an interpreter’s guide to learning vocabulary

If I had a penny for every time someone told me they had trouble memorizing words, I’d probably had hundreds of pennies, which is not very helpful in terms of paying rent but hey, could just possibly lure a tiny dragon under my couch, so.

Anyway, if you’re one of those people and feel like you don’t have a good head for words, here are a few tips.

1) Sounds silly, but stop focusing on how bad you are at this. Vocabulary is most of what you need in any language - if you’re serious about speaking that language, you’ll need to find a learning technique that works for you, and if you keep convincing your brain you just can’t do it, you’ll end up believing it. Not helpful.

2) Learning anything gets much harder with age, and also when you’re stressed. Be patient with yourself, and manage your mental health. if you’re learning for school or for some important test, give yourself time to get there and plan ahead, because vocabulary learning is not the kind of studying you can get done by pulling an all-nighter. And if you’re an older learner, just remember what you’re doing is extremely healthy for your brain, so however long it takes you to achieve some results, you’re doing something really good for yourself: kudos!

3) Whether you’re writing your own material or studying with online apps, keep vocabulary lists short. You’re not going to learn 100 words in one go. It’s much better to work with groups of 20, or even 10, so if you’ve been given a list from a teacher, or are compiling one from your textbook, remember to chop it down in smaller units.

4) The sad thing is: many people learn better by writing things down, especially by hand*. Personally, there are still words I write down fifty times, but thanks to the current magic of technology I mostly go on websites like Memrise or Quizlet and use the ‘write’ function. As a warning: it’s going to be difficult and irritating, especially at first, because obviously these programs won’t forgive you spelling mistakes, but in the long run, I find writing things forges a direct path to your brain that’s not easily undone.

(*This is also why you shouldn’t use a computer when taking notes in class.)

5) Another good way of learning is creating context. You can simply associate a word to another (for instance, noun + adjective, which also helps you memorizing gender if gender is a thing in your target language), or you can write lists centered around specific themes (animals, family, the nuclear winter we’re all headed towards). One thing I find helpful are lists based on clusters of similar words - think stuff like sun, sunrise, sunny, sunglass and so on.

6) Speak as often as you can - not necessarily with people. A conversation with a potted plant can be just as helpful, and placing a new word you’re learning in the context of a sentence is a very good way to give life to it.

7) If you have access to an etymological dictionary, use it. Remembering words is much easier if you understand how a specific word was born, and the logic behind it. 

8) Use post-its or change your computer’s wallpaper to difficult words. Seeing stuff all the time is an excellent way of making it seep into your subconscious. I used to write on my arms, which is Quirky and Interesting, but also not very kind to your skin, so maybe stick to the bathroom mirror.

9) Remember there’s a difference between active and passive knowledge, and that both are normal and good. Active knowledge are those words you’d use in conversation; passive knowledge are words you recognize and understand, but wouldn’t use yourself. Depending on your level, education, linguistic curiosity and reading habits, the number of words in each category and the ratio between them will vary, but your passive knowledge is always going to be much deeper than your active one. Don’t be stressed about that.

10) Finally, some good news: you need fewer words than you think. Many native speakers around the world function on as little as 500 words of active knowledge; 2000 words is considered a good base for reading most texts. If you find it helps you, keep track of how many words you’re learning, but don’t let it obsess you. Human brains are built to fill in blanks with reasonable solutions, and the more familiar you become with grammar and basic words, the more you’ll find that you’re able to guess the meaning of new words simply by their context or what they look like.   

Oh, and since this is tumblr -

11) Don’t learn an excessive number of ‘weird’ or ‘cute’ words, especially if you’re a beginner. Writing lists of elf-related words can be fun, and a way to keep yourself motivated, but ultimately what you need are normal words - stuff you can use in conversation, in a restaurant, and to read the news. I met people who stubbornly fill their notebooks with absurd lists, and it’s all very nice and instagrammable, but what tends to happen is that sooner or later, they feel they’re not making any progress and get discouraged. So please remember - whatever language you’re learning, it’s most probably a human language human people use to speak to each other, which means you’ll need all sort of boring words to understand them and make yourself understood. Embrace the boring, the average and the mundane - they’re never as boring, average and mundane as you fear.

Loneliness

one day, you will be able to say ‘i made it.’ and until then, i really want you to hold on to whatever it is that you dream of.

by Riiiiiii

The Elder and Young tom

the inherent cultism of wealthy new england towns in autumn