(Part 2) Best products from r/GetStudying

just bought a pair of these babys. Shit is great. I can listen to my lofi music while I study and not hear anything else but the music 👌🏽👌🏽👌🏽 super affordable and good enough music quality.


My father is retired so all he does is sit in the living room and watch game shows at a much too loud of a volume. There’s headphones work great to block out the annoying Steve Harvey

1. Eat your pancakes every day. If you don't know what I mean, watch this video.
   
2. Use flashcards. Anki or Firecracker. Pick one (don't do both!) and stick with it. Here's the medical school Anki subreddit. Here's the Firecracker page. Anki is free, but that has it's issues. Firecracker is expensive, but you get some good stuff with it (including an NBME Anatomy practice exam).
   
3. Use a Pomodoro timer. Google it. I follow the basic scheme of 25 on/5 off, with a 30 minute break after 4 Pomodoros. I usually work through my 5 minute breaks but always take the 30 minute break.
   
4. For Anatomy → acquire a copy of the Gray's Anatomy Review book and do all the questions. All of them. Use the UMich anatomy website for more help.
   
5. For Histology → I sort of floundered through this class so I don't have much advice to give other than don't just memorize the picture, understand what you are looking at.
   
6. Treat it like a full-time job that has overtime. You're expected to work 8-5 knowing that you'll also have to work from 5pm-8pm.
   
7. I cannot emphasize this enough - lots of cocaine! - Just kidding, I saw this on a meme elsewhere and wanted to throw this in.
   
   ​
   
   Are you by chance going to a school in the south? Perhaps one dedicated to Honest Abe?

I have terrible handwriting (tremor). You might want to try printing instead of cursive because you'll have to consolidate what the teacher is saying a bit more. I use graph-paper notebooks: the grid helps regulate my writing a bit. I also fold the paper into 2 columns or fold down a triangle section to break up the page visually, draw boxes around some things and try to note if anything strikes me with a funny association I can use for testing. If there's something to draw, I draw it...it looks awful but it's still a good memory prompt. But typing only works for me when I listen to online lectures that I'll never be tested on anyway.
For the notebook, Amazon is too expensive, (1/2 this price elsewhere) but these are the ones that help me: https://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Quad-Wirebound-Notebook-06194/dp/B003VIVX2C. At my store, they're located in the section with stationery and ledgers, not with the main set of notebooks.
I hope any of that helps! Good luck and good job for thinking it through.

I used to have this issue as well. I was experimenting tree-like structures (file systems), wiki-like structures (like wikipedia), tag-like structures (like evernote). I was experimenting with different formats like text, physical hand written notes in folders, scanned hand written notes, hand written notes using a wacom...



Of course, I was spending so much time on structuring information and finding the optimal solution that I was not getting any studies done.

Really, there is no best way to organize all information. Different kind of files relate to other files in complex ways, tags will always be kind of off. Different information lends itself to different kinds of visualization and representation. So you'll never reach optimality in this quest of yours.


My tip for you is this: let it go. Don't do it. A first approximation is all you need (drop stuff in a folder with course name, for example), further optimization will only lead to over-fitting.

Another way of putting this issue is in the context of a sort/search problem. The problem here is that sorting stuff is computationally expensive, and so if you can, you don't want to do a sort. Only if you need to search for something many times will sorting the data be computationally worth it. And here is the question for you: how much time are you spending on sorting compared to searching? Are you spending enough time on searching that you need to do a sort so that future searches are quicker?


Personally, I use a mix of dropbox, evernote, google keep and workflowy to organize my stuff.

I use google keep as a kind of "post-it" wall; "remember to buy this book", "this music album was pretty good, check it out", etc.

I write all my lecture notes and book notes on physical paper, then I'll scan them and push them to evernote, with the course tag attached. Old exams and the like also go into evernote.

Finally, labs and stuff that is "volatile", that I need to change often, goes into a Dropbox folder. When the lab is complete, it gets zipped up and sent into evernote as well, for future reference.


So this is how I personally do it. I think it works for me, but you know, everyone is different. :) Good luck.

Edit: The search/sort problem, and the problem of overfitting, and it's applicability to real life, is taken from the book "Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions" by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths. I love this book, definitely a recommendation from me!

I’m going to answer your questions in reverse.

My college doesn’t offer an app for its online class interface. BUT THATS OK because the safari/anything you do on the internet (anything I do on the internet) is the exact same as it is on my MacBook. I have the 13” 2018 MacBook Pro fwiw, so screen size is berry similar.

I have office suite on my iPad and laptop. On iPad, again with the exception of it being the iPad APP FOR MICROSOFT WORD, not the 2019 SUITE FOR PRO, the essentials are there. It’s what I consider “bells and whistles” to be missing. To see what I mean just download the app on your phone if you don’t have it already. That’s doesn’t mean I don’t use it, it’s just less advanced than I wish it was.

I only use the onscreen keyboard or scribble to text features on my iPad. I purchased it to replace note taking systems that became arduous to me, but I couldn’t seem to break myself from. No more printing, no more buying the pens in 20 colors. These two items, and their functioning chargers (carrying case, which is slim, holds both) is all I need and often would carry to class.

I have my iPad in a slim case that has a magnetic front-folds over the screen and you can convert it into two different positions for “stands” and I write in both positions. https://www.amazon.com/JETech-Generation-Model-Sleep-Black/dp/B00W4ZLZP8/ref=mp_s_a_1_4?keywords=ipad+pro+12.9+case&qid=1574430829&sprefix=ipad+pro&sr=8-4

You very well may want something more protective. My reasoning is that I’m the only person touching it, I only touch it when I am sitting/laying, I enjoyed the feel of the thinner case better (as I have had other iPad with otter boxes and they were bulky).

I hope that answers everything:-) let me know if you have more questions! I’m very happy to share.

This book for Evolutionary psychology seems quite good as it is published by the Cambridge University Press, although I have not studied much on evolutionary psych. Also, anything by Frederick Toates is very well written, and we use this book in my biological psychology lectures at university and has a lot of neuroscience in it.

However, textbooks can unavoidably be quite expensive (even though you can sell them afterwards, getting the initial cash can be hard without a student loan). As an alternative, you might want to look at the A Graphic Guide series. I read the Introducing Psychology one during my A levels when I didn't have much money and found it really useful, although a bit short. There is one specific to evolutionary psychology, too.

Finally, a researcher at my university told me about this book, written by one of his lecturers, that helps you to understand more about the anatomy of the brain. It is a colouring book where you colour in each different region of the brain, but each page gets more specific about each brain region. The book isn't that expensive either. Here is a link. :)

Hope this helps, and good luck on your psychology quest :D

I'm going to go out on a limb and say yes, a VAST majority of speed reading and accelerated learning courses are based on the general principles put forth by Evelyn Wood. It will take some practice and like any worthwhile acquired skill, there will hills and valleys and plateaus of reading speed but it will kick in. Throw in mind-mapping and eventually you'll start creating images in your head as you head almost as if you were mind-mapping but not drawing it out.

I add in mind-mapping for a few reasons:

• You have to process the information in a different way. Reading is an auditory process while drawing something out and making pictures is much more of a creative, visual process.
  
• You have to review the information - the act of creating a mind-map is essentially reviewing the information
  
• They can be interesting to create associations (anything with sex or personal interests are great)
  
• When I need to recall information, I can mentally "see" where that 'thing' was on the mind-map that I drew
  
  Amazon link for Evelyn Wood - don't bother with the reviews

Your welcome. Don't give up on r/motivation. They care about you succeeding.

Just learn to set priorities. One task at a time, breaking it up into small bits then working on those bits piece by piece and soon enough you are done. Also do not forget that your professors are people too and if you notify them WELL IN ADVANCE on your busy schedule they might accommodate.

PS good job on investing in a calender. I use both this white board and a giant calendar to keep myself in check. On said whiteboard AMAZON I write three motivational quotes and change one every day so I'm in a rotation of quotes or jokes to keep myself up and happy.

it's really worth getting in print.

Make sure you get a hold of the robin buss translation, it's the best one imo.

at around 1300 pages of tiny print - reading from print is far more comfortable than an ebook.

here is the buss translation in ebook format if you decide to go that route.

Edit: I'm not OP, just someone who loves the novel. Easily my favourite book.

Yeah, it's really liberating to know that you can do anything you set your mind to... And that it's ok not to know your passion immediately!

My favorite books on this topic:

So Good They Can't Ignore You by Cal Newport
and
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell


For online business, I love these peoples' sites:

• Ramit Sethi
  
• Marie Forleo
  
• Lewis Howes
  
• Chris Guilelbeau
  
  Check them out!
  (Just in case someone's wondering... None of these are affiliate links! LOL.)

• These notebooks. It works like a binder. You can take paper out, put new paper in and move stuff around as you see fit.
  
  
• To go with the notebook is this hole punch. With this you are also able to put in important documents that you use every lesson.
  
  
• These pens. They are erasable and have a very fine tip so they are ideal for drawing diagrams and writing super small.
  
  
• I just switched to a big enough pencil case so that I'm able to have my calculator in it.
  
  
• Evernote premium is something I use for so many school realted things that I feel like I have to mention it. I have not tried One Note.

If the room feels cold, maybe some copper string lights from amazon (UK / US) would help, thats what I use to make my room look a bit cosier, as well as having a nice candle to light (I use fruity smelling big candles but you could just get some cheap tealights and a candle holder too). This especially helps because my room is completely white with grey carpet so I really needed something that made it feel less cold.

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I have a couple of low maintenance plants on there just to make it seem a bit more homely and I have a blanket for if I'm working late or get cold.

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Would you be able to put up a little corkboard to stick some pictures and a schedule etc on?

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Do you have any pen pots or organisers on your desk? I think ASOS have some nice ones or you could go to a local stationary shop and check out what they have there

​

Most of it is just little personal touches to make me feel more comfortable there and make me actually want to sit down and study.

Yo, I'm not getting that image, but at a base level I can tell you this -

1. I don't know you if you know any R or Python, but there are good NLP (Natural Language Processing) libraries available for both
   
   Here's a good book for Python: http://www.nltk.org/book/
   
   A link to some more: http://nlp.stanford.edu/~manning/courses/DigitalHumanities/DH2011-Manning.pdf
   
   And for R, there's http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319207018
   and
   https://www.amazon.com/Analysis-Students-Literature-Quantitative-Humanities-ebook/dp/B00PUM0DAA/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1483316118&sr=8-9&keywords=humanities+r
   
   There's also this https://www.amazon.com/Mining-Social-Web-Facebook-LinkedIn/dp/1449367615/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8 for web scraping with Python
   
   I know the R context better, and using R, you'd want to do something like this:
   
   
2. Scrape a bunch of sites using the R library 'rvest'
   
3. Put everything into a 'Corpus' using the 'tm' library
   
4. Use some form of clustering (k-nearest neighbor, LDA, or Structural Topic Model using the libraries 'knn', 'lda', or 'stm' respectively) to draw out trends in the data
   
   And that's that!

Math professor chiming in:

My number one suggestion to students when it comes to something like this is to do so many problems that you can't NOT feel confident. More than anything else, success in maths comes from lots and lots and lots of practice. You should be doing more problems than just the homework. Pick problems from the book at random, especially harder ones! Check out various study websites (like Khan Academy) for more practice. Re-do homework problems. Ideally, this will help cover all problem types so that there won't be a problem you've never seen (plus or minus difference in numbers).

Making small mistakes can be avoided by, again, practicing. If you do a homework problem and make a small mistake, do the whole thing over. Again. Until it is perfect. I think often we say "oh yeah, I should've added not subtracted there" and we understand the small mistake, but unless you write it, you are not effectively correcting your mistake. It's very tedious, but it's the only way to get it done.

Finally, if you're at university, check out counseling services to see if they have suggestions and programs for test anxiety, particularly if they have things geared towards math anxiety. These are very real problems and they can really bring down your grade! You are already paying for counseling services, so you should use them :) It sounds to me like you have some testing anxiety since you are realizing mistakes right after you hand the exam in (I do think some of this can be alleviated by more practice, but you should still look into services!).

Good luck!

Edit: It should be noted that I think it's very important to understand the why behind the things you do in mathematics. If you cannot support your work with logical reasons for each step, then you do not really understand and more basic things need to be fixed. If you're in university, definitely start using office hours all the time. If you're in high school, press your teacher for more explanation of why. Any good instructor should be happy to answer such questions. Math is a field based on logic, and your work should be too!

If you're serious about buffing up your study skills, check out Winning at Math. It will cover most of the things I've said here, and more! There's also a whole chapter about math anxiety.

I'll share my reading list for the next 12 months as it's how I plan to become a better learner:


 

Learning

• Learning How To Learn - Free online course
  
• Become a Straight-A Student - Book
  
• Make it Stick - Book
  
  
  Improving Maths
  
• A Mind for Numbers - Book
  
• Secrets of Mental Math - Book
  
• Vedic Mathematics- Book
  
  
  Improving Reading Speed
  
• Breakthrough Rapid Reading - Book
  
  
  Algorithmic thinking
  
• Algorithms to Live By - Book
  
  
  Understanding the Mind
  
• How the Mind Works - Book
  
• Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow - Book
  
• The Owner's Manual for the Brain - Book
  
  
  Productivity
  
• Getting Things Done - Book
  
• The Willpower Instinct - Book
  
• Willpower Doesn't Work - Book
  
• The Chimp Paradox - Book
  
  
  
  It's an ambitious reading list for the next 12 months as there is some heavy reading in there but hopefully you can get one or two useful suggestions from it!