#why starting a studyblr

[why-the-heck-not]

me, a responsible being, working on the coding project as I should vs. me, a dysfunctional shithead, getting distracted by reading about brains (once aGAIN damnit (it's my favorite "I need to study my field but bc I should do that it's an impossible unthinkable feat now, so I'm reading about something else to fool my brain I'm still being productive"-topic))

[the---hermit]

December 2024 wrap up!I love how you can tell when the storygraph introduced the pause update lmao.

01|01|2025

Happy new year! I haven't really realized yet we are in a new year, I will definitely mess up the date for the next few weeks. I have started my year as just another day, I did my normal study routine, and I continued reviewing out loud my notes. It was a quiet day, I still managed to get some rest since I haven't had the best night of sleep, and overall I am happy with how the day turned out, I felt productive without feeling like I overworked myself.

Today's productivity:

Continued my first outloud review for my history of Sabaudian states exam

Signed up for the exam

Duolingo

📖: Iliad by Homer

[polyglot-sock]

it's ironic that, for someone who is able to speak several languages, my ability to verbally communicate disappears really often

[notetaeker]

June 10, 2023 - Saturday

Honestly feel like a mess lol. The past few weeks/months I have managed to stay on track pretty well but this whole week was such a mess tbh everything is so disorganized in my head and in my room 🥲 It feels like I was untying a complex knot and making some progress and then stepped away for a few mins and now have no idea where to start to get back on track again 😔😭

pics: apocalyptic smoky sky, strawberries from my strawberry plant, red light from the smoky red sun

[studyblr-perhaps]

I really want to make a series of posts explaining in simple terms the different maths/physics concepts I struggled with when I first learnt them.

Would anyone be interested in it 👀👀?

[studycricket]

heres a little summary of my summer so far :) i took a weekend bookmaking workshop back in june that was actually taught by one of the admissions counselors i work with! i made a fun little book of smaller books where i mostly just played with materials and folding techniques. ive made friends with one of my coworkers and we've been hanging out going to arcades and yard sales (where i got the soup mugs!!) my partner and i got ice cream from salt & straw multiple times because we're obsessed with the blackberry flavors lol and ive been reading the southern reach trilogy and thoroughly enjoying them !! hope everyone is enjoying the season :3

[exploringcarelessly]

Ik I should take advantage of this vacation and write my business management IA, I just can't bring myself to

Someone send help

[citrusstudies]

Love when I have a great idea for a new project which I find fun and mentally stimulating. Hate when I have the idea while I really need to wrap up another project I've lost a lot of passion for

Anyone have tips for staying motivated and on track when you just want a project to be OVER? I'm so close but loosing steam so fast 😭

[why-the-heck-not]

it’s cold brew season again babyyy

[ronastudies]

eXCUSE YOU, why do I have to pay TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTY FIVE U.S. DOLLARS to take a test that proves my ability to read, write and speak in the English language if I might even as much as CONSIDER applying to a university in the U.S.? Read my stupid little posts on all these stupid little websites like this one if you want to have your damn proof ffs

[chemstudent-sherlock]

I have an exam tomorrow at 8.45 a.m. It's finally time to study.

Who needs sleep anyway?

[study-like-you-mean-it]

2024 Goal Setting for People Who Used to be Studyblr Queens and are Now Just Muddling Through Adult Life

I know you, you know me. I've had this account since I was freshly 16 and I'm 23 (and a half) now, and I can guarantee there's loads of you in the same boat right now.

Where did I go? What did I do? I finished my Master's Degree and realised (with some trepidation) at the end of it that I'd achieved everything that was on my list of things to achieve ever, and I didn't really have a plan on what I was going to do, so for what may have been the first time in my life I just...winged it. Started measuring progress according to how I felt about it. And it worked! Lots of good has come out of it so let me suggest some goal setting approaches to help if you're in a similar position (and given the studyblr -> chaos pipeline I might suggest there's at least a few people this might help)

Point 1 - Don't set yourself academic goals

"But Study Like You Mean It, I always set academic goals!" I hear you say. I appreciate the irony of my username in relation to this. Point is, you're not in academia anymore. You need to stop goal setting like you're in academia, and the easiest way to do this is to stop setting academic goals.

"But I like the pursuit of knowledge!" I hear you counter. So do I, but if you've just come out of a hothouse academic setting, you *really* need to consider who you're goal setting for. Do you like the idea of being a polyglot by the end of the year? Sure, fine, whatever, but consider who you're goal setting for. Do you want to be a polyglot because you like the process of learning languages, or because you want to show to others that you know languages? It sounds silly, but you're not working to a grade anymore, and it's absolutely essential that you reflect on why you like doing academic things. This doesn't apply to everyone, but I would kick off the process of self-reflection on this (because you know the Studyblr types are most likely guilty of performative learning) by refusing to set yourself academic goals.

If you don't hit a yardstick, what's the worst that will happen?

(nothing- the answer is nothing and you need to start getting comfortable with that)

Point 2 - Set Process-Based Goals

Building on the last point, if you want to have achieved something by the end of the year, how can you frame it in a way that's definitely not you trying to put down a point to show to others that you've improved, and instead internalise your sense of progress? Maybe the goal you set is "by the end of the year, I want to feel like I understand internalised growth and progress", and you'll know at the end of the year when you self-reflect if you've succeeded in that.

Otherwise, set a process-based goal. If you want to get better at something, but know you're guilty of holding yourself to externalised yardsticks, set yourself a goal that's about the process rather than the result. Scary, I know. For example, say you want to start playing a sport. If you go in without a process-based goal, you could end up saying to yourself "I want to put myself in a position where I qualify for a team two leagues above by the end of the season," which is a SMART* goal, but incredibly determined by outside reflections on your own ability, and very end-result focused. There's a time and a place for goals like this, but if you're coming off a high-intensity academic environment, I would argue that it's not the right place. Instead, what about "I will show up every week and be positive about the fact that I'm not perfect"? It's about the learning process, and I think post-university a lot of people fall out of love with the actual learning process, and become too mired in results.

*specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound

Point 3 - What happens if you don't hit your goal?

I love asking this question to people who've come out of academic environments.

Literally what's going to happen if you can't meet the goal that you've set for yourself when you set an end-goal focused goal?

Nothing!!!!!

It's so freeing. Embrace it! There are no time bounds on learning, so enjoy the learning! There's no exam to pass, no professors to wow, no applications to get accepted. It's just you learning how to be you, and remembering why you love to get good at things!

Part 4 - Habits =/= Goals

This one maybe is a bit tricky to explain. It's the difference between "I'm going to get into the practice of reading on my commute when I can" and "I must finish 10 books this year by reading on my commute when I can". One of them is about introducing something new into your life because it makes you feel good, and the other one is about setting limits on that because you feel you need to control the way that you enjoy things (this comes from academia putting constraints on learning, etc.).

Be patient with yourself, for goodness' sakes. Get into the habit and enjoy the process, don't automatically find ways to be masochistic about it.

My Goal Setting Approach

Now I've clarified the kinds of goals to set in this new and scary world, I'll run through my approach to implement them. First thing to note is I like setting lots of goals, but then those all get broken into little habits that I can focus on in my day to day, as well as timeline-less tasks to accomplish when I've got the time free.

I start with areas I'd like to improve myself in (again, not as a discipline thing, but towards the vision that I might be a more rounded and enriched person because of it):

Personal - how can I become more introspective/calm/mindful?

Financial - how can I become more fiscally responsible now I'm an adult?

Social - how do I make time for others?

Work - what does progress at work over this year look like?

Sport - this can be replaced by whatever your main hobby is

Intellectual - how can I enrich myself and learn about things that I'm interested in?

I won't run through all of these, but I'll create some examples:

Domain: Financial - how can I become more fiscally responsible now I'm an adult?

General points on this: I can save more money, I can improve my credit score, I can pay off some loans

Habits: for the first, I can maybe aim to save 20% of my takehome, by putting 10% in at the start of the month, and trying to put 10% in at the end if I've got enough, and I can set up the timelineless task of opening a high interest-rate savings account for money that I don't need for emergency access; for the second, I can set the timelineless task of setting up a credit card, and get into the habit of paying for my groceries with it; for the third, I can sit down and look at how much of my takehome I can dedicate to this, and then get into the habit of paying off a sustainable amount

Now, I have the timelineless tasks fo getting a credit card, opening a new savings account, and sitting down and looking at my loans, and then I have the two habits of tucking bits of money away and paying off some loans. Note that there's nothing that's made it too urgent (which I admit is a privilege) and there's nothing that tells me I'm a bad person for not being able to do it. Another example:

Domain: intellectual - how can I enrich myself and learn about things that I'm interested in?

General points on this: I would like to read more broadly, I would like to improve my French, I would like to understand more about world events

Habits: for the first, I can read on my commute when I can get a seat on the train, as I have half an hour each way so I can use that time to read. I can set the timelineless task of exploring the kinds of books that I'd like to read; for the second, I can choose to consume more French media when I feel like I have the mental capacity. I also have to speak French at work, so I want to get into the habit of not cowarding out and switching to English (scary but doable); for the last, I can get into the habit of watching the evening news (so it's contained within a time slot and I'm not being overwhelmed by the 24h news cycle) and I can set the timelineless task of picking up a copy of a magazine like the economist once in a while to get a deeper understanding.

So the habits to get into are reading on my commute, choosing to speak more in French, and watching the news when I can; the tasks are maybe picking up a copy of a magazine and coming up with a reading list.

The whole point of this approach is it breaks your bigger goals into a timeline-free to-do list, and then a list of small habits that you can get into. The good news is that there's no punishment for failure! If I want to listen to the Bongo's Bingo Greatest Hits playlist on the train one morning instead of reading about the modern history of Cambodia, nobody's going to come along and tell me off for not being serious enough, or clever enough, or "academic" enough about my approach to life. The to-do list aspect I find immensely helpful, as often I struggle to write larger-level to-do lists when I'm in the middle of the year, because I don't have the same kind of clarity over the types of progress I want to make when I'm in the middle of things.

Anyway, I hope this is useful, and a good counterpoint to the mindset that everyone who's ever been near Studyblr has. Learning now is only for enjoyment, so enjoy that aspect! Live your life! Understand that the process of betterment is all about enriching your personal sphere and nothing about other people because (drumroll) literally nobody else cares! In a good way! Nobody cares that you've not mastered Polish in 3 weeks or read the entire academic output of Montaigne in a week! And it's cool if you have, but the person you are is more important, and freeing yourself from external yardsticks is so so crucial!

Love to anyone who read this far ♥

[antoniosos]

I would like to add something about routine. People ask how to discipline themselves so they can do 'The Thing' but the only answer they get is to do 'The Thing' and become disciplined by that. Which is not helpful at all. People don't understand one important thing about discipline.

Discipline is an emotion

and needs to be fueled. And what do you fuel it with? Resolve.

To become disciplined you need to cultivate resolve.

Here's the source :3

https://youtu.be/0N0LV0mqTYQ?si=pqqz4egK2We1Gwfy

long term study tips

a lot of study tip posts that exist have a weird mix of short term and long term tips and that weirds me out, so here are some long term study tips (aka pavlov-ing yourself):

light the same scent of candle every day when you study- eventually the smell of the candle will put you in a study mood

drink the same kind of drink (I always drink green tea) and you will start to associate the process of getting the drink/the smell/the taste with studying

get into a habit of studying for a few minutes every night. Even if you are not doing much, it's something.

play the same playlist whenever you study- hearing "reflections" by Toshifumi Hinata instantly puts me into the study mood

Routines routines routines: the only reason I passed some of my classes last year was because I had routines in place for doing my work (they are falling apart this year, and I'm struggling.)

[helenstudies]

I've seen a lot of "gifted kid burnout" posts and also a few "where do we go to post studyblr stuff when we're bad students and don't get good grades" so I'm here to talk about my own experience of "I've never been a gifted kid and I've never been a good student".

I'm not a gifted kid. In fact, there was no "gifted kid" system in my country at all. And instead of multiple choice questions or true or false questions, we had to memorize pages and pages of our textbook and write them down during three hour exams. You can't get "a" and "the" wrong or you lose points, that's how much memorization we had to do. We didn't get electives until our last two years of high school and the electives were "biology or economics?" Yeah, those were the only two. Even at my university, I didn't get to choose my own electives. Everything came in a neat little box that you can never escape. And we never, EVER get full marks in Burmese or English. 80 out of 100 is considered phenomenal and no one's ever gotten more than 82 in either subject. So our matriculation exam's full mark is 600 but the most you can get is 550.

Suffice to say, the education system sucked and I don't like memorization so my grades were 50% at most. I failed my math and physic classes with 28 marks out of 100 for a whole two years, only barely passing on midterms and end of year exams. For my matriculation exam I got 340 out of 600, which is SUBPAR. That's 2.0 GPA btw. I never thought of myself as educated or a good student and I still don't.

But I love languages and I realize that while languages seem hard to learn and have strict rules, they actually don't. You can move them around and learn them however you like. So as an avid reader, I started learning languages so that I will be able to read books in those languages and I found studying liberating. Why not? I'm no longer memorizing 600 pages of text book and writing them down.

I realize that I love learning and studying when I get to choose what I learn. So I stopped caring about grades and started learning things that I love. Hey, do you know what's the biggest side effect of learning things that you love and not caring about grades? It's that you actually start to learn and your grades start to come up. I realize I perform badly when I am stressing out about my grades. This is why you're seeing all my 100% grade and 80% grade all over my walls. It's not because I'm a good student. It's because I've let go of the notion that I HAVE to be a good student.

I can talk about my bad grades as freely as I can talk about my good grades. I can tell you that I've been learning Japanese for ten seven years and I'm only JLPT N3 level. Honestly, you know what? As a generation, we're due to appreciate our process and progress instead of our achievements. It's fine if you're a bad student. It's fine if you are a gifted kid who fell off the wagon. It's fine if you've never been a gifted kid or a bad student. What matters is you're here studying and learning and appreciating yourself for doing all that.

So post your good grades, post your bad grades. Post your good stuff and bad stuff and messy notes. Post about your good days and your bad days. Talk about your productive days and talk about your rest days. Keep going and keep learning!

[ramblingsfromthytruly]

the pages are turning~

a months old pic of my desk

29th august 2024

day 4/50 - productivity challenge

🕒 6:00 a.m.

sleep deprivation is hitting. eating leftovers and coffee for breakfast.

checked notifs

actually ate some goddamn breakfast

not me realizing that i barely eat 2 meals every school day..

revised psychology: ch-1: what is psychology

here's a (self) reminder to actually go study instead of procrastinating 30 mins by watching study motivation videos.

also i recommend listening to non-lyrical music while studying. i personally listen to classical piano music. this is what i was listening to today morning.

showered

morning skincare

extended duolingo streak

aaand off to school. thought i would be late but honestly i've been reaching at the correct time all these days. if i leave my house by 8:05 then i'm good.

at school i first had physics and then 2 continuous chemistry classes (the teacher is good but her classes are so draining ugh).

completed physics classwork (the stuff i missed when i was absent on tuesday)

did the OCEAN test in psychology class! idk why but i love personality tests. i'll discuss my results with my teacher tmr hopefully but what i gathered is that i'm an ambivert leaning to introversion and ok emotional regulation & stability. my other classmate was very much an extrovert with higher tendency to take others' words to heart. we bunked the last 2 english classes together in the library lol. also want to say that i'm so ashamed for having formed an image in my mind of her, without really knowing her that well. i cruelly judged her prematurely and though we didn't really talk about our lives and stuff, we did get closer (maybe even friends?) today and i regret my judgments. ik i would be crushed if someone thought up an image of me in their head like that and i try not to do the same but sometimes i make mistakes. i'm trying to be more aware of that.

studied psychology ch-6: human memory (in the library when i skipped english)

lightly rained the entire trip home and got much louder as i ate a hearty lunch 😋

started a word doc for biology investigatory project

started a word doc for chemistry investigatory project

me and my bestfriend have been much more honest with our feelings recently. the saying "distance makes the heart grow fonder" was actually made for us. she's in a new college all popular with new pretty friends and boys probably crushing on her and she says i'm her favourite person. i'm at a new school slowly making new friends and she's my favourite person. i told her i love her. she deserves to know that. and i meant it totally platonically and that doesn't make it any less. if anyone ever asks, "who's your first love?" i'll say her name. it'll always be her.

practiced playing keyboard 🎹

read newspaper 📰 (some of those cases make me feel sick)

post for studyblr weekly prompt

dinner. yum. noodles and cake.

made notes psychology ch-1: what is psychology?

night skincare

🕒 nope! pulled an all-nighter.. yes i have school tmr 😃 listen i do not recommend doing this shit at all. why did i do it you may ask? i don't really have any crushing deadlines as such, but i've tricked my mind into thinking my own plans are deadlines. this week my sleep has been astronomically fucked up. the weekend will be a reset (i have school on saturday 😭) and i will prioritze sleep. i need to at least manage 6-7 hours everyday.

edit: actually i fell asleep around 2 a.m. and did no other studying..

🎧 i love you, i'm sorry by gracie abrams

her songs are actually just excerpts from my journal but minus the romance unfortunately like where's my gf ugh we're wasting time

a months old pic of my desk

[why-the-heck-not]

02.10.23, thursday

I feel like taking whole weekends off doesn’t work for me. Like if I take the days off, I’ll get stuck in that mood and I’m just now getting back to the groove of things, and it’s friday again tmrw. I think the ideal for me would be like 2 weeks on and then couple days off. Something I could actually do sometimes if I just schedule it. But couple last weekends I’ve had set plans so had to have actual weekends and my productivity has taken the hit