25/11/18 - 77 Days Of Productivity

19/09/18 Maths notes!

General advice for GCSE and A levels

So I was asked a question by a follower and I thought it might be beneficial to post some general advice for all the future candidates whose GCSEs and A levels aren’t cancelled because of a pandemic. Here’s a short list of what helped me get through these exams.

1) Getting exam technique down is IMPORTANT! Do not underestimate this importance - knowing what the examiners want from you is (sadly) almost more important than knowledge of content (though you do have to know that, too!)

2) Understand the question words. For example, explain means give detail, and list means don’t waste time with such detail.

3) Answer the question as it is written, not what you want the question to be. Some questions are really long winded - they’ll wrap up the question with some background material that you haven’t learnt about per se but is still relevant and applicable to your course. You have to be able to unravel the core of what the examiners are asking. Don’t worry about the wall of information. Do read it as be ready to glean clues from it, but find the question first.

4) Read the mark schemes AND THE EXAMINERS’ REPORTS! Last year’s documents are locked because teachers like to use them for mocks, but if you’ve already done those papers, ask your teachers to send you them. These are gold! Use the mark schemes to know which buzzwords and details the examiners will reward and use the examiners reports to see which questions candidates struggled to answer. There is almost always detailed analysis of common mistakes and advice to future candidates there!

5) Look through the teacher-oriented documents. I know for OCR A Biology A level, there were sample documents that gave examples of full marks, mid marks and low marks for long response questions. They literally hand you “what a good one looks like” (and it was easy to find because of how new the specification is). I was never given these documents in class! Nobody you have contact with knows the course better than a teacher who is meant to teach it. For A level languages, I read every single document, no matter how boring it seemed, which perhaps was a bit overkill, but it helped me know what exactly was expected of me. I’m talking everything from the specification to exemplar work and speaking exam conduct (which actually was useful because I then knew what would happen if I got too distressed to continue for example, as I knew what the teacher/examiner would be required to do in that case). It sounds nuts, but seeing it from a teacher’s perspective helped me. I knew the structure of my course by heart; I knew weightings of different aspects of exams and the learning objectives by which I was assessed. A lot of it is irrelevant admin, but there are actually some useful documents so do have a root through!

6) Don’t be afraid of old spec questions if the subject matter is relevant.

7) Revising using past papers is always the best way, ultimately. If you run out of past papers, make your own questions and file them away and come back to them! I buddied up with a friend and we tested each other, swapping our own exam-style questions at periodic intervals and marking our partner’s answers. You get to be the examiner, the marker and the candidate in one simple activity!

8) Learn from your mistakes. Don’t look at a lower mark and think you’re doomed; rather, think about where you went wrong. You’d be surprised at how many marks are lost to silly mistakes for which you’ll absolutely kick yourself in hindsight! Little mistakes might be avoided by doing something as little as slowing down, taking a toilet break to clear your head and generally being aware of them.

9) If there’s a certain type of question you struggle to answer, it may help to make a checklist of what to include. For example, whenever I’m asked to draw a graph, I write down things like “suitable axes using more than half the available space, x is independent variable, labels, title, units, correctly plotted points, line of best fit” in a corner somewhere out the way - and I’m at university rn! I do this before I start fumbling about with the question; it takes less than 30s to jot it down in a shorthand I understand.

10) Teach someone else, or pretend to! Even now, I remember stuff and understand it better if I’m “explaining” my thought process out loud as if I were teaching it. Understanding things will make subjects like chemistry a lot easier, because then you can apply what you know rather than blindly rote learn a bunch of examples. Mechanism you’re not quite sure of? Draw it out and talk it through! You’ll quickly pinpoint exactly what you’re struggling with.

11) Breathe and look after yourself. It’s not impossible; so much of success is about confidence. If you convince yourself you can’t do something, you absolutely won’t - attitude is everything and so is your health.

Damn 😳

Sometimes you're just an introverted loser who sits alone in your room with a cup of tea and a book, has fantasies about morally grey fictional characters, is severely touch starved with a completely fucked up sleep schedule and slowly declining mental health.

It’s a low-key kind of day

19/12/18 - 100/100 days of productivity!

As if I saved this as a draft instead of putting it into my queue 😑

Thank you so much for your continued support during my absence. It’s been a while but it is the holidays so I’m going to wait until next week to try my next run of 100 days, because that’s when I go back to sixth form.

So this was a while back, when I had just finished mocks. I find out how I did on the 10th January.

Integration at A2 is disgusting. Integration by substitution and especially integration by parts are just stupidly hard for my brain to understand for some reason haha

I feel... fulfilled. Somehow. Like I managed to achieve something meaningful that pushed me forwards in my goal of ultimately getting 5A*’s, because I’m normally a terrible procrastinator when I’m bored. Who knows, I may or may not get those grades but I will be proud of whatever I get because I put my best foot forward.

See you guys soon! I will be posting in the meantime (I promise) as I revise and get my brain back into the swing of things, so I’m going to be busy!

6-7/11/18 - 58-59 days of productivity

I’m so so happy I’ve finished this topic because a lot of it is just common sense. However, lessons are a laugh, as always :)

Analysing Der Vorleser in German is really amazing and I have my first essay to write on it this week! I really want to smash it out the park.

Maths is going well - I’ve used all this time I have to take it a bit easy these past two days because I felt like I was neglecting French.

Chemistry work is all done! AND I was in bed for 9:45pm, too :)

Plus - there’s supposed to be a biology test next week and I’m going to miss it for a visit day to Birmingham, which might just mess my schedule up but I’m excited for the visit nonetheless.

Have a great rest-of-week guys!

This is why we need to be kinder to people. You are welcome, also-another-random-Tumblr-user 💕

You are exceptional.

Thank you for existing.

I feel like so many people need to hear this because this message is getting lost in the noise of dismal politics and the aesthetics of everyone else’s lives.

P.S.

You do not need straight A’s to be exceptional.

You do not need to spend 24 hours a day making aesthetic notes to be exceptional.

You do not need to have your shit together all the time to be exceptional.

You do not have to be in an amazing mood 24/7 to be exceptional.

16/08/18 So studying languages is amazing but I also love sciences and there is an introductory lecture tomorrow about pharmacokinetics that I unfortunately am not attending. However, it looked like fun so I’m reading up on it myself and making some notes for something to do because it’s 22:14 right now. I’m not a person to specialise in just one thing 😫

Absolutely! I don’t have a MacBook - I have a seven-year-old, slow and slightly broken HP laptop that has served loyally as a faithful study companion. I have mildliners, yes - but not because everyone else has them. I have them because I actually like them!

I take the time to write up my notes neatly because they go into a folder that is inspected by my teachers - we get told off if we put scruffy work in. But I make them more aesthetic as a way of assimilating information and having a productive way to chill out.

The whole point of having a studyblr for me was to keep on track for my personal targets. If those targets were straight Cs instead of straight A*s it wouldn’t be any less valid.

I don’t have muji pens or the finest notebooks - I save up and buy some of my favourite Pentel Energel pens whenever I can because they are actually fairly expensive as pens go and I sure as hell wouldn’t buy them at all just because everyone else is raving about them. Otherwise, it’s a cheap notebook for me all the way - because guess what? The paper you use doesn’t impact the quality of your notes.

You do what’s right for you, studyblrs of the world.

Your aesthetic does not invalidate the quality of your account.

call for change: studyblrs

I have had this blog for about a year now, and I’ve come to realise the unattainable perfection of studyblrs. I created this account to motivate and educate myself and I feel as though these ‘perfect study notes’ hold unrealistic expectations. This is why I have decided to post things that are more realistic, educational and have a positive impact on the community. Please reblog this to spread the message: You do not need perfect notes, every stationary item, a macbook, top grades or an aesthetic study space to be a studyblr. All you need to do is do the best you can.

27/09/18 - 16/100 days of productivity

Well, today was... interesting. I got to school at 8am, went to form, had a cup of tea and did a maths challenge in said form... and spilt my water all over my bag. My important stuff was fine, but my phone and everything up front got soaked. Oops!

I had to lay all my stuff out on the desk and wait for my mother to bring a spare backpack. Of course, stupid me forgot to take my key out that bag so I was locked out for an hour when I got home :(

Other than that, I had 4 free periods and 1 lesson today. I made biology notes on gene regulation and the lac operon from 08:55 to 10:55 and did a mixed exercise on geometric sequences from 11:20 until 12:20.

Then came Chemistry, where we did worksheets on orders of reaction because my teacher had a massive migraine.

Lesson 5 was my designated time to see my tutor, who is a retired maths teacher and is helping me along. We spent 45 minutes talking about the binomial expansion and then radians, which was great fun. That was such a nice way to end the day.

When I got home (which was almost an hour later than usual since I was locked out!) I kind of flopped on my bed and completely forgot that I had to do homework due in tomorrow.

So at 17:00, I sprang into life again and finished German (pictured) and then Chemistry. That took until 21:00, when I forced myself to stop.

Girl’s gotta look after herself, you know?