Some Handsome Revision Notes On Liberalism, Even If I Say So Myself.

mapping some chem notes

Back To School: Stationery

PENCIL CASES:

Pencil cases by Paperchase

Lani Ang three layer pencil case

Large pastel colour pencil case

IPOW canvas pencil case 

IPOW floral canvas pencil case

Emma Bridgewater pencil case

PLANNERS:

WHSmith black A6 diary - Week-to-view

WHSmith black A6 diary - Page-to-view

‘This Week’ planner by Knock Knock

‘5 Days A Week’ desk jotter by Knock Knock

Planners and organisers by Paperchase

NOTEBOOKS:

Oxford Campus notebooks

10 subject notebook by Paperchase

Decomposition notebooks

Pukka Pad notebooks

Muji notebooks (B5)

Muji notebooks (A5)

PENS:

Pilot V5 Hi-tecpoint 0.5 pen (black)

Uni-ball eye fine tip roller-ball pen (black)

Bic medium ballpoint pen (black)

Muji 0.5 gel ink pens

Muji 0.38 gel ink pens

PENCILS:

Muji box of 12 colouring pencils

Staedtler colouring pencils (24 pack)

Staedtler HB pencils (5 pack)

PaperMate mechanical pencil (12 pack)

Paperchase dual ended colouring pencils (12 pack)

Paperchase graphic pencils (10 pack)

FINELINERS AND FELT-TIPS:

Stabilo fineliners (20 pack)

Stabilo felt-tips (20 pack)

Staedtler triplus fineliners (20 pack)

Staedtler triplus felt-tips (20 pack)

Paperchase fineliners (12 pack)

HIGHLIGHTERS:

Stabilo boss highlighters (8 pack)

Stabilo boss highlighters (4 pack)

Staedtler highlighter (8 pack)

Sharpie highlighter (4 pack)

Paperchase cat highlighters (5 pack)

Paperchase panda highlighters (5 pack) 

MISCELLANEOUS:

Paperchase tube map memo block

Paperchase sticky note box

Dot and stripe washi tape

Allydrew washi tape

Tipex correction fluid

Post-it notes 3″x 3″ (5 pack)

Index cards (white) 3″x 5″

More biology notes. Reviewing my old notes on Ecology, Evolution and Population Ecology for my Biology final exam.

How to make an awesome study guide / make notes on your computer

Writing by hand can be great in class or for jotting down notes from skimming through the text book. A great way to combine those notes are typing them up on your computer, and then print them out. Neat perfect notes with less paper wasted. Well printed out you can work with them even more to really get that information to stay. 

Go from 100 pages in the text book + a pile of handwritten notes to just a couple of pages of typed notes.

When typing them:

Layout. For each paragraph I make a headline in bold text. After that I use bullets and italicize terminology. I format the body text to be in two columns to save space and easier reading.

Keep it short. I  never write full sentences or grammatically correct. Write as short as possible while still getting the important information through. Making up abbreviations are an easy way to keep things short. It doesn’t have to look pretty, just make sure you understand it.

Simplify. Use arrows, dashes, colons, equal signs to indicate how different subjects and explanations are connected. Avoid “unnecessary“ words like "meaning…”, “such as”, “is the same as”. Use symbols instead. 

Tables. Making tables is an excellent idea for comparing things with different parameters. In your word processing program you can make your own pretty table designs or use pre-made ones. Sometimes simple ones are better though.

Paginate. Obvious but extremely useful!

Print on both sides of the paper. With half the amount of paper it kind of psychologically feel that you have less material to learn. 

Example:

What not to write:

Different species have different niches. You can define a niche as a species specialty, like its job.

Instead, try to remove unnecessary words that don’t contain much information.

Niche = a specie’s specialty, job.

When you have them on paper

All freshly printed and done? Great! Take your pens, pencils and highlighters and let’s go through the material. The first time I go through it I let it take a good while and I read it very carefully with my highlighters and pens handy.

Highlighting. If you’re into highlighting I have some tips for you. Don’t use one colour. Use several and assign each colour a different task or role. For me it really makes a big difference and I can see what’s what. Here’s an example of how I do it:

Pink: Headlines and headings Blue: Terms and words Green: Definitions and meaning of the term. (Green explains blue) Yellow: Examples and misc

Drawing. It’s helpful if you couldn’t draw said thing on the computer. What I like to do though is to make small doodles related to the terms, definitions, examples or the paragraphs in them selves in the margin. 

Notes. Take notes or mark off things you find extra hard or confusing.

When you’ve done all of that and your notes are a colourful clusterfuck I read them through again and again. You can also hold over the paragraph and try to either write down or explain verbally what the paragraph is about. Try not to completely memorize the paragraphs, instead really try to understand the concept.

I hope that was helpful for some of you :) I know exams are coming up and this can be a fun thing to try out. After I’ve made my study guide I almost exclusively study from it. I don’t use the textbook from that point on except for answering practice questions. 

If you have any questions, feel free to send me a message.

Good luck! ♥

[02.01.18] Hi everyone! I have received a lot of feedback on my one page note summaries. I had always planned on sharing some of them with you all in PDF format but never had the time to. So here are some of my favorites and most requested! :D

Amino Acids

Cross-Bridge Cycle

Hypothalamic-Pituitary Axis

Mitochondria & Electron Transport Chain

The Digestive System Overview

The Kidney Overview

The Periodic Table & Trends

Viruses

college note taking 101: how i take notes and use them to study for exams

in lecture:

i like to take quick/shorthand notes because i think learning to discriminate between what is and isn’t important material is a good skill to have so i’m not drowning in useless information when it’s time to study for a midterm or final.

i like to bring my ipad and use the notability app. it’s easier for me to just carry an ipad mini and stylus than it is for me to lug around a heavy notebook/binder and several pens/pencils.

if the professor makes lecture slides available to students online (via a class website), i like to download them onto notability and annotate them as the professor goes along. that way, i can focus more on what the professor is saying and less on merely writing everything down.

if lecture slides aren’t available, i type out my notes as i find it faster than handwriting them.

at home:

once i’m home, i take out my ipad and copy down my lecture notes into a specified notebook for that class, explain everything more thoroughly, make them neater, and organize them in a way that makes more sense to me (as opposed to copying them down exactly as how they were presented in lecture).

i like to use lots of colors, highlighters, and etc. and make them as pretty as possible so i actually want to use them to study from in the future.

integrating reading notes:

normally, what professors will do is assign reading from a textbook and base their lectures around the reading (or have the reading be based on the lectures). usually exams/tests will rely mostly on what was said in lecture instead of in the reading and this is partly because they overlap so much. what the professor says in lecture, you should consider the “important points” in your reading. sometimes, though, there are things in the reading that seem important and weren’t mentioned in lecture.

what i’ll do if this is the case is take post-its, write the piece of information down, and stick the post-it in my notebook in the corresponding section (i.e. where it fits best with my notes)

i like this method as opposed to taking notes directly in my textbook or having a separate notebook for only reading notes because 1) i’ve consistently found that reading material is not as heavily focused on in tests as lecture material and 2) i like to have all of my information in one place

using my notes to study:

when an exam is coming up, what i like to do is take all of the information in my notebook and condense it into a study guide that i can use to study from.

the format of my study guide varies depending on the class and which type of study guide and method of studying i think will help me best. my study guides range from flash cards to mind maps to sheets of paper with a bunch of condensed information.

if i come across a concept on my study guide that i can’t completely explain to myself/don’t fully understand, that’s when i’ll look back in my notebook for a better and fuller explanation of it.

i also like to give myself some time before an exam to completely read through my notebook and look at all the notes i’ve taken (not just what i have on my study guide) because i think it’s a good refresher of all of the lecture and reading material and all of the information will be brought forward in my mind.

[* a few of you have asked me for a advice on note taking: how i take notes, methods i use, how i study from them, and etc. i hope this post was helpful to you! feel free to message me if you have any other questions. happy studying! ^_^]

🌠Guide to Study Guides

Hi, so I make study guides when I revise as referenced to in this post/ask here. So in this post I’m gonna try and show you guys how I go about making a study guide like I did for sociology or philosophy, both of which are shown in that link there. This is my method so it probably is really complicated and stuff, I know for sure that my guides are overly “fancy” and whatnot, but it makes me happy and I guess the extra effort does pay off, at least aesthetically. 

Okay, yes, let’s begin…

1. Visit colourlovers.com to choose a colour scheme for your guide!

I’ve provided the link to the most loved palette page which is where I choose my colour scheme. In Word, you change your colour scheme by choosing Page Layout > Colour > Create New Theme Colours and you go from there!! I basically started making my own colour schemes after I went through all the ones already provided by Word, but to be honest you can start with those since they’re really nice too. I recommend: Apex, Composite, Foundry, Metro, Module, Slipstream and Solstice.

If you do want to make your own colour scheme, you should get ready to do some fiddling around because I still don’t get this really. Making a colour scheme on Word requires at least 10 colours, that’s okay because on colourlovers, palettes are usually made up of 5 so just choose 2 that you think suit each other :) After this you need to input the hex codes manually into the popup window of “Create New Theme Colours” starting from Text/Background - Dark 2 to Accent 6. The hex codes are provided by individually clicking on the colours.

So that’s what one of my self-made colour schemes look like, you should be aware that Word usually randomises these? I don’t really know how it works but basically sometimes the colours won’t necessarily be in that order when you go to select it to specifically colour a word, if that’s the case you’ll just have to fiddle and change it around to choose your preferred colour in the scheme. Also not all the colours will go into the textbox options so be aware of that too!

2. Font shopping

Next if I haven’t updated the font collection for a while I’ll go to dafont.com because I just…really like jazzy fonts. From here I’ll either check out “All The New Fonts” (option is at the bottom of the front page) or go to the menu titled Script, and check out Handwritten, Fancy or Various. Here are some links to asks about fonts that I’ve used in my shown study guides or just fonts I like in general!! 1 and 2.

Okay so as you can see in the Disney Princess Document/Sociology Study Guide I used at least five fonts, I usually average around 4? Once downloaded choosing fonts that you like for your guide is basically a trial and error process, I choose any fonts that I like or haven’t recently used or just recently downloaded that I want to try out and I match them with what I think would look nice! Here I’ll show you why I use around four or more fonts:

In order to make the process of typing up your guide with these fonts easier, highlight one, so for example the Big Title, right click > Styles > Save Selection as New Quick Style…and it’ll be available to you in the Quick Styles menu underneath a heading like Style1. After this to easily change a font to that particular font, just highlight, go to Quick Styles, choose that particular font and bam! I try to make my fonts match, so if one is bold, I aim for at least a thick-ish font in the rest of my choices. Now to go through what they’re for. 

So obviously the Big Title is for your BIG TITLE that could be your subject or your main topic, so if it was sociology (like in the first pic) I would use it for Key Concepts and Methods, I might later reuse the font for another BIG TOPIC, but really…it’s your choice.

The Subtitle is what I would use for well…your subtitle, so following my first pic it would be the subtitle of Positivism versus Interpretivism…Three Key Concepts, etc. The heading is therefore for the headings under the subtitle (this is only if you’re making a guide for something that is like intensely sectioned, like sociology), so I’d use that font for where it says Reliability etc.

It just brings something extra on top of all the later colour you’ll probably use, although I only use it for like a set theme, so dates, names etc. and only either a word or a phrase, if it gets too long it’ll just mess up the format of your sentence. 

3. Okay, so you’re happily typing away but now you wanna add the speech bubbles, you wanna add the textboxes and the Disney princesses! Don’t worry my  friend, I got you.

Basically I add textboxes or speech bubbles for 2 reasons, either to highlight a particular point or differentiate a piece of information from the rest OR to fill up space because of some particular study guide pet peeves. 

Pet peeve, when a particular sentence ends like this:

I know it might seem like a bit much, but to be honest, it throws the whole format of a block of text if a bit of it ends with like this huge expanse of space. So in this instance I either will insert a photo or I’ll try and delete a word or add a word until I’m satisfied. THIS IS JUST ME, IF YOU DON’T CARE OBVIOUSLY IT DOESN’T MATTER 👌

You can insert speech bubbles by going to Insert > Shapes > Callouts (you’ll find it there) and textboxes by going to Insert > Textbox > Draw Textbox (I draw mine since I don’t tend to use the ones provided by Word. With the speech bubbles they actually act as textboxes, but I’ve found that using it in that way takes up a lot of space as in your words won’t necessarily take up the whole of the speech bubble so it simply expands and it’s all messy. Therefore, I put a textbox on the top of it, make the background and outline transparent and type there to save space. 

Here are some examples of when I’ve used photos or speech bubbles to fill up space or solve the annoying sentence problem.

I generally tend to have themes around what photos I use, so for example my sociology guide was largely based on Disney/Cartoon Network depending on how I felt and I’d use particular photos to emphasise a point and make it more entertaining I guess… As you can see the speech bubbles with LSP are for filler purposes but also to differentiate information, it just adds something extra really. Also because I continuously indent my guides (since I type with bullet points) as they get further and further in they’ll leave gaps that can be filled with photos, seen here with what I’ve done with LSP. Also with the photos that I choose, I search for the ones with a grey, checkered background which means that they’ll be transparent, allowing me to put them in front of a textbox or just makes overall design easier, it means that I can have the Gangreen Gang in front of that textbox like that :)

4. Final step, going over your guide when it’s done.

I then go through the guide again and highlight, underline, italicise, bold, colour etc. particular points of a sentence/paragraph that I want to remember! I do this in order of the colour scheme that appears in the menu when you click to change the colour of a font, so I’ll highlight particular words for a portion of a paragraph before changing, achieving a sort of a rainbow effect, like so:

These are from my history study guide, where I made front covers (which I don’t usually do…I feel like all my guides really depend on how I feel and my subject). This is what they looked like if you wanted an idea for something you could do too!!

Um..so that’s pretty much it! I’ve tried to make this as extensive and as in-depth as I can, I’m sorry it ended up SO LONG, I’ve never made a post this long before so I’m really sorry. I would put it under a read more but I feel like the font on my blog is too tiny for when it’s redirected and I’d much rather not have everyone straining their eyes. If you guys have any more questions, please feel free to ask. If you want any more examples or screen shots of my guides, just hit up my ask box!! Sorry for this taking so long and being so long once again and I really hope it helps you all in at least some way! 

***As an addition, those washi tapes you see are digital washi tapes which you can get just by googling! I use the free ones which only require a lil’ searching for. Also please tag me in whatever study guides you make and upload, I’d love to see them!!

My Study Method

My post 10 types of planners got way more notes than I expected. So today I will show you how I prepare for my exams. The method I’m going to explain is the one I’ve developed over the years and got me to get all A’s in high school. From taking notes, to nailing your exam.

1. HOW TO TAKE NOTES

1.1. Sit in the front of the classroom Don’t give a f**k if you look like a dork. Make sure you can see the blackboard clearly. You should be able to look at your teacher and the other way round. In case my experience is not enough: Studies show that those who “sit in the front and center (middle) of the classroom tend to achieve higher average exam scores”. Plus, your teacher will know who you are and will be aware that you pay attention in class.

1.2. Ask questions Don’t be afraid of asking questions. This took me years. Your teacher won’t think your question is stupid - in fact, it is their job to make sure everybody learns whatever they are supposed to teach. AND even if it looks as if the whole class has already understood the lesson, trust me, they haven’t.

1.3. Don’t write every word the teacher says There’s just no point in doing such thing. Contract words and use symbols and doodles. Once you get home, fair-copy your notes if they are not clear enough (or at least, re-read them). Otherwise, when you try to study with your notes a few weeks/months later, you won’t understand a thing.

1.4. Clarify your notes What did you just write down? Was it something that didn’t appear on the book? Was it an explaination of what the book says? Some info you should expand? Use a color code or symbols to clarify your notes. It doesn’t take time but will save you time in the future.

1.5. Compact notes Write with tiny (but legible) handwriting. It is quicker, tidier, and it saves paper. Also, write in two or three columns.

1.6. How to stay motivated to take good notes Last year I told one of my best friends (who is one grade bellow me) that I would give her all my notes at the end of the year. People normally dream of setting fire to their notes (and at least in Spain, people actually do that). But this other option (giving away my notes) was good for her and for me, since whenever I felt like writing carelessly, I’d think, “she won’t understand these notes, I have to do it better”.

2. PRE-STUDYING

Start pre-studying the very first day of class.

2.1. Active reading

Everytime I see someone whose book is entirely highlighted I’m like “why don’t you just dip it in a bucket of yellow paint?”. Seriously, stop.

Underline only the key words, not the whole sentence.

Use a different color (at least) for each paragraph.

When you read a paragraph, open a key in the margin and summarize what that paragraph is saying. Use between 1 and 10 words. Write as small as you can.

Right after you finish with a page, do an outline of the whole page in order to make sure that you have understood what you’ve just read. How? Scroll down.

2.2. Make it visual

Outlines, mindmaps, graphics… it really depends on the subject. All I know is that I just CAN’T study from a block of text.

Separate coordinated sentences and link them with symbols.

Use bullets or numbers and indent.

Color is not decorative. The same color links together different ideas.

Pink highlighters are cute but they don’t highlight at all.

Small handwriting and columns are your friends.

Highlight just the KEYWORDS. About 4-8 words per page.

Don’t use the same template or style on every page, unit or subject.

Number your pages.

Here you have a messy and a tidy example:

3. STUDYING

3.1. When should you start studying?

When I was in high school, I used to start studying one or two weeks before the exam. A few days before when I was too busy. The day before when I was about to jump out the window.

Divide whatever you have to study in equal parts to make it more approachable.

Try to organize yourself so that the day before the exam you don’t have to study because you already know everything (and you just need to revise a little bit).

3.2. Studying (and by studying, I mean memorizing) Once you have read it and understood it, you have to memorize it. My favourite quote is: “Don’t practice until you get it right. Practice until you can’t get it wrong.”

These are my methods. I also recommend reading this article for more. Use the method that works best for you or all of them to ensure you’ve got it.

Write your mind-map again and again and again. Don’t change the placement of each concept in your mind-map or you’ll become confused in the end.

Translate words into drawings. Translate your drawings into words. Repeat. Repeat!

Read a little bit, try to explain it out loud as if you were a teacher. Repeat endlessly.

Make a story that helps you fully understand what goes next and WHY.

3.3. Keywords list This is the spine of my whole studying method. So basically, reduce each sub-topic to ONE word. Then reduce each topic to ONE word. Study those words by heart.

In the exam, just write down your list of keywords and you will easily remember each topic and sub-topic.

4. EXTRA TIPS

4.1. When studying a list of words or names It is really important to know how many words there are.

Make a sentence with the first letter of each word.

Make a song. You can use a jingle you already know.

Picture a scene which contains all the words.

4.2. IMPORTANT!

Highlight, bookmark and make a list of those concepts that you usually forget or make mistakes, so it is the first thing you see (and revise) the next time you study.

The night before the exam, write in a little piece of paper that thing (an important formula, something that you always forget, your keywords list…) and that’s the only thing you should revise the following day.

Talk to older students and ask them for their old exams. Your exams will probably be different, but if the teacher is the same, they’ll be similar.

5. HOW TO NAIL AN EXAM

First of all, you should take a look to the Text Anxiety Booklet. It contains a lot of information for the ones who get really anxious.

5.1. Appearance matters My teachers always say that when they are correcting our exams, illegible handwriting really pisses them off. Since they are humans, that attitude towards your exam will be unconsciously reflected on your mark. On the other hand, when they get to a visually appealing exam, they are more compassionate. Conclussion: MAKE YOUR TEACHER’S WORK EASIER.

Use your best handwriting.

Write your name on every page (if you are asked to do so).

Leave margins.

Separate your paragraphs.

Indent when necessary.

Number your pages.

5.2. Don’t ever leave a question in blank Ever. Every little point adds up to you final mark, and a blank question means 0 points. If you write something and it is wrong, you simply made a mistake. But if you don’t answer, your teacher might think that you didn’t do it because you didn’t study. However, remember that your teacher is older and wiser than you, and will notice if you are trying to fool them.

In some tests, mistakes subtract points. In that case, you’d better leave the questions you don’t know in blank unless you like taking risks.

5.3. What if you go blank First of all, wait a minute and take a deep breath. This is not a waste of time because it will actually help you do better. Now, do the rest of the exam and come back later. Then, if you still can’t remember, try retracing not what you studied but what you were doing while you were studying. Maybe you were drinking tea, maybe your father came into your room or maybe you heard something on the street. And remember that you control your breathing, and your breathing controls your feelings.

5.4. An exam is not a race I guess some people believe they’ll receive a prize if they are the first one to hand in their exam. Those people have all of my disapproval. Use all the time your teacher gives you and always, I mean ALWAYS, revise your exam before handing in it. Revise. Your. Exam. Did you follow the instructions correctly? Did you answered all the questions? Are there spelling mistakes?

That’s it. I hope you found it helpful.

hello everyone!! i am so thankful for your support and for making the studyblr community the amazing place that it is - i honestly still can’t believe that i have 10k+ followers in only 6 months from starting this blog in june, and i want to show my appreciation for all of you! 

rules to enter:

must be following me!

reblog once to enter

you can enter more than once if you want!!

you can like this post to bookmark, but it is not an entry

prizes:

there will be one winner chosen randomly!

5 lined a5 notebooks

gridded, hole-punched notebook (to put in folders/binders!)

black b5 gridded notebook

black b5 lined spiral notebook

2 month daily schedule/planner (pictured; not from muji but it’s really nice so i decided to throw it in!)

7 gel ink pens (0.38)

black ruler

mechanical pencil

yellow push button highlighter

black eraser

checklist notepad

other info:

i will be shipping internationally!

please be over 18 or have parental permission

and be comfortable with giving me your address!

winner must have an open ask box + respond within 48 hours of my message, or i will pick a new winner

let me know in the tags if reblogging from a sideblog!

no giveaway blogs please

please do not delete this text!!

+ my ask box if you have any other questions :^)

ends on: january 18th, 2016 (8am EST)

good luck and thank you so much everyone!!

xuanlin

Some Good Study Playlists

Here are some study playlists I think are really motivating and keep you working. I personally love listening to study playlists while studying this keeps me really motivating and i don´t even see the time pass by. Hope i could help you (:

-Eat.Sleep.Study.Repeat

-Studdy Buddy

-Survival kit to finals

-Study Mix I

-Concentration 

-Concentration part 2

-Concentration part 3

-Study with Accompaniment    II.    III.

-Instrumental Mega Mix

and 

-Rainy Mood

04:10 PM // Hello! I made these mind maps a few days ago. I’m really proud of them considering I never made one before.