Note Taking

I always start my studying by making my notes and printing them out. I go through lecture slides to see if I left anything out on my notes and then I lay them out for ease of reading and print them out. I make all my notes on Google Drive so that I can pull them up on my laptop, phone or on a uni computer so I can refer back to them whenever I am studying. I like to print my notes since it makes them really easy to annotate while I am studying, and it's just so easy to work from a paper copy when I am also using them to plan essays or make revision materials. Nice notes are a great bit of groundwork for your studying!

Flashcards

Flashcards, both physical and digital, are excellent study resources! I tend to mix it up and make both paper flashcards and digital flashcards on Quizlet so that I always have as many revision resource options as possible. Creating flashcards means that you always have bitesize notes to hand when you quickly need to refresh your memory on a concept or topic. As a psychology student, I have always found flashcards incredibly helpful when learning different theories or studies. Quizlet makes it fun and easy to test yourself on your flashcards and the app means that you can take this method of studying anywhere! I always use the app on the bus or when I'm waiting for a shift to start, just while I have a free few minutes to kill.


Video Content & Podcasts

I am super lucky due to the fact that all my classes are podcasted, meaning I can revisit everything that my lecturers have said so that I don't miss out on any snippets of information! I go through lecture podcasts with my printed notes to hand, so that I can add anything the lecturer has said but hasn't put up on the slides. I also play the podcasts in the background whilst I'm doing chores and not studying so that I'm constantly reviewing information. I play these podcasts at 1.5x speed so that I can review each of them at least a couple of times before the exams.

Other video content may be available to accompany your classes. Crash Course pretty much got me through my A-Levels, especially my biology modules which were incredibly information heavy! I have also had course textbooks with accompanying videos on YouTube, like THIS cognitive neuroscience textbook. If you are having a hard time grasping a particular concept or topic, search for it on YouTube and see how someone else explains it! Sometimes, you just need a different explanation of a concept in order to understand it!

Mind Maps

A lot of my studying involves finding different ways to go back through my notes and review all the information I need to know. Cutting down the info into bitesize chunks for flashcards and (especially) mind maps pushes me to select the most important information from my notes, making sure I consolidate this info further while also reviewing my notes as a whole. Mindmaps are a good visual resource and I keep mine in their own separate notebooks per module, so I always have them to hand. When working through practice questions, pulling up a mind map means that you are being prompted only by keywords and headings rather than all the information you need to answer the questions, meaning that you need to push yourself harder to remember! They're really useful tools for your revision kit!


Past Paper Questions

I used to shy away from past papers and revision quizzes because they would make me lose confidence in what I had learned. I mean, how can I possibly take practice exams if I don't feel like I've revised enough for the actual exams? However, over time I realised that while past papers would make me feel unprepared for the exams, this was a good thing because it would light a fire in my belly and push me to work even harder. Plus, occasionally in exams, a question comes up which I have already worked on in a practice paper and I end up breezing through it since I remember how I answered and marked it in the past paper.

How do you study for your exams? I am always looking to try new revision methods! x

You can check out the rest of my student life posts HERE! You can check out my studyblr HERE! x

Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash

I've been a student for a good amount of years now and I've constantly searched for new ways to get productive throughout my time as a student, be that at high school, college or university! I have gathered a lot of tips, tricks and techniques over this period of time and I am so excited to share these with you! Before I set up this blog, I used to run a study blog over on Tumblr and I really learned a lot about productivity from this experience, as well as from studying and trying different things for myself!

There are so many great productivity apps on the market and so much choice that it can be hard to see which ones actually work and help you to get productive! I have tried and tested so many apps and I have finally settled on my handful of staple productivity apps, which I keep in a folder on my phone for those study/work days!

Forest

If you haven't heard of Forest, it is an incredibly popular app on the app store and possibly the cutest productivity app out there! It asks you to choose an amount of time that you want to focus for (I always go for 25 minutes as per the Pomodoro technique) and it plants a lil tree for you. As long as you do not go on your phone and exit the app for this length of time, the tree will grow. If you go on your phone and procrastinate, the tree dies and you are left with a dead little tree in your forest. It's a fun and cute way to get productive!

You can download Forest on the App Store HERE and the Google Play store HERE. There is also a Chrome browser button that you can download if the app isn't your cup of tea!

• Quizlet - a great app for students who are trying to revise!
• Canva - for making great graphics on the go!
• Google Calendar - gotta have a good calendar!
• To-Do - simpler than Priority Matrix!
• Dictionary - you never know when you'll need it!

• My Passion Projects
• Career Contessa
• Career Girl Daily

I was brainstorming for blog ideas this morning and it struck me that I haven't talked about my body confidence and how it has changed and shifted over the years. I also have some advice that I want to share on the subject and also a little bit to say about how getting my first tattoo has affected the way I see my body.


I don't think I really thought about my body shape until high school. In primary school, everyone just got along and I only have good memories from that time in my early life. However, it wasn't the same in high school, which I think is quite common. I was beginning to see, and hear, negatives about my body that I just hadn't considered before. I felt fat and I began to dislike my features. In PE, I felt useless. I was told that I just wasn't trying at sports and needed to get on with it when what I really needed was the encouragement to improve rather than being completely terrified to go to another PE class. Comments were made about my nose being 'massive' and 'huge'. I remember one instance when I was told that I would never find someone who would go out with me unless they were blind.




Towards the end of high school, I obsessed over body image and tried all the home workouts in the world. In time for prom, I had slimmed down quite a bit and felt slightly better about myself that summer. I even wore a bikini once, but I was still pretty terrified and didn't wear it for long! It was the beginning of my on/off relationship with working out and fitness bursts.


College was a bit better in terms of my body image. I was riding the wave of the body positivity movement and I started my first part-time job so I was able to buy all the clothes I wanted to wear and dress exactly how I wanted. Gone were the days of having to wear a school uniform five days a week and then normal clothes twice a week. I was wearing MY clothes five days a week and then a fast food uniform twice a week. Even when I was putting on weight from stress eating during my A-Levels, I still felt super cute. I started experimenting more with makeup and funky clothes and I even cut my hair super short! I felt individual and suddenly my weight didn't seem like my defining feature.

That's right! I miss my teenage emo days! It seems like yesterday that I was listening to all the music I could find in Kerrang and dreaming about a time when Hot Topic would bring its beautiful stores to the UK, specifically near me in Wales! It was a good time! When My Chemical Romance was still together and I could solve all my problems by listening to Carolyn by Black Veil Brides over and over again! Here are a few more reasons why I miss these days!

I felt a part of something

The music that I listened to felt like part of my identity! It was all I thought about and pretty much all I talked about. Whenever I met anyone wearing merch from a band I liked, I instantly felt connected to them! I would find any way I could to be their friend and I met so many people like this! People I am still friends with! I wore my band tees with pride and loved it when people noticed them. Going to shows and signings felt incredible too because I felt a connection to each and every person there.

Having a sense of individuality

I thrived on sticking out in a crowd! I loved having a sense of individuality and causing a stir. I was in a more confident place than I am now and felt like making a statement with my clothes or hair or makeup made me different to everyone else. Unique and someone who could not blend into a crowd! I felt like a total badass and loved every minute of it! I miss that feeling!

My Chemical Romance was still together

Undeniably my favourite bad at the time, and possibly ever, was My Chemical Romance. I loved following them on social media and also finding fellow fans of theirs on social media! It was a massive fanbase and interacting with them made me feel like I had a massive community of friends! I would wait eagerly for new music, lose myself in the worlds that they created with their concept albums and listen to them non-stop!

I lived from gig to gig

Whenever I wasn't at a gig, I was thinking about what the next one would be! Granted, because I lived in a small town, gigs were few and far between and difficult to arrange since I would have to travel to get to them. However, the feeling of being at a gig was my favourite! My favourite bands were right there in front of me and they were actual REAL people. It would blow my mind! I also found being shoved around in a massive crowd very exhilarating. I want to go to see more live music like I used to.

Pulp stores and signings

On the odd occasions in which I could afford to travel to cities, my first destination was always Pulp! The clothes, the merch, the music; it was like heaven! Plus, I once went to a signing held at Pulp and it was all I could talk about for months! I had met and hugged the members of one of my favourite bands and it was amazing! The excitement that I had felt back then just being in these stores is funny to look back on. I do miss that feeling!

The makeup

My makeup skills were very questionable but I loved the way I made myself look! I would use white powder on my already pale skin to make sure I looked extra pale and I would apply thick eyeliner better than I ever could nowadays! I would buy this powder from Claires every time they stocked it for Halloween and it was my top makeup trick! I felt amazing! Sometimes in my room, I would put on makeup worn by my favourite band members! Especially those who wore a lot of costume makeup in their music videos!

Exploring my emotions

I would listen to a sad or angsty song and feel a sense of relatability. This would make me ask myself why I felt that way and led me to think a lot about my own emotions and really understand them! I became more in touch with my emotions than I ever have been and I think that was a very good thing! It made me more self-aware and definitely made me feel way more alone to listen to a song and know that the person who had written it had gone through a similar thing!

What do you miss about your early-mid teen years? Do you ever wish you could go back? x