Entelodonts: Terrifying.

you and your words flooded my senses

your sentences left me defenseless

you built me palaces out of paragraphs

you built cathedrals

Study tips

Be active while studying :

Do not mindelssly skip through your notes.Make sure you are fully understanding the material that you are working on. Ask yourself questions. If you can answer them , that’s cool, if you can’t, note them down on a post-it and ask your teacher or classmates or maybe google it. If you can’t focus take a break and come back later.

Set the mood for studying:

Wash you face and hands with cold water, or take a shower. Put on comfy clothes. Organize your study space and clean it up. Get yourself a snack and a cup of coffee or tea or just plain water, whatever works for you. Set the stuff you need for studying and get rid of anything else. If you don’t need your phone for studying, turn the wi-fi off and put it away from you. Start a study playlist if you want. Put your to do list right in front you and get to it.

Make a TO DO list:

Grab a white sheet of paper. Brain dump all the tasks you have to do for the day, prioritize them, and write them again in a clean way, while dismissing the unimportant tasks if you don’t have enough time.

Take breaks when you need them :

If you take too much you’ll lose focus, if you don’t take enough, your studying won’t be effective. If you can’t get yourself to study, set a timer for 30 min, take a 10 min break and work to add to the length of the studying each time.

Eat the frog :

Start with the boring and hardest tasks first. You’ll be more motivated to get work done after you get them out of the way.

Break up big goals to shorter clear tasks :

Don’t write for example ’ study maths ’ as a task, instead note exactly how you’re planning to do it, for instance ’ work 10 exercices from a certain book’ . It feels easier to get work done when it’s not just a vague goal.

Start homework as soon as you get. If you are busy, schedule a time block for doing it asap.

Break big projects to smaller tasks and schedule them on your planner.

You’ll more likely do them if you see them in your planner, then if it’s just an unclear deadline freaking you out and that you don’t know how to start.

Go to your classes and pay attention to your teachers:

Be ACTIVE. Ask questions, participate in class, it’s really helpful . Take your own notes, in your own way and don’t do just mindlessly note everything your teacher says. Pick just the important stuff or those that aren’t in the text book. Draw mind maps, lists, diagrams, use colors and leave space and margins.

When reviewing your notes, make them easier to understand by adding remarks from other sources in the margings.

I don’t know if it’s clear enough. But while reviewing my notes I like to use a pencil and try to make my notes easier to grasp, for example, write down a general way to solve all the problems that are similar to one that you have seen in class.

Study EVERYDAY:

Make studying a daily task. Don’t wait until the night before the test. Stay up to date with your classes.

Prepare your classes ahead of time time:

Read the text book. Google it. Watch YouTube videos. Take some notes and write questions for all the things you didn’t understand to ask in class. This way you won’t be overwhelmed in class and manage to not fall behind and make the most out if it.

Practice practice practice problems :

Work as much exercices as you can, and all the previous exams that you get your hands on. That way you know what the professor usually test the students on, and also you get used to working with your lessons, especially for maths and physics and such subjects.

Ticks in amber that fed on dino blood

The 99 million year old fossilised tree sap from Burma has brought us several significant finds of late including a baby bird (see http://bit.ly/2C8DsW1) and some early avian wings (see http://bit.ly/2hpvCQK). Now some preserved remnants from a feathered dinosaur nest has revealed several parasitic ticks (a type of arachnid, related so spiders and scorpions) alongside a dinosaur feather (one clinging to it for dear life) and nest dwelling beetles, and several other fossilised ticks have appeared in material from the same location. The feather clinger was seemingly filled with dinosaur blood and swollen to 8 times its normal size after its final and fatal feast (named by the team Deinocroton draculi aka Dracula’s terrible tick). For those fans of Jurassic Park amongst our readers, I’ll just remind you of the unfortunate scientific fact that DNA simply does not survive that long except in the tiniest and hard to read dribs and drabs (at the very best, and even these prove highly contentious).

Continuar lendo

lextalkington A couple more mech-fossils that will be available this Friday, Sep 28. . Gold Spiked Rockfish Articulated Copperneck Seahorse (in the background) . I’m busy making new frames for these, but I plan to offer a smaller compact stand with a solid background as an option.

Cute animals ♥

Today’s doodle: Torvosaurus tanneri for some signage at Eccles Dinosaur Park. Happy #FossilFriday!

Another one…