100 Days Of Productivity

winter dark academia

- waking up to cold mornings and condensation on your windows

- brewing a cup of hot coffee while reading a book

- wearing cozy sweaters and cardigans to stay warm

- draping your favorite long coat over your shoulders to create a mysterious silhouette

- stepping through heavy, packed snow as you walk to your morning class

- watching the glistening trees, pausing your podcast to admire them in their full glory

- combing your fingers through your hair to remove the falling snowflakes

- sipping hot chocolate in front of a roaring fire, turning the pages in your book leisurely

- stringing fairy lights to brighten up a dark room

- practicing your instrument in the evening, pretending to play at night - but the sun just sets early, but that’s not important

- relishing the long, dark hours to keep focused on your work

- listening to the quiet tones of claire de lune as you scribble through your essay

this is an astronomer's paradise <3

Star trails over La Silla

Credit: ESO/B. Tafreshi/ C.Madsen

Hey remember when US and Russia was all like “We’re the best!!! We’ve won the space race!!!!” But India sent a kick-ass space probe to Mars and the whole mission was fuel efficient, costed less and a roaring success in the first try and then they were like “…..wait no that can’t be true” and still have the audacity to call us “underdeveloped” or only view us as a ‘third world country’? :)

For anyone who needs more info, the probe was called Mangalyaan (which literally means space probe vehicle) or Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) and you can also get more information here and here

The art director JP Boneyard ’s favourite park is Montana’s Glacier national park. “It’s breathtaking, I’m smiling just thinking about it ,” he says. For his screen-print project Fifty-Nine Parks, now collected in a book, he asked modern artists to reinterpret America’s classic national park posters, commissioned by the government in the 1900s.

“I hope they inspire people to visit the parks and connect with nature, but, heck, it’d be awesome if the book inspired folks to pick up a squeegee and start printing too,” he says.

[via]

Eight Ways to Remember Anything by Alex Lickerman M.D.

Reference: Research-based strategies to boost your memory and keep it strong via psychology today

Scans of the inside covers of Strang’s Calculus, which you can legally-download for free here from the MIT website. This is my all-time favorite math or physics textbook. Scanned it so I could cut and paste it into my new sketchbook, wanna try and make a ~cool artistic~ reference poster out of it, ‘cuz I’ve been real into that idea since I took notes about rings for the algebra midterm on a big piece of watercolor paper.

Wouldn't mind having one.

 Preparing for your exams

Check whether you have anything you haven’t studied. If you do, list them out in a paper/document. Put them into three categories: 

1. Things you are not familiar with at all (that you probably haven’t paid attention during class, and haven’t read through them)

2. Things you have already gone through once and have a rough idea what it is about, but not clear with the details

3. Things you are quite familiar with, that you just want to go through them once again to memorise them

It is very important that you have every content of your exam syllabus on the second level around 2-7 days before your exams (depends on the amount of materials that is going to be on the papers)

So you should make a timetable to go through everything if you still have a few days/weeks

Don’t try to spend so much time actually memorising them for now. The key right now is to understand everything, so that they can be in your long-term memory. 

You can leave other small details and examples (that probably requires your short-term memory) till the last week/last three days before exams.

If you have the feeling that you MUST remember things word by word / very clearly, mark them with a red pen or something to make sure they stand out so you can quickly memorise them during the final review.

You can also make index cards during this stage

Which may help you to organise the information and help you to stay focus (without wasting you so much time in making full and comprehensive notes)

And to quiz yourself during your final review

Final Review - 2-3 days before your exams

Scientific research shows that we are all very good at recognising things, but that does not mean that we are good at recalling them (which is exactly what requires during exams)

So, instead of just reading your notes, definitely quiz yourself using flashcards, or just look at the heading of the notes and recall as much information as possible

“no I have to memorise everything first before quizzing myself”??

No, not really. It is known that even pre-quiz can help you to remember the information better! Quickly quizzing yourself once to understand which areas you are least familiar with so you can focus more on those chapters in your final review

It actually does activate your mind too since you will be curious about the information (after knowing you cannot recall them during the quiz) - that can help you to remember better

Memorise in the right way!

Auditory learner: read the information out loud / try to teach others

Visual learner: recall the information by writing them all out in a piece of blank paper (feynman technique)

You can recall the information better when you are in the same kind of environment (scientifically proven)

That is, if you exam hall is silent, it’s better for you to remember things in silence

Even works for your condition too.

If you take energy boosting drink while your are studying, you can probably recall the information better if you drink them before exams (same as NOT drinking energy boosting drink too)

Write a list of very important keywords / information / equations as a final summary

The morning before your exams

Try not to go through anything new, you probably can’t remember/understand them anyway

The best thing to do is probably simply to go through the summary sheet you made before exams. It will help you to recall all the information you have memorised + you won’t panic since it’s everything that you have already studied

Breakfast, remember. You don’t want to be starving during exams.

#10 || Link to my study tips series - I post once a week here!  (strive-for-da-best)