Reddit mentions of Brother HL-L2320D Mono Laser Printer

A Brother laser printer, that is.

Or at least a laser printer, but I second your recommendation of Brother.

I was in a similar situation in my first year, commuted 1.5h each way daily, didn't do so hot. You're actually actively trying to improve within the first month of your first year, that's better than me, which is impressive to say the least. And your post is not stupid! In your first year you end up taking a bunch of classes in different disciplines so you naturally will have a harder time. I also have a sneaking suspicion that professors try to make first year harder to weed out people, but it might just be my experience biasing things. Later on in your education you can sort of specialize into stuff you're good at. I improved most my second year, and did really well my third (even got $$$ from UBC for my grades :O). I settled in Computer Science so YMMV if you're in another science discipline, engineering, arts, etc.

If I would give advice to my former self, I'd say these things (sorry if this is a bit rambly, I will clean this up later) :

• Don't be overwhelmed, try any of the following stuff in piecemeal and try to iterate on what works for you.
  
  
• Do most of your studying/homework AT SCHOOL. Make time for that if possible, and treat it like a job. The library is your second home now. Actually the library is your home. Your other home is only for sleeping (7-8 hours), showering, relaxing, and potentially family stuff. After you're done commuting you should relax, or do light review. Never bring your stress home. There were only ~3 days where I was thinking of school at around 7+PM last year (excluding late evening exams, it was always traceable to something that would have been easier if I started earlier...).
  
  
• Go to all classes, sit at the front, say hi to your neighbor, and then take ALL the notes. I never read notes before class (BAD high school habit), but when I started doing pre-readings or skimming through to get a sense of what the topic would be, the lectures were about refining knowledge instead of racing to grasp it. Also it helps immensely if you start reading through textbooks and doing the problems in them. I read all my textbooks for my courses now and make my own notes before class (a good litmus test is can you summarize what the paragraph(s) just said in a few sentences?). Though make sure you're learning the same material the professor is teaching (keener problems :P). You should also skim/re-read your notes and it should take you 5-10 minutes to read a set of notes, which helps fill in the gaps between lectures!
  
  
• Simulate all your practice midterms/quizzes/exams in quiet places in the library, and time yourself. If you get a midterm/quiz back and you didn't do well, DO IT AGAIN on your own with the same time set as the original one. A bad grade is helpful in a weird masochistic way, it tells you EXACTLY what topics you need to do better in.
  
  
• Learn how to take better notes. Use techniques like the Cornell method, paraphrasing, etc. Also, when the professor says something that isn't on the slides, make note of it, it might be on the exam.
  
  
• Go to all labs, tutorials, etc and make an effort. Be attentive and alert in your work here. Don't be afraid to ask questions about stuff you don't know, you are wasting your tuition by not doing so - however - do prep though to figure out the gaps in your knowledge and aim your questions to bridge those gaps.
  
  
• Track all deadlines/deliverable in your courses using Google Calendar/Keep (or equivalent). Technology is not your friend if you don't use it right, i.e. if you play games, facebook, etc, it's only going to hurt you. This involves using piazza, connect, canvas, and etc on your phone/laptop to find what's up in your courses.
  
  
• Quit time sinks like gaming. I completely gave up gaming and my grades improved. I occasional can play games now, but in M O D E R A T I O N. Turns out if you stop playing games, you really just don't find them fun anymore. Removing stuff like gaming will cause time to just open up in your schedule.
  
  
• Start your homework/assignments ASAP (make personal deadlines HALF of what the actual deadline is), and go to office hours to clarify on stuff you aren't making progress on. Depending on the professor or TA, they might multi-cast the explanations they give to other students to spread the learning to you, so it might be beneficial to go even if you don't have any direct questions, just general uneasiness.
  
  
• Start a hobby. Reading, playing an instrument, a sport, etc. It helps relieve stress and ground you in reality that life is a lot more than just grades (seriously, think 60 years down the road).
  
  
• There is light at the end of the tunnel, think of how in XYZ amount of years you'll look back and enjoy your many accomplishments, including finishing UBC first year. :)
  
  
• Print out all your assignments (this is my best friend), homework and practice questions/midterms/quizzes/finals and do them in a quiet place. To give you an example, I print out my assignments, then whenever I work on them I manually make notes of how far I got, circling what questions I'm stuck on, what questions I can ask on piazza, office hours, etc.
  
  
• Grab all PDFs/Doc files from your courses and organize them into Onedrive/Drive/Dropbox etc. using a hierarchy structure. For example for every term I have folders for each class (and folders for stuff like co-op, etc), and in each class folder I have folders for the lecture slides, assignments, syllabus (for future reference), solutions, and practice materials. If you want to scan your notes you can do that too (get an auto feed duplex scanner, not a manual one!), and shoebox your physical notes! You can also save web pages as PDFs (should be built-in for chrome), some courses or labs were just HTML pages and you can't download them easily.
  
  
• Check out material from your courses from the internet, or other universities, or even online courses. For instance there was a concept in one of my classes that I didn't really get, I watched a few youtube videos and checked out some online lectures that shared topics and was able to understand.
  
  
• Know how your brain learns materials! An online course called "Learning how to learn" is a useful investment, but you are already overloaded it seems like. If you have a lazy saturday, or some spare cycles, read this reddit summary and/or watch the videos on coursera.
  
  The following stuff is really situational (and you should talk to your department advisors instead of some random redditor over them)
  
  
• Try spreading out your courses over summer - I took a few courses in the summer to stay ahead and have more breathing room.
  
  
• You might want to take a year break for work (co-op or non-co-op) - I did co-op, my grades got better when returning from my job, but I think this was more because I was the one paying for my tuition, not my parents.
  
  
• You may want to spread out your degree to 5 years - I'm doing this already because of co-op (16 month of work spread in between my terms), but you can just repeat a standing of a year (ie. be considered X year twice) if you don't meet promotion requirements.
  
  
  
  Specific to commuting:
  
  
• Try coming to school earlier to avoid the traffic and get in some extra study time.
  
  
• Listen to audiobooks or read a book (not a text book) while listening to music.
  
  
• Practice Anki flash cards or do some light review. I wasn't able to effectively zone out the transit crowd well enough to actually study new things.
  
  
• See if a family member can drop you off closer to a stop/sky train or pick you up. I skipped a bus transfer (and saved time in the commute) by just waking up earlier and hitching a ride with a family member to a Skytrain station.
  
  
  
  And on the health side of things:
  
  
• Bring your home made lunch or eat healthy on the campus. As a commuter it might be tempting to eat junk food, but try eating healthy.
  
  
• Drink lots of water, and if you can handle the weight, bring a refillable water bottle.
  

Switch to a Laser Printer, something like This : https://www.amazon.ca/Brother-HL-L2320D-Monochrome-Printer-Printing/dp/B00LEA5EHO

As for Adhesive Labels you can find plenty available as well : https://www.amazon.ca/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Shipping+Labels


If you sell quite a bit then a Thermal Printer might be worth a investment though i'm not to keen on those.

Thanks for all the replies! I can't decide between thermal or laser printer, which one would you suggest me? I will take one of those:

https://www.amazon.ca/Brother-QL-570-Professional-Label-Printer/dp/B000ZHEVZ8/ref=sr_1_6?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1491361089&sr=1-6&keywords=thermal+printer

https://www.amazon.ca/Brother-HL-L2320D-Monochrome-Printer-Printing/dp/B00LEA5EHO/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1491361083&sr=1-2&keywords=laser+printer

Im not sure if its allowed to ask about printers here, but lets try:

Would you recommend this printer? Its to print simple things like PDFs (text and simple images like charts)

Brother HL-L2320D Mono Laser Printer

and what's the difference to this one:

Brother HL-L2300D Monochrome Laser Printer with Duplex Printing

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LEA5EHO/?coliid=I1QWMRSEGBE9UY&colid=1CEG8SQ3FOV3G&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it