28/10 - 3/11/18: 47-54/100 Days Of Productivity

16/09/18 - 5/100 days of productivity

Sorry this is late - I had internet problems last night. Anyway, I did a 2 hour maths paper and did a whole bunch of filing (which took up the whole day!)

Revision time!

ft tea and toasted hot cross buns

Music tag

Rules: Put your entire music library on shuffle and list the first 10 songs, then choose 10 victims.

Thank you for tagging me, @marie-curie :)

1. Hold Me While You Wait - Lewis Capaldi

2. Laughter Lines - Bastille

3. Some Might Say - Oasis

4. Caméléon - Maître Gims

5. Legenden - Max Giesinger

6. Nummer Eins - Stereoact

7. Zeitlupe - Madeline Juno

8. Doom Days - Bastille

9. Angel with a Shotgun - The Cab

10. Borderline - Madeline Juno

There are disproportionately many English songs on this list; the majority of songs in my library are in French and German haha

My victims are: @studydiaryofamedstudent @patriotstudies @problematicprocrastinator @vocative @alettereminuscole @apricot-studies @hastily-written @dusknotes @briellestudies @fluencylevelfrench

(Sorry if you’ve already been tagged!)

4/10/19 Waiting for lectures

Today has been a fairly lecture heavy day but this is my last one! I’ve had this lecturer once already today and I’m loving this part of the course.

Tonight, I’ll do some reading on MO theory. I really want to understand the maths more deeply... it’s so interesting and probably not as scary as it looks!

General advice for GCSE and A levels

So I was asked a question by a follower and I thought it might be beneficial to post some general advice for all the future candidates whose GCSEs and A levels aren’t cancelled because of a pandemic. Here’s a short list of what helped me get through these exams.

1) Getting exam technique down is IMPORTANT! Do not underestimate this importance - knowing what the examiners want from you is (sadly) almost more important than knowledge of content (though you do have to know that, too!)

2) Understand the question words. For example, explain means give detail, and list means don’t waste time with such detail.

3) Answer the question as it is written, not what you want the question to be. Some questions are really long winded - they’ll wrap up the question with some background material that you haven’t learnt about per se but is still relevant and applicable to your course. You have to be able to unravel the core of what the examiners are asking. Don’t worry about the wall of information. Do read it as be ready to glean clues from it, but find the question first.

4) Read the mark schemes AND THE EXAMINERS’ REPORTS! Last year’s documents are locked because teachers like to use them for mocks, but if you’ve already done those papers, ask your teachers to send you them. These are gold! Use the mark schemes to know which buzzwords and details the examiners will reward and use the examiners reports to see which questions candidates struggled to answer. There is almost always detailed analysis of common mistakes and advice to future candidates there!

5) Look through the teacher-oriented documents. I know for OCR A Biology A level, there were sample documents that gave examples of full marks, mid marks and low marks for long response questions. They literally hand you “what a good one looks like” (and it was easy to find because of how new the specification is). I was never given these documents in class! Nobody you have contact with knows the course better than a teacher who is meant to teach it. For A level languages, I read every single document, no matter how boring it seemed, which perhaps was a bit overkill, but it helped me know what exactly was expected of me. I’m talking everything from the specification to exemplar work and speaking exam conduct (which actually was useful because I then knew what would happen if I got too distressed to continue for example, as I knew what the teacher/examiner would be required to do in that case). It sounds nuts, but seeing it from a teacher’s perspective helped me. I knew the structure of my course by heart; I knew weightings of different aspects of exams and the learning objectives by which I was assessed. A lot of it is irrelevant admin, but there are actually some useful documents so do have a root through!

6) Don’t be afraid of old spec questions if the subject matter is relevant.

7) Revising using past papers is always the best way, ultimately. If you run out of past papers, make your own questions and file them away and come back to them! I buddied up with a friend and we tested each other, swapping our own exam-style questions at periodic intervals and marking our partner’s answers. You get to be the examiner, the marker and the candidate in one simple activity!

8) Learn from your mistakes. Don’t look at a lower mark and think you’re doomed; rather, think about where you went wrong. You’d be surprised at how many marks are lost to silly mistakes for which you’ll absolutely kick yourself in hindsight! Little mistakes might be avoided by doing something as little as slowing down, taking a toilet break to clear your head and generally being aware of them.

9) If there’s a certain type of question you struggle to answer, it may help to make a checklist of what to include. For example, whenever I’m asked to draw a graph, I write down things like “suitable axes using more than half the available space, x is independent variable, labels, title, units, correctly plotted points, line of best fit” in a corner somewhere out the way - and I’m at university rn! I do this before I start fumbling about with the question; it takes less than 30s to jot it down in a shorthand I understand.

10) Teach someone else, or pretend to! Even now, I remember stuff and understand it better if I’m “explaining” my thought process out loud as if I were teaching it. Understanding things will make subjects like chemistry a lot easier, because then you can apply what you know rather than blindly rote learn a bunch of examples. Mechanism you’re not quite sure of? Draw it out and talk it through! You’ll quickly pinpoint exactly what you’re struggling with.

11) Breathe and look after yourself. It’s not impossible; so much of success is about confidence. If you convince yourself you can’t do something, you absolutely won’t - attitude is everything and so is your health.

Ok but do you ever get that one moment where you’re totally at peace and having the best time with no worries in the world, but all of a sudden you become aware of the imminent end of this perfect moment and you start thinking about it as a fond memory that you’ll recall on your death bed in (what’s hopefully) a very long time and get all melancholic and nostalgic for the present?

07/10/18 - 25/100 days of productivity

Whiteboards are my favourite way of revising. To add a dimension of challenge and novelty, I often incorporate French and German into science revision. That way if I watch a video to revise, I know I won’t switch off and automatically assume that I know it all just because it’s familiar. I actually have to listen and do something with the language to make sure I understand, because the content is being shown to me in a different way. It also kills two birds with one stone!

Plus I completely forgot how to translate Entgiftungsfunktion into English (despite the fact that I am English 😂) and figured that the German encapsulated it quite nicely. I just go with what’s tidiest hehe

5/3/19

Photosynthesis is so interesting! I still can’t believe that lowly plants and even cyanobacteria harness the energy of the humble electron to power this stuff. It’s so intricate

Edit: this app is called Notability for anyone wondering!

Thanks for the tag, @a-maze-h :)

Three facts about me:

- My favourite film is Dead Poets Society (and I will ship Neil and Todd until the day I die). There aren’t many films that make me emotional, but with this one I cry every time.

- While I was in primary school, I was adamant that I wanted to be a cryptanalyst when I grew up. I spent my days solving various puzzles and ciphers, and today I can solve a “hard” sudoku in a couple of minutes!

- My maternal grandparents were both Ukrainian and I spent every day of my childhood around them, so I could have been raised truly bilingual. But my family all thought I would get confused with English. So, they instead refused to speak a word in their mother tongue around me. There is therefore a cruel irony in my love of languages - I speak 2 others aside from English proficiently, but not a word of Ukrainian! (Yes I regret this, and will one day rectify it)

I’m tagging @allo-hello-hola @lastnxvember @univers-of-biology @himynameisirina @caffelattestudies @studydiaryofanhistorian - absolutely no pressure!

three facts tag game

thank you so much for the tag @sleepy-night-child!

rules: post three random facts about yourself (or your book/ocs) and tag the seven last blogs in your notifications.

1. i’m finishing school this friday! that’s not a particularly interesting fact, just something i’m both excited and terrified about.

2. seventh sunfall is my oldest wip (at least, that i’m still working on). i started it at the start of high school, when i was about 11/12, and it’s still going, even if it’s barely recognisable as the story it was to begin with!

3. the first language i tried to learn was greek, when i was about five (emphasis on tried). it was a complete failure, but i’m still holding out hope that i might pick it back up some day.

i’m tagging (no pressure! feel free to ignore this if you don’t do tag games, or if you just don’t want to) @writing-with-l @lend-your-lungs-to-me @generalblizzarddreamer @magnoliaash @writing-is-a-martial-art @47crayons @wannabeauthorzofija

Absolutely! I don’t have a MacBook - I have a seven-year-old, slow and slightly broken HP laptop that has served loyally as a faithful study companion. I have mildliners, yes - but not because everyone else has them. I have them because I actually like them!

I take the time to write up my notes neatly because they go into a folder that is inspected by my teachers - we get told off if we put scruffy work in. But I make them more aesthetic as a way of assimilating information and having a productive way to chill out.

The whole point of having a studyblr for me was to keep on track for my personal targets. If those targets were straight Cs instead of straight A*s it wouldn’t be any less valid.

I don’t have muji pens or the finest notebooks - I save up and buy some of my favourite Pentel Energel pens whenever I can because they are actually fairly expensive as pens go and I sure as hell wouldn’t buy them at all just because everyone else is raving about them. Otherwise, it’s a cheap notebook for me all the way - because guess what? The paper you use doesn’t impact the quality of your notes.

You do what’s right for you, studyblrs of the world.

Your aesthetic does not invalidate the quality of your account.

call for change: studyblrs

I have had this blog for about a year now, and I’ve come to realise the unattainable perfection of studyblrs. I created this account to motivate and educate myself and I feel as though these ‘perfect study notes’ hold unrealistic expectations. This is why I have decided to post things that are more realistic, educational and have a positive impact on the community. Please reblog this to spread the message: You do not need perfect notes, every stationary item, a macbook, top grades or an aesthetic study space to be a studyblr. All you need to do is do the best you can.