Tag: university
YouTube Video (2)
High School Semester In Review
It’s been a while, but I’m back! I’ve been busying myself with school. Specifically, my finals and final tasks (summatives).
I’ve officially finished my first semester of grade 11. My courses were physics, data management, French, and accounting. I live in Canada, so my school is semestered. One semester I have four courses everyday and four different courses the next semester. At first, I thought I may be overwhelmed with the heavy focus on math-oriented subjects, but it was manageable.
I’ll go through each of my courses and explain the good and bad parts of each one.
Physics was pretty rough, not going to lie. Some units were fairly easy, and some were challenging. It was mostly lab experiments and tests. We had one project where we had to fashion an instrument to play “Mary Had a Little Lamb”. That was the only fun part of the class. My performance in the class overall was SO much better than I expected, but still not as good as I wanted it to be before I started the semester: 91%. I definitely will not be taking physics again because I know this is not for me. It’s far too logical.
Data management wasn’t the best either. The topics covered were sometimes confusing, like permutations. I had to do a lot of problem-solving questions involving them, and boy are they weird but fun at the same time. Many of the topics were straight-forward too, like analyzing graphs and finding the relationship between two variables. Unfortunately, my bad tests outweighed the good ones. Before my exam, I had a 91%. The exam was brutal and I just barely scraped up a 79%. My mark dropped one percent as a result, so I finished with a 90%. Again, it exceeded my expectations (as they’d been drastically lowered as I made my way through the course).
I love French. This year, it was different. No more memorizing and regurgitating. “Plug and chug”, that’s what my physics teacher calls it. Now, I had to analyze books and movies but in French. It was new, but I liked it. I was actually using my brain for once. This all came at a cost of course. My mark dropped this year to a 90% from a 94%. But I will definitely take French again for Grade 12, because if I’ve taken it for seven years so far, I think I can do one last hurrah.
Accounting turned out to be barely math-related at all, mostly just understanding. Once you get the primary concepts, you can pretty much teach yourself the rest of the course. I put in minimal effort, as did many of my classmates, and they too were successful. I passed this course with flying colours, a 97% to be exact. I will be taking accounting again next year because I now know it’s something I’m good at.
This semester, I have anthro/psych/socio, law, international business, and English. A very heavy focus on humanities this semester, so we’ll see how this goes. I’ll be sure to keep you updated.
Thank you for reading 🙂
My Study Essentials
I thought it would be fitting to write a post about my study essentials while I’m actually studying for my midterm exams! My last one is tomorrow, and I’m spending today studying for it! The following list of my study essentials is in no particular order!
Laptop
My laptop is totally essential for when I study. Although it can be quite a distraction, I use it for Spotify and to review lecture slides from my classes. Sometimes I have to just switch it off and put it to the side when I start to procrastinate.
Notes
Most important material for studying are my notes! I take notes (as pictured) based off the lectures and the slides that my teacher uploads. I try to keep my notes as organized and straight-forward as possible because doing so makes it so much easier when it comes time to review and get ready for exams.
Pens
I make short pointers / big concept notes using my 0.38mm Muji pens. I try to keep as many coloured pens on hand for when I need to just add a little colour to my boring notes!
Highlighters
Mildliner highlighters are heavenly! I highly recommend buying them, if you haven’t done so yet. I’ve had them for more than a year now, and I use them regularly, and not one of them has lost all its ink yet. They’re absolutely fabulous. I highlight key terms and their definitions in my notes, so I can remember to pay close attention to them (since these terms are almost always on my exams).
Sticky notes
Sticky notes are imperative for when I forget to write something in my notes. I don’t like whiting-out my writing because it creates such a mess, and ruins the aesthetic of the notes, so I just take a sticky note, write down the point I missed from the lecture slides, and stick it right onto my notes. Doing so keeps things clean, colourful and easy on the eyes.
Hope you enjoyed reading this post! What are some things you just can’t live without when studying?
Week in Review (3)
The Sunday Post is a weekly meme by The Caffeinated Book Reviewer in which bloggers are able to share news and happenings in their lives from the past week on their blog.
Well, what a week it has been! I’m currently sitting here studying for my midterms, but clearly I’m distracted. Blogging is so therapeutic and exactly what I need. The feeling of being burnt out from uni is subsiding, so that’s always a good thing.
I had a bunch of essays due this past week and a whole load of studying to get done. I think it’s been quite successful, but I cannot wait to get into holiday mode (only a little over a month to go)!
The gloomy weather quite accurately matched how I felt this week. I love thunderstorms so much! They have such a calming effect on me.
For me, studying while it’s raining outside is the best. I’m so productive, and relaxed at the same time, which makes for a great study session. I’ve got to have some icy water to keep me hydrated and focused as well! What’s your go-to beverage while studying?
I went for a quick outing today to end off the week and I got some mango milk bubble tea! Super delicious and refreshing! It was the first time I got milk bubble tea, I usually just get it without milk, but this one was so much more yummy. How do you like your bubble tea?
Here’s to a new week and much success! How was your week? What are you looking forward to next week? Thanks for stopping by. 💕
University (1)
With the first month of my second year at university coming to an end, I can’t help but feel so sad that I haven’t posted a blog post in quite a bit of time. To be honest, I haven’t really been doing anything fun, other than studying, going to meetings and doing readings for classes. I haven’t even had the chance to read a good book since summer ended. I think I’ll designate my winter break to be the month during which I read as many books and write as many reviews as I can, and I’m already looking forward to it!
For now, I will try to upload a blog post every now and then on any kind of topic that interests me. If you have some ideas of what you’d like to see me write about, please leave a comment below! I’d love some ideas.
How’s your school / work / university / college going? Super busy? Let me know! Thank you for reading.
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How to Stay Organized
In this post I will be talking about the ways in which I try to stay organized in my everyday life. I chose this topic to write about because I ran a poll on my Twitter, and the winning option was a post on how I stay organized (as seen below). Be sure to go and follow it because I will be hosting more polls on which blog posts you’d like to see me post! Now, onto the topic of the day…..
When talking about staying organized, I will focus more on staying organized from an academic perspective, as I am currently a university student. Of course, some of these tips can also apply to your everyday life, if you’re interested in that.
First and foremost, have some sort of planner / calendar / to-do list, or even a combination of all these things. You will be able to keep a running record of what you need to get done for that day or week, and it will give you an overview of your plan of action. In this way, you won’t forget something important that needs to get done. Hold yourself accountable when you can’t complete your to-do list and reflect on the reason(s) as to why you were not able to complete everything on that list.
Keeping a planner is all good, but try your best not to over-plan. I’m guilty of doing this! I am always over-ambitious when I’m writing my to-do list in my agenda, and in the end, when I haven’t done some of the things in my planner, I feel quite annoyed! Recently, I have begun to write two or three realistic things that need to get done in a day, and when I get them done I feel incredibly accomplished.
To be quite honest, staying organized in all that you do will pay dividends when it comes time to review your notes for tests or exams. If you have been diligently attending lectures and taking notes, then you are able to go one step further and organize these notes into designated folders on your computer or into binders. This will ensure all your notes are kept in one location and you do not need to go scrambling last minute to get your study notes together. See the picture below which shows a little overview of how I organize all of my lecture and reading notes.
Finally, I find that having cute stationary (i.e. pens, sticky notes, highlighters, erasers, pencils, etc.) and notebooks keeps me motivated and interested in whatever it is that I’m doing. My favourite store to purchase stationary would have to be Muji! I find Muji to be reasonably priced with top quality items. I did a mini-haul the other day, and my purchases can be seen in the picture below.
I truly hope these tips helped you in some way! All the pictures in this post were taken by yours truly! What is a method that you use to stay organized? Please feel free to comment your tips below, I’d love to hear them 🙂
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Exclusory Style 