Category: Academic

I am not dead. Nor have I quit Blog Squad. Like Mary said in one of her posts, I hate to use the excuse of life, but it must be thrown out there. However, I have about an hour to breathe right now, so I’m going to try and be useful and give you a list of some of my study habits. Clearly you’re not me, but maybe some of my habits will help you out? Yes? Yes. Oh and I know that midterms are (for the most part) over, but it’s never too early to start mentally preparing oneself for finals.

What Jen Does To Successfully Study For A Test/Midterm/FINAL

1) I have a study shirt. It’s nothing lame like this

but it’s a shirt I wear when I study nonetheless. I’ve found that wearing it reminds me of past study-wins, and it inspires me to continue the trend.

2) Munchies! My personal favorites are toast w/peanut butter, sandwiches, and those little square caramels; anything that can be eaten without really looking at it. I’ve found that noodles are a big NO NO when studying; you have to pay attention otherwise the soup gets everywhere, it requires usage of a dominant hand (well for me at least..), and really you’re just eating sodium. But anyway, I usually keep munchies at hand when studying. I’ve also heard that it’s good to keep your snacks at least 10 feet away from you, that way you have to actually get up and get them (unless you have freakishly long arms, in which case you don’t really need to be in school and can make millions playing basketball or something), which gets the blood flowing and offers a brief respite from studying.

3) I have an epic playlist that I only listen to when studying. If you’re one of those people that needs to study in silence, just skip ahead to number 4. But hello fellow person that requires noise to study! I’ve found that listening to songs with words in them can get distracting; even if you don’t realize it, as you’re working on that super-long equation or scanning a page for a definition, you’ll slip and subconsciously sing right along with Katy Perry as she tells her guy to shut up and put his money where his mouth is. I personally prefer to listen to instrumentals and songs in languages I can’t understand, but maybe you can try listening to “sounds of nature” (haha..haven’t tried that yet..), or just put your music (with words) to a very low volume. As a side note, I dig anything by Schubert. Just sayin.

4) I don’t study on my bed. Ever! It just doesn’t work. I associate beds with chill-time and sleep, so every time I attempt to study there it fails miserably. My desk is a relatively better place to study, but I find that I get the most work done when I’m at the kitchen table. Point is, I wouldn’t recommend studying anywhere you do anything else, because then your mind will start to drift, resulting in an epic fail. Pick a “study place”, keep to it, and don’t let it become a “sleep place”, “Youtube place”, or “Facebook place”.

5) I try to use the same pens/pencils I used while studying, during the actual exam. I swear it’s happened where I’ll erase something in a test, and remember erasing something else with the same pencil, and that’s jogged my memory of the material. Brilliant.

and finally..

6) I sleep. I know it’s painfully easy to fall into the trap of doing marathon-bouts of studying with no sleep and those 5-hour energy drinks, but you really will retain so much more information if you sleep. Also, you’ll be so much happier overall. No one likes a grouch grouch.

Who says grouch grouch? wth.

Kay but anyway, those are my six little tips. I’m sure you’ve heard them elsewhere, but..well now you’ve heard them again. Happy studying!

So I forgot to put a title on a philosophy paper I turned in yesterday.

WHO forgets to title a paper! I’ve spents days thinking of proper titles for papers before! Mind you not full 24-hour days, more like days where it’s always at the back of my head. I mean it’s the second thing the prof sees! So when my TA or prof or whatever is reading this it’s going to be like “Okay on to number 16. Geez I’m hungry..okay I’ll eat right after I grade this one. Jennifer Ayala. *check off little box on a sheet of paper* ….WHAT?” The “….” referring to his general confusion at having such a small space between the heading and the first paragraph, with NOTHING inbetween.

And it’s even more fail because it was like the 4th or 5th copy I printed out. I spent a couple of hours revising and adding to the rough draft, and the whole time I had the first page sitting on top of my desk, staring at me, but apparently I wasn’t staring back. Oh, OH! And later on when I told my friend, she said “Oh yeah that was the first thing I noticed when you showed me..but I thought that was what your professor wanted.” Excuse me while I SLAP YOU.

I’m hoping I don’t get points docked off or anything. I’m praying for just a little “Title?” note where it should be, and that my grader will instead concentrate on my deep philosophical quanderings into the three forms of conventionalism in relation to a medical ethics case.

But now I’m not sure what I should do to prevent this from happening again. I’ve been writing papers for how long and I still fail? I’m hoping that this was just a minor mental slip due to my recently defective immune system (although today I think I’ve been at my best since I got sick! Win!). Just in case though, maybe I’ll stick a post-it to my printer that says “Look at first page of paper. If no title: add title and reprint. If titled: you didn’t fail :)”

I don’t know how this happened exactly, but somehow every single one of my classes are tying into each other this semester. And not in vague “oh this kind of relates to an idea that was brought up in a tangent discussion the other day in my __ class”, I’m talking we’re discussing the same ideas in all of my classes. Let me explain.

I start off my week by going to Intro to World Archaeology, where we’re basically learning about human origins, and why various early human species died out (specifically, perhaps it was due to integration between other human species nearby, or maybe it was an inability to adapt to new environments, social turmoil, etc etc). My second class of the week is philo (Intro to Moral Theory), where we’re discussing (duh) moral theories; are there any ethical truths, are there any universally accepted beliefs or laws, are things “good” or “bad” because society says it or because God says it? etc etc. Next is Intro to Cultural Anthropology; right now we’re reading a book (mentioned this before) about culture clashes, and learning about different cases where Western influence isn’t necessarily a good thing in some indigenous societies. Fourth I have English (British Literature to the 17th century…I think), where we keep running into the theme of how women were treated and represented in literature in the ‘olden’ days, and we discuss how (or if) this relates to modern days. Lastly I have history (Contemporary Global Issues in Historical Perspective), where we’re talking about climate change and how it’s affecting smaller societies (such as the Inuit), specifically how our actions contribute to the demise of their home lands, while they’re contributing practically nothing to the global climate change.

Do you see how these are all connecting? BAHAHAHHAAA I feel like I’m taking one giant class talking about human relations, truth, and the consequences of our actions. Hence I’m calling this my Semester of the Mind, which I guess every semester is supposed to be, but whatever.

Anywhoodles. I whole heartedly recommend that you take my exact semester right now (except maybe you could drop archeology, it relates the least). So yeah, get on planning this into your timetables for next year. 🙂