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[pocket-sizedpal]

after your distress, it’s time to destress

photo credit: myownprivatecinema

You’ve worked extremely hard and the adrenaline has been shouting GO!GO!GO! and you’ve got finals acne, no sleep, your kidneys are begging you to stop drinking so much caffeine- but it’s over. So how do you let your body know it’s time to come down from that frenzied high? Here are some personal tips for when the end-of-semester stress refuses to bugger off!

For the physical:

make invisible

put away tools

throw out trash

The importance of decluttering is not overrated, friend. I hate to break it to you, but the messier your surroundings are, the more difficult it will be to focus on yourself and on relaxing. Put all pens, pencils, highlighters and white out back in their respective places, all the stuff you had to use throughout the semester. Allow yourself one last look at the papers you’ve undoubtedly amassed and ask yourself for each one: is this useful? If the answer is yes, store it somewhere safe but out of sight, if the answer is no, bin it!

The process of cleaning your surroundings will tire you physically and reward you mentally.

make visible

comforting objects

tidy room

Everyone has different tidiness levels and I’m not here to tell you what cleaner you should use or how often you should clean your laptop’s keyboard. However, having your desk cleared of the things you don’t need, finally putting away all the things you didn’t get to because of finals, and making your bed for the first time in weeks (no judgement) can really help to refresh your mind and body. Add as many plushies and comforters as needed.

For the mental:

make invisible

lists

planners

You did such a good job staying on top of things as best you could, but it’s time to say goodbye and prepare yourself to never see those things again! Your planner might not be completely full, so feel free to store it somewhere you’ll remember for the next time you really need it, but those assignment lists can go into the bin.

make visible

soothing visuals

relaxing scents

Being able to sit in bed and look at something that you like around your bedroom combined with your favorite scents can do wonders for helping you relax. Play some music on low volume, sit back and enjoy.

You know what works for you, or you can figure it out. Now is not the time to grade yourself.

For some post-finals activity ideas, check out this post from Universities in the USA!

You’re done with the terror, allow yourself the beauty.

[pocket-sizedpal]

how to take notes - news flash: it’s different for everyone

photo credit: waystostudy-blog

So you’ve gotten all the highlighters and washi tape anyone could ever dream of, but you still aren’t understanding your lessons and assignments, or it just feels like it’s not paying off. There might be some simple mistakes you’re making that are having these undesirable outcomes, so let’s see if we can fix that!

The Dos and Don’ts of Note-Taking

do: read the overviews and lesson plans and the whole text to work as a debrief

don’t: read and reread and reread

Reading over and over again may work for some, but the truth is not the majority of us. Repeating the process of looking at the words will help memorize but not help utilize. In order to get a good feel for what you’re learning, you have to be able to put it into practice!

do: use visuals to separate and stimulate

don’t: use too many colors or shapes

Color coding is a great way to differentiate between subjects and topics. You can highlight or underline vocabulary, capitalize keywords, and shadow chapter titles. It doesn’t have to be rococo, but making our notes neat and with a bit of color are pleasing to the eye, which can help hold your attention and actually draw your gaze to the most important bits. However, avoid going to the extreme where everything is highlighted just with different colors. Keep it simple, and don’t be afraid to create sections. Lined or dotted paper is your friend here if you like to do things by hand rather than type and need a guide.

TIP: Taking notes by hand has been proven time and time again over typing to work best in terms of developing an understanding of the subject. If you have the stereotypical ‘doctor’s handwriting’ (I know plenty who write perfectly legible) now is the time to neaten it up!

do: come up with a listing system

don’t: write everything at the same level and spacing

This is an easy way to kill your study flow. Your eyes will simply get tired of staring at what they perceive to be the exact. Same. Thing.

Line over line over line over line.

Don’t hurt yourself, and instead help yourself by figuring out what symbols you’d like to use to section off important points. Personally, I take notes by using numbers, dashes, bullets, and greater-than signs to create subsections in my notes in that consecutive order.

For more in-depth tips and suggestions, visit Ways To Study’s Youtube channel.

[pocket-sizedpal]

eating healthy on a student budget without sacrificing flavor

photo credit: e-ziara

You might be in a tight spot as a student, stuck between meeting the basic requirements of survival and completing your assignments. And by basic requirements I mean getting sleep… some nights. And eating healthy meals on a regular basis. Or just eating healthy meals. Or just eating. Yeah, being a student is rough. But it doesn’t mean you can just put your poor body through the ringer and live off of fast-food, takeout, and cup noodles for every meal.

No disrespect to ramen, you come in clutch on finals week

I digress. Here are some tips and pointers for meal planning, grocery shopping, and how to clean out your leftover produce!

Meal Planning

Inarguably, the biggest hurdles to jump when it comes to healthy eating while being a student are time and energy. This is how we can work around it:

Come up with a list of foods that you like that are 1) healthy and 2) you can make or learn to make.

Depending on your income, if you live alone or with others, and how much you eat, figure out how often you will need a grocery run. Start adding those foods to your grocery list.

Figuring out how often you will need to go on a grocery run will take a few runs, but will save you money in the long run because you won’t be overbuying food, especially fresh produce that might go bad and have to be tossed.

Grocery Shopping

When buying fruits and vegetables, the rainbow is your friend.

Spices will SAVE YOUR TASTE BUDS.

Invest in good quality food containers.

Be smart with your money, the majority of your shopping cart should be healthy foods and drinks with a minority of your favorite snacks and junk foods.

Brightly colored foods are often full of nutrients and healthy fats, sugars, the works. Follow ROYGBV to maximize the benefits of your shopping cart. When going by color, find the richest of fruits and vegetables. Don’t go for weird looking or feeling red bell peppers, soft oranges, green bananas, brown spinach, white blueberries or mushy blackberries.

If you’re the type of person who absolutely NEEDS some type of flavor (I’m a monster who is fine with eating certain foods as they are), don’t compromise your taste buds and body with fast food just because it’s yummier. Take the time to figure out what spices you like and experiment with them. Buy a few or a bunch, most common spices are relatively cheap. Start off with your basic salt and pepper and go from there.

Here’s a great list with tips on which spices to buy, how much, and how to store them! The Essential Pantry Spices List

Leftovers

For getting rid of any excess veggies or meats, I go for bibimbap. A Korean dish characterized by mixing it up, it’s a healthy way to clean out your fridge of all those last bits of vegetables from all the other good stuff you’ve been cooking. My Korean Kitchen has a great recipe that’s easy to follow here: Bibimbap (Korean Mixed Rice with Meat and Assorted Vegetables)

[pocket-sizedpal]

how to hone your time managing skills (sorry, it takes a little bit of work)

photo credit: vivaldi

In my experience, the key to managing my time so that I don’t put things off until the last minute and freak out when the deadline comes through is to make lists. If you’re not a big list person, don’t worry, there are small lists you can make, too.

Essentially: the smaller the list, the more general the items

If you’re not a big list person, chances are you don’t tend to care too much about the details and prefer to knock things out in one go, which is fine. A more generalized list of items might be your cup of tea, in which case, stick to small lists with broad items like these:

have breakfast

make bed

do homework

do laundry

If you’re more of a list person, chances are you might be a bit more detail oriented and a lot more likely to feel pressured by such general items. Feel free to create a longer, more specific list, like this:

have breakfast (1 hour)

wash dishes (10 minutes)

make bed (5 minutes)

take notes for Korean quiz (10 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.)

do chapter reading for English Literature (1 p.m. - 2:30 p.m.)

study for Art Criticism exam (5 p.m. - 7 p.m.)

separate dirty clothes (4 p.m.)

load 1; wash, dry, put away (8 p.m.)

load 2; wash, dry, put away (9 p.m.)

Taking the time to be a bit more specific in your list can help guide you throughout the day, as well as allow you more freedom to actually check things off your list.

It’s important to note that not checking anything off our lists can make us feel like we haven’t been productive, regardless of the work we actually did. So, create your lists according to how likely you are to complete your tasks.

If you’re like me and want to take it a step further, create different lists for different things!

As a university student, I typically create a list for my coursework and a list for chore work. My course list usually looks like this:

Course I

assignment A (time)

assignment B (time)

Course II

notes A (time)

Course III

study for exam B (time)

Course IV

readings A (time)

assignment A (time)

IMPORTANT - You absolutely must allow yourself breaks, for meals, bathroom, and especially to destress. Being productive is greatly affected by how up to the task you are, so put yourself before your work, always.

This method of dividing up your time into tasks and allowing specific intervals for breaks is my take on the Pomodoro technique, which you can read up on here.

[pocket-sizedpal]

Are you actually going to use that planner, or are you wasting $6 like you did with the last one?

photo credit: acataemic

I know it’s hard to resist when you see a neat-looking planner. You see one and you think to yourself Wow, I could really use it, I’m going to be so busy this coming year… and you buy it, fill in maybe the first month page, and never open that puppy again.

Then whenever you see a new one, you get that impulse to buy the pretty thing, and maybe even a little guilt because you know you never actually stick to them. So how does one actually use a planner in a dedicated way that you see all the study blogs post aesthetic pictures of?

I’ll break it down into a few easy steps for you:

The reason you can’t stick to a planner is because you can’t stick to the routine of using it. If you have an alarm that wakes you (and the extra 3 for when you inevitably fall back asleep; it’s alright, lockdown is affecting all of us), make time in your morning routine to set aside at most 10 minutes for your planner.

Those 5-10 minutes are solely dedicated to either checking off or marking down things you have done or have to do. If you use your phone or any other electronic, it is just to verify the things you are writing. When you’re done, continue on your merry way!

Most planners have room SOMEWHERE for you to write down your daily itinerary: USE IT. Make a simple list and cross things off as you go. It’s like a little serotonin boost every time you cross something off your checklist, and motivates you to get things done.

OPTIONAL: take an additional 5-10 minutes at night to update your planner for tomorrow

some motivational tips:

Please, please, forget the “21 days to keep a habit” theory. It is different for everyone, so don’t be hard on yourself if you miss a day or two, or even a week. Just pick it up and try again.

Pick a planner that you actually like, and do with it what you will. You can have zero additions in terms of customizing your planner to your own eye-pleasure, or you can add all the stuff. Your planner, your choice.

Figure out when in your morning routine is the best time to sit and use your planner. Is it after shower, before or after coffee? Nothing before coffee? Your ball.

Here’s a list of great brands to get stationery from (planners and more): https://www.creativeboom.com/features/10-of-the-best-online-stationery-shops-to-satisfy-that-back-to-school-feeling/