Category Archives: Exams

The 4 Steps of Successful Studying

I’m a little late to the advice-giving bandwagon, but here… you… go!

Prioritize: What’s your most important class? Which exam comes first? What are you best at, and what are you worst at? What exam can you cram for? Unfortunately, the answer to the last question is almost always a resounding NONE.

Make a plan: What do you need to do to study for your exams? Do you need to make cue cards, go over lecture notes, or do textbook problems? How much of your precious studying time will each method take? Each exam has a different format, so tailor your studying to match it!

The Study Plan of a Kinesiology Student

As you can see, I have made a comprehensive list of what I have to study for and how I’m going to do it. You can also see that I have not cleaned my desk. Bad Courtney.

Prepare: Find and use all the resources you can! Go to Vista or Connect and look for practice questions, or dig through all those emails to find those darn handouts you’d forgotten about. Don’t forget to take advantage of office hours, your prof’s email, and all your classmates too 😉

Do it! For a distraction-free environment, clear your desk and your computer desktop. Set up Songza to play lyric-free music. And honestly? I wouldn’t worry about making breaks for yourself, if you’re a procrastinator. Once you’re in the flow of studying, it doesn’t really make sense to stop and give yourself a chance to procrastinate more. When you find yourself getting tired of studying, then it’s time to take a break!

Best of luck with your exams!

I’m back! But only sort of.

So I still have a ton of school work left to do, but I missed blogging too much to stop <3

Surprisingly, I’m not feeling the stress of final exams yet.  Maybe it’s because mine don’t start until December 12th? Which is relatively late… My final final exam is late too; it’s on the 19th.  Of course I would have exams up until the very end.

I’m really looking forward to the end of the week! Once we’re done class, I’m going to do two things:

  1. Sleep through more than two circadian rhythms.
  2. Rub it in the face of my younger sister, who has school until the 21st.

Anyways, got to go back to bullshitting writing beautifully crafted pieces full of excessive wordiness, needless verbiage, inordinate jargon, redundant loquacity, and general beating-around-the-bush. Will write soon, I promise!

For that durn Chemistry exam

Hello, world!

I haven’t been posting as often as I had before because of the huge piles of work.  Humongous piles.  I’m drowning, guys. I’ve been studying for the upcoming Chem 121 midterm.  I’m finding the material pretty tough, but I’m determined to pass this exam with an acceptable grade.

Anyways, I’ve been taking lots of breaks (probably more breaks than necessary). Now my procrastinating has become more productive, and even chemistry related! Here are two chemistry videos I’d like to share with you (oi, don’t give me that look). You know you like it!

My chemistry prof’s favourite:

My personal favourite:

Ways to procrastinate: Do other homework!

Actually.

I should be studying neurophysiology and muscle physiology right now… but nope! Instead, I’m taking the time to do my dance observations assignment.

Which is also due tomorrow.

No big deal.

And when I want to take a real break, I go onto Skype and talk to my best friend and then I start listening to this:

I will be okay.  I can do this!

Dinners for Kinners!

Here in UBC KIN, we’re like a ginormous extended family!  It’s one of the perks of being a small school within the university.  Everyone’s pretty friendly, and it’s easy to get close with each other because we pretty much all go to the same classes at the same times.

Anyways, the Kinesiology Undergraduate Society (KUS) thrives on the enthusiasm of KIN students and puts on a lot of different social events throughout the year. Regrettably, a couple of them (such as the annual Halloween Boat Cruise) require you to be 19+ in order to go. Dinners for Kinners, however, is all ages! D4K is (in the words of the coordinators) “one of the marquee traditions for UBC kinesiology students“.  Everyone in the faculty is invited to go out to eat at a restaurant together, and have a good time! Can any other faculty boast that amount of inclusion?

This past Thursday was Round 1 of D4K! We went out to The Eatery, which is a Japanese food restaurant with some really funky sushi combos. I had a Green Hornet Roll (yep, like the superhero) and ohmygod it was delicious!  Definitely one of best sushi rolls I’ve ever had.

Huffah, my table group! They are cool people.

Even better than the food, though, was that I got to hang out with new friends—without the pressure of exams hanging over us.  The overall mood was great, despite the drizzly weather!  About 80-ish people went, and we took up practically the whole restaurant. There were a couple of games played, and prizes given out.  The combination of post-exam relief, sanctuary from bad weather, and great noshes made for some good times!  🙂

It was a great way to end what was a horrible week for me. I can’t wait for the next one!

PS. Anyone have any suggestions on where we could go? 🙂