I’m Not Asian Myself But I Saw A Lot Of Comments Like This On The Shang Chi Trailer And Wanted To Make

29.09.20 / i finally got to rearranging the photos and artwork on my wall. i’m the type of person who thrives when my surroundings are refreshed and organized so i’m feeling extra productive now that i have a “new” desk situation. i’m editing a first draft at the moment while listening to older albums i haven’t listened to in a while. i hope you’re having a lovely tuesday ♡

what to do when everything’s a mess

Wash your hair. Don’t worry about all those articles online about the best haircare products of 2019 and whatnot, get in, wash it like you usually do, get out. Leave it to air dry, it’s less work for you.

Brush your teeth. Even if you brushed them this morning and are probably going to brush it tonight, do it anyway. Especially if it’s exam time, all that tea or coffee you’re most likely downing (props to you if you only study with water) probably makes them feel kind of gross.

I know most of these lists tell you to run a bath, but let’s face it, for those of you who even have a bath in the first place, the thought of filling that tub and sitting there in complete silence for a couple hours seems like a trek. And ironically exhausting. So instead, just brush your hair, take a nap (set a nice soothing alarm) and once you’ve gotten out of bed, wash your face or at least splash cold water on your face.

CLEAN clean clean clean CLEAN. Easier said than done, but at least start by clearing one messy component of your area; it could be your floor, your desk or your bed. You don’t need to clean and re-organise your entire room marie condo-style for you to actually have a reason to take the time to clean in the first place. A little goes a long way, and you don’t ALWAYS need to do the hard yards ya know.

I would say read a book, but sometimes your brain is melting or buzzing so it can’t really focus on anything lengthy. So instead, find someone reciting a poem online, and just listen to it. I recommend Jeremy Irons and his voicing of tons of T.S Eliot poetry, or Allen Ginsberg reciting his own poetry (Howl is a classic).

If you’re one of those people who drowns their sorrows by listening to music, don’t listen to music!! Don’t reinforce your pain!! So to that I say, listen to a podcast. If the classic podcast genre of true crime is a little too stressful and you’ve already cried twice today, listen to interviews with actors, screenwriters and directors. It can be really refreshing to listen to people you already enjoy the content of talk about their work. I recommend Awards Chatter and Happy Sad Confused.

Stop staring at screens! Just physically sit outside for a bit, you don’t need to go for a jog or do a general workout, just…sit. People-watch, try and memorise the exact scene in front of you, from the mis-en-scene to all the colours and sounds and the way the sunlight feels on your eyelashes. Write it down if you want to, you could even denote a single notebook to your little outdoor descriptions. Or just write on a napkin. To each their own.

Have you eaten today? And I mean something hearty, something that isn’t primarily made out of air and salt. Something that falls under the umbrella of snack does not count; meal is more like it. If not, eat. Preparing food might feel exhausting, but so’s going a relatively long amount of time without something nutritionally substantial.

If you’re feeling emotionally heavily, get out a notebook or even just a scrap of paper, a pen and cry until your eyes are as blurry as can be. With tears down your cheeks, scribble out how you’re feeling. Don’t bother with how neat or messy it is, whether the sentences even stay on the lines, it’s not about being aesthetic. In fact, it’s about being as messy as possible. Let all of it out, and let is act as a physical manifestation of what’s going on in your head. Don’t fight it or deny it, relieve yourself by both constructing and understanding yourself. 

You can't fly unless you let yourself fall.

Düşmene izin vermedikçe uçamazsın.

a list of my favorite study tips (and when to use them)

summer:

invest in a book of short stories for each language you’re studying, and keep the book(s) on your bedside table. take advantage of the free time while out of school to get in the habit of reading through the short stories whenever you can. just a few minutes of reading the short stories every day will immensely improve your foreign language skills and keep you from forgetting the vocab & grammar over summer break

acquire a list of the books you’ll be reading for school in the fall and start reading them. to get the list of books, try asking someone who’s already taken the class, your future teachers, or a school counselor. reading the books ahead of time will not only put you ahead of the rest of your class by giving you time to work through the material in advance; it will also significantly lessen your workload during the school year.

this applies to the school year as well, but especially when you’re reading books in advance, keep a journal and pen at hand every time you read. write down the major plot points of the section you’re reading, what you like/agree with, what you dislike/disagree with, and one or two quotes that summarize the main themes of the section (make sure you include page numbers!!!!). when school starts & you’re assigned an essay on that book, you’ll already have the main points of the book laid out, and lots of great quotes—with page references!—to use in your essay.

two weeks before school starts:

take a look at your syllabus and get started on your first assignments. if you start now, you can stay at least one week ahead on all of your assignments throughout the year. this is a HUGE lifesaver when something comes up unexpectedly during the school year—like getting sick or having to go out of town for a few days at the last minute—and you don’t have time to get homework done, because if you’ve done it in advance then you won’t have to worry about falling behind.

get a planner app for your phone. i like egenda, but you can use any app where you input homework assignments in advance and it alerts you at various intervals of time before they’re due. it’s impossible to get a good grade on an assignment if you forget to turn it in on time, so just alleviate that issue altogether.

throughout the school year:

take notes. have a notebook open in every class, and write down all important names, dates, quotes, formulas, and theorems. write the current date at the top of each page, and have a separate notebook for each subject. if a teacher repeats something more than once in a class, underline it, because those are the things that appear on midterms and finals.

help yourself memorize things by writing essays about them. even if you’re not assigned an essay about a topic, try to write/type two or three paragraphs every week to summarize what you’re learning in a class. writing things in your own words is one of the best ways to remember them, and it will also help you to improve your writing skills. additionally, this should be applied to all subjects, not just literature or history (because even if you’re studying a STEM field and writing isn’t a huge part of the curriculum, you should still have the ability to write about STEM concepts in a way that is understandable and engaging).

befriend the smartest person in the class. figure out who always has the right answers and make yourself their ally. be a good friend to them, and then when you’re struggling with a concept, they will either explain it to you or—if they don’t know what the explanation is yet—they’ll help you search for it.

take advantage of indexes. almost all books have one, and they can be lifesavers if you don’t know the answer to a question. especially in history class, when there are a bunch of names that are super difficult to memorize. i know this is a pretty basic tip (if you can even call it a tip), but i’ve had a lot of friends completely forget about indexes, so this is just a brief reminder. :)

participate in class. this might sound super obvious, but you cannot retain information without discussing it! if you’re like me and participating in class sucks because of social anxiety, try to force yourself out of your comfort zone & remember that you are your own worst critic, but it’s also okay just to discuss things with a close friend or family member instead. the important thing is that you’re repeating what you’ve learned out loud and practicing explaining it to someone else, which will really help you to grasp the concepts.

three weeks before midterms/finals:

now is when all of your notes come in handy. go back through the notes for each class and study them, particularly the parts you’ve underlined. you shouldn’t try to memorize the pages, but you should study them enough that—by finals week—you could summarize the contents if someone asked you pointed questions about them. this is also when it becomes extra helpful to be friends with the smartest person in the class, because they will be an excellent study buddy. just make sure that you reciprocate if you ask them to help you study.

fill in any gaps in your notes by talking to your teachers and attending all of the office hours that you can. many teachers will give you a study guide if you ask for one, and you can literally go through and fill it in with info from your notes. remember, most of your teachers really do want you to do well, and they’ll try their best to help you achieve the best scores possible.

if any of your quizzes are open book, ask your teacher if you can put completely blank sticky notes on pages. bookmark the pages that have important events, quotes, facts, etc., and then if you forget something on a test you can refer to the book & it will be much easier to find the information. personally, the only open book finals i’ve had are the kind where you just write three 1000 word essays in 3 hours, but we are required to have at least 5 quotes in each essay, so if that’s the case for any of you guys then this tip is super helpful for bookmarking those quotes as well.

while taking a final/midterm:

read through the whole test first. figure out how long it is, how much time you have, and how many points each question is worth. if you’re worried about running out of time, start by doing the problems that are worth more points, and then out of whatever’s left do the ones that look easiest first. this will guarantee that you make the best use of your time & get the highest grade possible

and that’s all i can think of right now! hope this can help at least a few people :)

9/4/21 | 96/103 Days of Productivity

This is going to be a busy month.

*starts song over because I wasn’t enjoying it hard enough*

As I’m soon to take my first assessment of the year, I thought now would be a good time to come to you with a post on a method I find useful for fully understanding concepts and explaining them on exams. It can be very frustrating when you know a fact, but you lose marks because you don’t fully cover all the details of a the concept. This method, I hope, can help with that.

I call this method the ‘what? why? how?’ method and it is pretty much what it sounds like! Essentially, to ensure you’re covering all the needed details, you format your responses to first explain what occurs in a situation, then why this occurs, and finally how it happens. It is especially useful when applied to processes in sciences such as biology and psychology (descriptive sciences). 

To help you understand better, here’s a scaffolded example of how you might formulate an exam response using this method:

Question: Explain the role of the spinal reflex.

Answer plan: What - unconscious response. Why - to react to stimuli quickly, which can minimise harm. How - by stimuli not travelling as far.

Final answer: The spinal reflex is an unconscious response which allows a faster reaction to stimuli compared to reactions controlled by the brain. This is useful as it can minimise time exposed to harmful stimulus. The spinal reflex achieves this faster reaction time by allowing the stimulus to travel less far - to the spinal cord and back rather than to the brain and back - minimising the time it takes before a motor signal can be sent back to initiate a response.

I hope this strategy is useful to some of you to maximise the marks you receive on exams (I know I’ll definitely be using it today!). It could also be used as a way to structure your notes when learning concepts, as it can be a good way to ensure you actually understand a concept, rather than just remember a definition. If you like, I’d love if you tagged me (#heystormstudy) in pics of notes which you’ve tried this out in!

Wish me luck for my test today! Emma :)

you’ve gotten a bad grade. the assignment you turned in was not as good as you expected. the exam just went awful. we all know the feeling when this happens. but i’m here to help you!! don’t stress my friend everything will be okay

first of all: it’s okay!!!!!! everybody fails sometimes! i know it feels awful because you worked your ass off and now this happens. what’s important is that you don’t give up. academic success is not everything, so don’t beat yourself up too much. (also like there’s so much wrong with this system, but that’s a topic for another time)

- ̗̀ right after  ̖́-

give yourself some time to be sad, angry, frustrated, etc. talk to someone or journal your thoughts down and just get everything out. (it would be best to talk someone who isn’t in the same situation, so instead of maybe making your classmate uncomfortable, talk to somebody who will listen and give emotional support)

nobody excepts you to go right back to studying. in fact it would be better to get your mind off of things and distract yourself a bit. do something you love and relax a little.

but! don’t forget to pick yourself up again and take the next step:

- ̗̀ mindset  ̖́-

put your “failing“ into perspective. how bad is it really? is it the end of the world (no it isn’t). do you only think it’s a bad grade because you keep comparing yourself to your classmates?

don’t!!!!! compare!!!! yourself to others!!! focus on yourself. you don’t know all the other things your classmates may struggle with and your academic performance does not determine your self-worth. so what you didn’t do that good? there are so many other great things about you, believe me mwah

- ̗̀ identify the cause  ̖́-

what was the cause you didn’t do as well you expected?

did you study the wrong things? or did you study them the wrong way? were the concepts just way to complicated and you didn’t understand them?

did you panic while taking the exam?

didn’t pay attention in class?

did you not start early enough?

is your teacher just awful™?

whatever the reason try to identify it and find a solution. try to apply it the next time. but remember that there is not always a cause, sometimes things are just like they are. if that seems to be the case, just remember that it’s probably not your fault and try to continue doing your best.

- ̗̀ solutions  ̖́-

ha you thought you have to figure out the solution all by yourself. but i’m here to (hopefully) help you.

don’t be afraid to talk to your teacher/prof! most of the time they want to see you succeed, so maybe there is something you could do to improve the grade or you could try to tackle the issue you have/had.

find a study method that suits you and make it a routine. there’re so many helpful posts on here (just search up “study tips”) so there is to 100% something that works for you.

study schedule? some people do better with one, some don’t. with one, you can exactly plan out when and what to study for the upcoming tests, so you’ll be able to improve your grade. also, try to plan in when you’re going to revise hard topics again or the ones you didn’t understand if there were any.

do your homework and assignments! they help so much with improving your grade and the teacher/prof sees that you’re willing to make an effort.

join a study group or visit a tutor. they are a great way to find help and make you remember that you’re not alone and that there’s a solution to everything.

be a pro at exam taking. i’ll maybe do a separate post on that because there is so much i could say, but the most important thing is: be positive. give yourself a pep talk and don’t stress. you got this.

okay, that’s everything i have to say! i hope i could help u a bit <3 remember: you got this!!