Step One:

04:10 PM // Hello! I made these mind maps a few days ago. I’m really proud of them considering I never made one before.

Study time!

How to Take Notes: from a Textbook

(Be sure to change the post type from link to text post when you reblog, if that’s what you want to do)

This method is best suited for textbook or article notes, and is a version of revised notes. It is also well suited for books you plan on returning to the bookstore or books you have rented, as it does not involve writing directly in the book itself.

First, you’ll need to find a notebook, and the pens you like the best. My favorite notebooks to work with for note-taking, especially for my “revised” notes, are the Moleskine, hard or soft cover, in size extra large. For this specific class (Intro to Gender and Women’s Studies), I decided that lined pages would suit my needs better. For my math, engineering, and science classes, I usually opt for squared paper, as I draw in lots of diagrams and graphs.

My favorite pens ever are Staedtler Triplus Fineliners, so even though they show through the pages a little bit, I still choose to use them. I just love the way they write. I usually write out my notes themselves with a Pilot G2 05 with black ink, as it writes with a finer line and doesn’t bleed through quite as much.

I usually try to set up my notebooks about a week or so before class starts, that way it’s ready to go on my first day of class.

You’ll want to start off by setting up your notebook. On my first page, I put my course code for my university, as well as the course title.

Next, and this is perfectly optional (I just like the way it makes the book look, especially at the end of the semester), I include some sort of related quote to the course. For my engineering courses (which are related to my major), I put a different quote at the beginning of each section. But as this is a two-month long course during the summer, I opted for one quote by Mohadesa Najumi at the beginning of my book.

Next I set up my table of contents and include a page with basic course information. As this course is all online, my course information just included the start and end dates of the course, what time content is posted and on what day, and the name of my professor. For my usual courses, I will include the days of the week the class meets on and where, TA names and contact info, as well as posted office hours for my professors and TAs and tutoring hours either in the library or in the College of Engineering.

Next is one of the things I’m most proud of.

While I religiously use my Erin Condren planner to map out my days, weeks, and months, I have found throughout my college experience that including monthly views for the months my class ranges has been helpful. This way, there’s no sifting through the multiple colors I have in my planner, and everything related to that class is in the same notebook.

On this calendar I include start dates of the class, the end date, the dates of exams or quizzes, assignment deadlines, office hours, etc.

For this course, as I just started a few days ago, I don’t have a lot of dates or information, so my calendars are still very empty.

Next up I go to my weekly overview. At the beginning of each week, I set up a weekly layout, and I include a list of assignments, tests, quizzes, tasks, projects, etc that need my attention throughout the week, and I place the days I plan on doing them or the days they need turned in onto the weekly layout.

Now you’re finally ready to get into taking the notes.

Gather your book, some sticky notes, and your favorite pen or pencil.

I color code my stickies so that the “revision” process later goes a bit smoother. In this case, I’m using blue to denote something interesting, intriguing, or thought provoking, greenish-yellow to represent the facts or important concepts, and pink for important vocabulary words and their definitions.

Read the selection once.

As you read along the second time, write notes on your stickies, and place them in a place of relevance directly on the page in the book. Just make sure you don’t cover up anything you need to keep reading.

Now, once you’ve read all the material in questions (you can choose to break it up however you want, but since Chapter 1 was assigned for the week, I’ve elected to break it into chapters), carefully remove your stickies one by one and lay them out on a flat surface. This is when having a separate color for vocab can be helpful, as I sometimes put all of my vocab at the beginning or end of a section, especially if the section of reading was particularly large.

Organize your stickies in an order that makes sense to you, and use this order as your basis for transferring those notes into your notebook. The order you choose can just be lumping them under similar headings. Some classes even lend themselves to a nice chronological order. Whatever you choose, just make sure it’s something that will make sense to you when you come back to it in the end.

Okay so up there I wasn’t following my own advice, I just thought I would include the picture because my handwriting looks nice…

Now organize the stickies!

Now you just start writing everything from the stickies into your notebook. I like to take each category or subgroup and put them in the book on the facing page, then put them back in my textbook as I finish with each post it.

Moving on to the next category.

Before you know it, you’ve written all of your stickies into your notebooks.

Now you’re revved up and ready to go. You can either keep going and make a note summary page (which I’ll show you next week), or you can leave it. These will also be helpful when reviewing for tests and quizzes. You can highlight or underline, or use even more stickies (which is what I usually do) as you review.

Well, that’s all I have for you right now. Happy studying!

(To view this post on wordpress, click here)

[02.01.18] Hi everyone! I have received a lot of feedback on my one page note summaries. I had always planned on sharing some of them with you all in PDF format but never had the time to. So here are some of my favorites and most requested! :D

Amino Acids

Cross-Bridge Cycle

Hypothalamic-Pituitary Axis

Mitochondria & Electron Transport Chain

The Digestive System Overview

The Kidney Overview

The Periodic Table & Trends

Viruses

Superb Study Guides and Mini Moleskines

(A more concise version of this will be published in my college’s newspaper on Thursday. I will likely add or link diagrams and examples to this post, so you can check the original here.)

As a tutor, many students ask me for tips on making study guides. Generally, my response is that, “it depends”.

But hold on. Before we continue we should discuss what the purpose of a study guide really is.

Study guides fall into two main categories: study guides that prompt you to find/think about information and study guides that directly organize the information you need to know. Some professors provide you with study guides of the former kind (i.e., you’re not given the answers), and it’s essentially your job to create your own study guide of the latter type. Both categories serve the purpose of organizing information you already have in order to synthesize a study tool that best facilitates your comprehension and memorization of the information at hand, just at a different stage in the process.

Before you even start, it is helpful to be aware of the level at which you are required to know the information for your test. The most basic of these is recalling definitions, which can accomplished by use of flashcards. Other information you’ll have to know will require you to compare ideas or apply them. Think of your learning process as literal → interpretive → applicative, meaning you will need study guides that help you visualize, draw relationships, and understand material so you may memorize less in a way that helps you answer more, and better than straight memorization ever could.

–

Concept Map:

These can be anything from a basic branching diagram to a complex mind map. This type of study guide allows you to compare information in a more spatial manner than strictly linear. Let’s be honest; sometimes linear learning is unrealistic, because our world is not truly linear. This format allows you to start from the basic, bare bones of the topic you’re studying and expand into very specific details and examples. This way you can get a really solid overview of the information and delve deeper as necessary. At least for mind maps in specific, Mindly is a beautiful and highly functional mind mapping app for iOS. It’s worth the small price, I can tell you that.

Comparison Chart:

Another visually-oriented type of study guide, comparison charts are the easiest way to map out similarities and differences for various topics. The biggest advantage of this method is that you can easily find the important similarities and differences of the subjects in question without having to reread a chapter or search through your piles of notes. It won’t help you visually connect topics like a mind map would, but this very simple tool is important and useful in its own rite.

Index Cards:

Before you skip over this because you think you know what I’m talking about, this is not the same as a flashcard. Flashcards have the very basic purpose of helping you memorize information, and little else. Index cards, however, are like flashcards on steroids because they contain much more information and are used primarily to summarize key information in a portable way that allows you to easily locate more details if necessary. Allow me to break down how you might want to use this method.

Front:

Middle: Main idea [e.g. alveoli]

Upper Right: Organizational term [e.g. respiratory system]

Bottom Middle: Source of information [e.g. Chapter 17, pg. 479 or Notes from 11/26/2013]

Back:

In your own words, what’s most important to know about the concept.

Include examples, summaries, diagrams, definitions, etc.

Be detailed! Remember, this is not about strictly memorizing.

Make sure the content corresponds to level of understanding your professor excepts

Diagram:

This one is pretty self-explanatory, but is extremely dependent on the topic at hand. This could be anything from a chemical reaction scheme, a cycle, Venn diagram, etc. You may even consider making a timeline, which is great for chronological organization of ideas. This is not limited to history, though! You can also organize information from classes such as anthropology, psychology, biology, anatomy, physiology, ecology, etc. If it has a specific, linear order, it can be made into a timeline.

Question Prompts:

This method I find works very well if you use the Cornell note-taking method. If you’re using Cornell notes, you would write your prompts in the left hand column next to where the answers are located, then just cover up the answers when studying. For example, for something as simple as a definition you could write, “What is _____?” For something more complicated such as a comparison chart, you could write, “What are the key differences between _____ and _____?” If you want, you can even ask questions that aren’t directly answered in the adjacent text such as, “Why is [idea] important to [concept]?”

–

Now that you know what formats you might use for your study guides (remember you don’t have to stick with just one), you may wonder where you can put this information. The basic answer to that question: anywhere. Many people like to draw these things on computer paper. You may want to type some of these things. If you’re using Mindly then you would be inputting the information into an app. I would like to offer up the suggestion of little mini notebooks for each class. I personally make these study guide materials on paper or a computer first, then when I’m satisfied with the result, I copy it down into my pocket-sized Moleskine notebooks. I personally prefer the squared, dotted, or blank notebooks, but whatever suits your fancy. The benefit to these little notebooks is that you have all of the information you need to study for in a small, convenient little book that you can easily keep in your backpack all the time because of its size. (Ladies, it will even fit in a clutch!) Study on the bus, waiting for class to start, when eating at the cafeteria, while waiting for your laundry to finish, etc. Not to mention, this will help you avoid losing papers because they’re all in one place.

Just try not to lose the notebook.

October 2015 Monthly Pastel Planner Printables

By request! Comes in the 5 colours pictured above (peach, pink, lilac, blue, mint). There’s two versions. One where the week starts with Monday and one with Sunday. 

Download from Google drive for free (PDF files):

Starts with Monday (October 2015)

Starts with Sunday (October 2015)

My other pastel planner printables:

Weekly

Daily

Hope you enjoy them! If you share pictures with them here, tag me with #studyblrbunny.

ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

writing adult emails is awful

its like

hi [name of person], 

this formatting is making me uncomfortable but I have to tell you something / ask you something that is vital to my career as a student. 

I re-read and edited that sentence for an hour, but you’ll probably just glance over it for half a second.

thanks! 

- [name]

{28/03/15} - It’s embarrassing how much making these excites me… trying to make a subject I find boring a little more amusing and I think it’s working?

child handling for the childless nurse

My current job has me working with children, which is kind of a weird shock after years in environments where a “young” patient is 40 years old.  Here’s my impressions so far:

Birth - 1 year: Essentially a small cute animal.  Handle accordingly; gently and affectionately, but relying heavily on the caregivers and with no real expectation of cooperation.

Age 1 - 2: Hates you.  Hates you so much.  You can smile, you can coo, you can attempt to soothe; they hate you anyway, because you’re a stranger and you’re scary and you’re touching them.  There’s no winning this so just get it over with as quickly and non-traumatically as possible.

Age 3 - 5: Nervous around medical things, but possible to soothe.  Easily upset, but also easily distracted from the thing that upset them.  Smartphone cartoons and “who wants a sticker?!!?!?” are key management techniques.

Age 6 - 10: Really cool, actually.  I did not realize kids were this cool.  Around this age they tend to be fairly outgoing, and super curious and eager to learn.  Absolutely do not babytalk; instead, flatter them with how grown-up they are, teach them some Fun Gross Medical Facts, and introduce potentially frightening experiences with “hey, you want to see something really cool?”

Age 11 - 14: Extremely variable.  Can be very childish or very mature, or rapidly switch from one mode to the other.  At this point you can almost treat them as an adult, just… a really sensitive and unpredictable adult.  Do not, under any circumstances, offer stickers.  (But they might grab one out of the bin anyway.)

Age 15 - 18: Basically an adult with severely limited life experience.  Treat as an adult who needs a little extra education with their care.  Keep parents out of the room as much as possible, unless the kid wants them there.  At this point you can go ahead and offer stickers again, because they’ll probably think it’s funny.  And they’ll want one.  Deep down, everyone wants a sticker.

{ 06.09.15 } » did someone say making posters?