I started using this study method my 2nd month of college, when I realized that it was better for study-life balance and my emotional wellbeing. It makes me feel productive and alert all day, and gives me plenty of free time to pursue hobbies, clubs, and personal interests. It sounds kind of hardcore at first, but it’s seriously wonderful if you give it a try! Here’s the game plan:
After the first few days of the semester, I sit down with all of the syllabi from all of my classes and write down every single assignment for the rest of the semester into my planner. Include exams, readings, lab report due dates, worksheets, essays, etc. Everything.
Every weekend, I set aside however much time I need to knock out every single assignment for the upcoming week that is possible to do in advance. I do my textbook readings, textbook practice problems, my humanities readings, short essays or write-ups to accompany those humanities readings, etc.
Even though I’m doing more work, I generally spend the same amount of time in the library as my friends who only do their work for Monday over the weekend. This is because if you don’t commit to doing a large number of assignments, you tend to spend a lot more time on minor assignments than is truly necessary - do I really need to spend 3 hours on this 1-page essay for my English class if it’s only graded on a 10 point scale? Couldn’t I finish this in 1 hour and then devote more time to the rest of the readings I need to do for that class this week?
I still have enough time to sleep in, have long lunch breaks, go the gym, go to parties in the evening, etc.
You can do this, no matter your workload. I am a pre-med science major taking 20 credits (max course load) a semester, with two labs, and I can get it done. My roommate is an English major with heavy novel reading assignments and she can get it done. (Disclaimer: this mostly applies to undergraduates.)
Research papers and midterm exam studying generally get their own day separate from homework assignments. I like writing essays in 1 or 2 sittings, but if you like to spread it out just break up the essay into manageable pieces and do it over multiple weekends, or do the pieces between classes (see next bullet point).
After blasting through most of my assignments over the weekend, during the week I generally only have to do busy-work that is assigned at the end of classes and continue studying for midterms that week. I easily finish these assignments in the breaks between classes during the day.
With this strategy, I always complete all of my homework well before dinnertime, and often have days when I don’t have any assignments to do. I use this free time for club meetings, hanging out with friends, going to the gym, marathoning Netflix, pursuing hobbies, working a job, whatever.
I also use this extra time to be able to study for exams much more effectively - when you don’t have busywork assignments floating in the back of your mind, it is much easier to focus. You will study more productively and effectively, and with much less stress. Exams are worth way more of your grade than the homework assignments you blast through each weekend, so it’s best to be able to focus exclusively on them Monday - Friday.
The best part about this strategy is that your workload is heavy on Sunday and sometimes Saturday, but you get to relax Monday - Friday. You basically have a 5 day weekend every week, assuming you enjoy going to class.
If anyone also uses this method, I’d love to hear from you or hear your variants/study suggestions! If anyone tries out this method for 1 or 2 weeks and finds that it works for them, I’d love to hear about it! If you try it and hate it with a fiery burning passion and loathe me for even suggesting it, I’d love to hear about it!
I believe in you!<3 No matter what study method you choose to use, just do your best and exceed your own expectations.
Walk through the steps of this fabulous frog magician and axolotl unicorn! Itβs always nice when I can do a painting in one day. This was a pure delight to paint! Hopefully you enjoy!
shoutout to all high school dropouts, students who didn’t get accepted into college, students who used to be on honor roll but became overwhelmed, students who study for hours but still fail tests, or student who don’t study at all due to depression/anxiety, you are all stars and I’m wishing y'all the best luck possible to get back on your feet
Please fucking lie to your employer. Like they don’t need to know your mental health issues or what drugs you do. Ffs
its not lying if its to employers or cops
and look up ur rights on what they can and cannot ask u many places ban asking about ur record and transportation status and things like that resources will also tell u how they reword sketchy questions so ur prepared
Hey. Take it from a former HR person… this goes double right now.
I just spent some time putting in some job applications myself (not for HR, lol) and got about 15 interviews. And idk if it’s because of COVID uncertainty or if places just don’t fucking care anymore because they know people are desperate for work, but the amount of straight up illegal shit my interviewers asked me was appalling.
(That’s not even counting the questions that were technically legal but clearly fishing for information they’re not legally allowed to ask.)
A tame example? Two questions into a phone interview, the guy on the other end of the line asked: “How old are you?”
I said “Excuse me?” - giving him a chance to rethink that.
He didn’t. “How old are you?”
“Sir, you are not allowed to ask me that question.”
“Well, I want to know. I’m asking.”
“And you’re legally not allowed to ask me that. I’m not required to tell you my age.”
At that point, I guess he managed to remember an old HR bulletin or something (I hope to god he wasn’t actually HR himself), and he said, “Well, I need to know if you’re over the age of 18.” (Which is what he should have asked in the first place… or not, since that was in the application that he could have read.)
“Yes. I’m over the age of 18.”
And we moved on. Two questions later, he tried another illegal question. I called him on it again and ended the interview, citing that a workplace with such a clear disregard for the law, especially upon first contact with a potential employee, was not going to be a good fit. (They offered me the job anyway, lol. I didn’t send a thank-you or a response.)
At a different interview, the majority of questions were “fishing” questions - just looking for that info they’re not actually allowed to ask. (This person was also either not really HR or an HR person who was exceptionally bad at their job.)
I could tell they were getting frustrated when I dodged answering the personal stuff, and they actually got extremely upset when I mentioned later in the interview (re: less relevant work experience) I had worked in HR. They were super flustered for the remainder of our time, and I watched them skip over questions on their sheet they had clearly planned on asking. They KNEW they were being sketchy and were counting on me not knowing anything about HR - or my rights - and so they got upset when I did.
These were super tame examples. I’m begging you, if you’re job searching right now, PLEASE know your rights. Please know what interviewers are allowed to ask.
Please don’t volunteer information or elaborate more than you’re required to about personal things. Save your words (and everyone’s time) by elaborating why you’re good for the position/what you can do.
I may create a resource list on this shit later but PLEASE PLEASE KNOW THIS STUFF BEFORE YOU TALK TO AN EMPLOYER. This goes for anywhere you’re interviewing as well as your current employer. This also goes for HR. HR may be the person you go to when shitty stuff happens, but that doesn’t mean they’re your friend (or competent).
They don’t need to know your age (beyond 16+, 18+, or 21+, depending on the job). They don’t need to know your medical history. (For the love of god, do NOT answer the “have you been diagnosed with depression?” question.) They don’t need to know if you have kids or whatever. They don’t need to know a LOT of those things that may appear on an application, including your veteran status, whether you’re on/have been on unemployment, etc. They’re not entitled to know specifics about your transportation (unless you’re using that transportation for the job, like Uber/delivery drivers). Look this up for your state/the job’s state.
Beware questions like “What year did you graduate?” if you’re like me and don’t put dates on your resume (I just put amount of time spent at employers, not dates of employment). They’re fishing for your age. It’s “Oh, you know, 100 years ago,” if you feel comfortable making a joke, or “About [generic number, like 5 or 10] years ago” if not.
Also beware things like the “What do you do in your free time?” question, even if you already work there. This is not a friendly getting-to-know-you question. This is a basis for judgement. Not up to an invisible standard? They’re going to be biased against you for pay raises, promotions, etc. Mention kids/lots of family/social engagements? That’s a tick against you for not being the kind of person who lives to work (yes, it’s gross and stupid). Mention lots of solitary things? Cool, that’s their mental note to ask more from you because you’re “not doing anything anyway.” By all means, be friendly with your coworkers/talk about shared interests if you want, but it is none of your boss’s business, and be aware what could get back to them.
saturday, march 6 • a february recap & march setup
my march bullet journal spread was inspired by my recent feb-cover-up situation 👀 because i’m actually quite liking the additional pOP! of color that i can add into my bujo with the random construction paper i have lying around uwu but ya dis an overview of my spreads that i made in a 10pm-dimly-lit-tired-trance last weekend hAHaha
also im not sure of where to take photos now in my new apt (i miss my old room’s lighting during golden hour ft. the nice flowy curtains), but i’ll figure it out this is small potatoes u know what i’m sayin’
Instead of endless wastelands of mowed grass lawns, consider:
True! Unless you can find an economical way to irrigate, more appropriate lawn alternatives in hotter, more arid places might lean more toΒ prairie meadowsΒ using local grasses and wildflowers:
Or, they might mean doing classic landscaping, but with rocks and xeriscape plants:
Or having a cactus garden:
There are lots of exciting possibilities once you throw the classic turf lawn out the window!
these are all so beautiful and all I can think is βthat stone arc isnβt a stargate and Iβm sad about itβ
πΊπππππ ππ,13 πππβ’ exams are finally over!! and Iβm free(for atleast one month :β)) also a lovely news that this smol corner of the internet hit 1k!!! fjdkdhkshsjhdjd this is my very first milestone on here and Iβm so so happy! π€§π€§ thank you so much for all the loveπ
to celebrate Iβm having a small sleepover on my blog!β¨ come say hi, talk about your day, rant about smth if you feel like, share a cherished memory or your dreams anything!! (it would really means a lot if you participate β‘οΈ)
some people were asking for a actual and i can never pass up an opportunity to procrastinate so here’s just a couple of things i always need to remind myself of…now back to my paper :(
My relationship with content creation and hobbies, in general, got a lot better when I started learning to reframe it as a simple act of human creation, and not a metric of my own self worth.
We’re taught competition, and perfectionism, and shame. If I say “I cook” I must add “(but not well)”. If I say “I run” I must say “(but I am not good at it).” I say “I code (but I mostly know frontend).” I create and express and my first impulse is to guard against embarrassment. Lest I fall so short of marketable competence. Lest I subject myself to the mockery of being caught creating poorly. I wound myself first so others may not.
Even the advice that fights against this says “your only goal should be to be better than yourself yesterday.” But why must I be in competition with her? What happens, after the initial rapid climb in skill, when I plateau? What of injury, and atrophy, and depression, that flake these skills away? Must I return feeling compelled to over-achieve? To wallow in embarrassment until I can surpass my own previous record? To hate my work until the reception, the notes, the engagement outperform an ever rising bar? I do not want to be paralyzed by the mountains I built behind me. Why should I look behind myself when there’s a wide swath of untilled Earth that stretches far out of sight ahead of me? I want to enjoy my work, and my mediocrity, moving forward with all its ebbs and flows.
At my worst, I was nothing. I was not a writer. Because I had forgone writing for all the fear and stress and damage to my self-worth that it wrought. I was not a coder. Because I was only useful for the niches of my job, and didn’t have the heart to create something badly, on my own, for fun, lest it confirm my suspicions of mediocrity. I was not even a runner - despite the extreme and exhaustive amount of time I sunk into it - because I fell short of my previous self, and I could not hold a candle to the actually-skilled runners, and I was forced to speak of this hobby in all those guarded terms - “but i am not good” - because of how much that ate at me.
I was no cook, and no homemaker, and no creator, because when I did those things, (I did them poorly.)
And when all these came together, I wallowed in emptinesses. (I still do, sometimes. It’s hard and complicated). Because emptiness is what was left when I stripped myself of the things and the pursuits whose lack of value could be used to hurt me.
The change for me - the change, I think - came at the time I started to recognize that I do not deserve self-punishment for my mediocrities, for the failings of my current state of being. It was not a revelation all at once. It was a slow and progressive flirting with the idea, found almost by accident on self-help youtube channels of a very particular ilk. It came with the recognition that I had trapped myself, wiling away my time and my energy, in a state of constant apology, and shame, and self-correction for the mediocrities I dare not unleash onto the world. I boxed myself up with the promise “once I am good enough, I will be allowed to come back out”, and that was a lie. I would never have come back out. I was chasing punishing metrics of self-improvement that I did not need, and would never actually catch and maintain, and which would never love me back.
It took a long time to internalize this. It took a long time to get angry on my own behalf. It took a long time to act on it, and write again because fuck you. To run on my own terms, at my own pace, for my own enjoyment because fuck you. To create with my hands again because fuck you. To lean into the happiness of creation that I had not “earned”, because fuck you.
I like creating because it fills an emptiness that used to be there. It’s so simple, and so lovely, that humans are like this. That we want to build with our hands. That we want to assemble and construct. That we derive joy from stacking pieces together, and stringing words together, and assembling colors on a page, and moving, and singing, and baking, and knitting. Humans love to build little worlds around them.
So why must we so actively try to cut people off from it off from it? Why do we condition ourselves to fear its mediocrity? Why does this still our hands? Why do we suffocate it for ourselves, before others can? I don’t have an answer. I can only recognize the monster.
I want to make bad art today. I want to make bad art tomorrow. If I am a worse writer tomorrow, I want that to be fine. If I am never more than a mediocre runner, I want to be at complete peace with that. Because if not, then I might box away my hobbies again, and my loves, and my pursuits. I might go back to empty. I might go back to nothing.
I hate that emptiness I lived through. I hate that nothing. I want to make bad art for the rest of my life.
