0:00 [Music] I am home for winter break probably you are as well we finally get a breather from all of that schoolwork and a fresh start before second semester starts so let's make the most of that Fresh Start overhaul our study habits so that you can have the best semester of your life and I don't just mean better grades I mean spending less time on schoolwork feeling more relaxed and actually enjoying learning more the first thing I'm going to push you to do is get organized stay it with me this semester I will put my files where they belong I will not have an unidentifiable garbage dump of PDFs all over my desktop that was last semester okay we're not doing that this semester so this is how I organize my files first of all I have all of my school stuff in
0:46 an iCloud folder because I don't want to risk something happening to my computer and losing everything I've had that happen before and I also don't want to worry about doing manual backups so everything is in this folder I.E University and it doesn't take up to too much of my iCloud storage because these are mostly PDFs PowerPoints Word documents Etc so then I make a separate folder for each class and this is how I like to name each one of my folders so this would be for example Y3 S2 year 3 semester 2 advertising creativity I have a big folder for all of the classes I've taken in University and then the ones that I'm currently taking I drag to the sidebar so that I have shortcuts to them the first thing that you're going to put in each of these folders is the syllabus so I drop it into the corresponding folder and rename it 0- syllabus so that
1:34 when this folder is sorted in alphabetical order that file will always appear first then every file that I add to this folder throughout the semester I add a number to the beginning to indicate which session it's for so if for example I downloaded a PDF that I need to read for session 12 I would nameit 12 foundations of political communication chapter 12 or something sometimes we have double sessions so I would just write 11 12 right next to each other and this is what a finished folder looks like at the very end of a semester it's kind of beautiful then you're going to create a list of your assignments and deadlines so maybe you already use a paper planner for this maybe you have like a fancy task management app or just a sticky note on your desktop find whatever works for you
2:20 but have a master list that has everything so that nothing slips through their cracks personally I use a Google doc so I actually share this Google doc with all of my classmates so that everyone can see all of the assignments that we have coming up I think it's just a nice thing to do and it also eliminates people asking repetitive questions in the group chat although some people will still ask them so in this document I basically have important email addresses and other information relevant to our degree listed at the top then I have a heading for each class with that professor's email under that each assignment is listed as a to-do with the checkbox and then big exams and project deadlines are highight highlighted in yellow and I put any important information about that xammer project Below in small text I also have
3:06 this archive section at the end so each time the due date for an assignment passes I delete it and I move it down there so that if anyone needs to catch up on older assignments they'll have access to a list of everything that we have done for that class so that's your file organization your assignment tracker and third you're going to need a system for not taking honestly I don't have much advice for this because I see this as a pretty personal thing you got to find what works for you personally I used Evernote for my first two years of University and I quite liked it I just got sick of paying for it so I switched to using Microsoft One Note because we have one note included in like our University's Microsoft Office subscription one note has been fine I think I did prefer Evernote but again one note is free I'm just not really
3:52 like married to anyone not taking app so I'm not going to fervently recommend anyone I will say however that that some of the best students I know take their notes on paper so do with that information what you will I will talk a bit later about some tips I have for Effective note taking but for the time being just set up your folders your notebooks whatever in the note taking tool that you choose and finally set your goals for this semester maybe you have a GPA goal for me this semester that just ended my only goal was just to increase my GPA by any amount because it took a hit the previous semester but I think it's even better to write goals that are based on the study habits that you want to develop not some final outcome that may or may not be fully under your control but the habits so maybe this semester you want to start
4:38 studying for each exam at least a week before maybe you want to set a rule for yourself that you're not going to do school workor on Sunday so that you give your brain this weekly break write down this goal keep it somewhere visible maybe find an accountability buddy for it I've actually made a video about my experience having an accountability buddy a few years back but it can be hard to find a buddy who you can count on even when life gets super busy for both of you so I want to thank Summit for sponsoring this video because Summit AI is a personalized life coach that will help you with your goals in school or any other area of your life so I've been using Summit to push me to do my internship applications for this summer to find sponsors for YouTube videos and also for this no complaining challenge
5:24 that I did a few weeks back so basically you tell your coach who you can personalize to have any of voice you want mine is very fun and peppy you tell them what goal you want to work on and it helps you adjust that goal so that it is actionable time bound you know all the smart goal stuff it helps you break down that goal into milestones and it will actually check in with you each day to ask you about your progress so you can have a conversation with it just like you would with an accountability Buddy it'll help you work through any obstacles you might be facing plan out your next steps or just get a nice little pat on the back for for what you've accomplished since it's the New Year another really cool feature that I love is the life circle so here your coach basically guides you through rating and reflecting on each area of
6:10 your life and then it recommends goals that you might want to work on based on the ratings that you gave Summit is free so you can go to summit. IM or just go to the link in the description and start personalizing your life coach all right so for the next section of the video we're going to talk about what you have to do in class to be an academic Powerhouse I love this phrasee it's so dramatic my first bit of advice is to pay attention in class don't click off the video yet I know this sounds stupidly obvious but at the beginning of the video I said that these tips would not only help you get better grades but also enjoy School more and so I think paying attention in class actually has a lot more to do with how much I like school I take notes on my computer okay I get distracted too I multitask but what I have noticed is that when I am
6:56 fully engaged and not multitasking not only do I obviously learn more but I leave class in a better mood especially if I participated in some way like if I got to ask a question or share an idea I just feel like I really got the most out of that hour like I have to go to class attendance is mandatory so I don't have any control over that but I do have control over whether I enjoy my time there so again I'm definitely guilty of multitasking feel free to call me a hypocrite if you ever see me in class not following my own advice but just try closing your other tabs and focus in completely and see what happens and secondly I promised that I would have a little more advice on effective not taking so here it is honestly I cringe a little bit when I see people copying the slides down word for word into their
7:43 notes because what is the point of that the best way to actually absorb the information after you listen to it or read it is to toss it around in your brain a little bit let it simmer let it marinate and then try to rewrite it in your own words a lot of professors put way too much text on their slides so trying to cut out what's unnecessary is actually a really good exercise in understanding in your notes you should also add any questions that you ask or examples that came up in class discussions because often times that's the stuff that really makes the content clear that's why personally I'm generally not a fan of self-studying I love being in a classroom because even if I myself have nothing to add to the discussion or I don't think that I have any questions just being there and listening to my classmates discuss I
8:29 feel like I get so much out of that before I move on to the next section I want to preface this by saying that I study Communications and digital media so your experience might be very different based on what you study we don't do math for example we do tons of group projects tons of presentations and so my advice is based on that take what helps you and leave the rest you really do not need to study for long stretches of time it is tiring it's boring and it's ineffective there's literally nothing good about it first I want to say that the more you keep up with your work throughout the semester the less you'll have to study for midterms and finals it's an inverse relationship so maybe there's a class where you technically have to do readings for each session but you don't do them because the professor doesn't check it's
9:14 probably going to come back to bite you in the ass at the end and honestly you know your learning style best so maybe you do work best Under Pressure but I do not so I would much rather learn all of the material at a relaxed pace throughout the semester than try to learn a semester's worth of content in 3 days at the very end secondly short intense study sessions are the key so when I have a final exam coming up I usually schedule out like a few morning study slots in the week leading up to the exam and these are an hour 2 hours maximum so they're short but what do I mean when I say that they're also intense first of all you are making your own notes I don't understand people who ask for notes and for study guides because making the study guide is the
10:01 studying it's all about active versus passive consumption making a study guide means going through your notes your readings the lecture slides and trying to synthesize all of that information down to the few most important bullet points when you're reading a study guide on the other hand like a study guide that someone else made you are not making any of those personal connections okay so first of all you are making your own notes your own study guide secondly you are practicing active recall so I remember in AP psychology which was one of my favorite classes that I ever took we learned about memory and we learned about recognition recall retention active recall means that instead of just looking at a PowerPoint slide with a bunch of definitions and reading it over and over again you are testing yourself
10:46 to see if you could pull up that information from the catalog of your brain you're covering up sections of your study guide trying to recall as much as you can before revealing what the study guide says and filling in any information that you missed you can almost feel your brain like a muscle having to strain a little bit to remember something and yes this way of studying is harder but this is how learning happens and ultimately you will spend less time on studying because this is so much more effective and efficient so for example if you have a big exam coming up and you have a list of Concepts you need to know and you're making a study guide you will learn way more effectively if you first challenge yourself to fill out as much of that study guide as you can from memory than
11:32 if you immediately just go to your notes and start summarizing those so test yourself check what you're missing test yourself check test check until you can remember all of the information so making a study guide active recall and finally spaced repetition if you have 5 hours in the week to dedicate to studying you will learn the material way better if you study for an hour each day then if you do one crazy 5H hour long study session your brain has this is forgetting curve over time it drops suddenly in the beginning and you basically need to review that information to keep bringing yourself back up to this level and each time you do that the longer the information will stay in your brain that's the concept behind apps like Anki which you might have heard a lot of student YouTubers
12:18 using basically you get a new flash card A New Concept that you're learning and if you get it right you'll see it again in like 10 minutes to review it then if you get it right again you'll see it in a day and then in 3 days in a week in a month that information just gets more and more solidified in your brain but you have to keep reviewing it over time so let me show you all this in practice because even when conditions are not ideal these techniques will help you make the most of your limited time and limited mental energy so I had a final exam like 2 weeks ago and the week prior to it my mental health really was not good I also didn't really like this class so I hardly paid attention over the course of the semester and I felt like I was screwed I honestly just kind of accepted my fate at that point but I managed to pull myself together and do
13:05 the bare minimum so I opened up all of my lecture slides I looked at the list of Concepts our professor told us we had to know and I studied intensely I was summarizing those slides into bullet points for 35 minutes on Friday for an hour on Sunday and for an hour on Monday right before I took the exam I honestly didn't even review that study guide after I made it but with the process of making it solidified so much information and so many acronyms in my brain and I managed to get a 10 on the exam and honestly I am very glad now that I didn't spend more time because apparently anything beyond those 2.5 hours would have just been a waste of time so I've actually written an addition of my newsletter that is all about tips for staying focused and
13:50 eliminating distractions I write this pretty cool pretty useful bi-weekly newsletter if you're interested in signing up for that you can sign up here but I I'll give a summary here when you are super intensely focused on doing something and something pulls your attention away it is so hard to get back that flow state that you were in so this is something called attention residue basically when you switch tasks your brain is not a computer it cannot fully switch over to the new thing that you're doing because some of your attention remains with that distraction so here's what I recommend when you're studying first of all turn off all distractions mute notifications on your phone mute whatsa on your computer anything that might ring ding or buzz and also I like to put my phone behind my computer
14:37 because other Studies have shown that the mere presence of your phone is actually distracting even if it's not making any noise if it's turned off just having it there takes some attention away from your brain so I don't want to see it it's behind my computer secondly I live by the Pomodoro Technique you've probably heard of it but it's basically where you set a timer and you work for 25 minutes and then you take a 5 minute break and then you just keep alternating that I use this for any work that I'm doing because taking regular breaks means that I'm able to work and focus for much longer stretches of time and it also makes any daunting assignment feel a lot more manageable if I know that I only need to be focused for the next 25 minutes like don't worry about the big
15:22 picture how this whole project is going to come together only look at the next 25 minutes and what I need to get done in that next little Pomodoro and finally pick a good place to study so depending on the level of background noise that you like whether you like having company or not don't compromise on that okay set boundaries go to the study space that you like study with the people that you know you can focus with if you're like me and you like to study at home by yourself then don't study on your bed keep your bed for sleeping and your couch for couching because you want to be comfortable but not like soft plushy comfort fortable you want to be somewhere that's conducive to focusing so personally I like to study at my kitchen table and finally for the final section of this video I wanted to dedicate a part of it to group work
16:09 almost everything we do in my degree is a group project individual work is the exception not the norm I think it's really interesting that there's like a lack of discussion about best practices for group work if that makes sense like none of it is actually practical advice for how best to divide up work and combine different ideas from different people and run meetings efficiently but there are a few things that I've learned so first of all if you're allowed to choose pick a solid group sometimes this requires having difficult conversations and saying no to people but you got to do it I've learned that there are some people that I love talking to socially but I simply cannot work with them and so you kind of have to separate work and personal life in a way so then once you have your group there are a few Bliss Bean trademarked certified best
16:56 practices that I have developed number one meetings are for making decisions meetings are not for working I think you should always come to a meeting with something already prepared because if you come with nothing you're kind of just all spinning your wheels and wasting time so for example I might be like hey guys before we meet please individually brainstorm five ideas for our marketing plan or whatever and add them to this Google doc so that when we meet we have a starting point for our discussion and we can just finalize our idea and move on to delegating work do people actually do this 80% of the time no but honestly if I at least can bring something to the meeting as a starting point and maybe like one other person it's much better than nothing number two be a proactive group member I actually
17:41 also wrote a newsletter about this so many people shift the mental load onto others to make it look as if they're doing work without actually doing any work they'll text on the group chat and be like hey guys we should meet to start this project and then disappear okay yes we should meet can you look at our class schedule and find a few possible meeting times and then make a poll and send it to the group chat so that we can actually schedule something so basically my rule and I feel like it's kind of just a variation of the golden rule is don't be the person who only ever points out the work that needs to be done be the person who makes a plan and gets things done number three set internal deadlines so especially if it's a long project You' got to set your own checkpoints like hey each person should have their research done by this day we should have our slides done by this day so that we can all meet and rehearse the
18:26 day before the presentation again do people follow these deadlines usually no but it's still better than nothing number four you can split up the work and do Parts individually but you have to leave time to make sure that all of those individual Parts make a cohesive hole so again maybe this is just because I study Communications but I've realized that so much of a group project is just about telling a good story like you might have bullshitted the project but if you can tell a good story that makes sense and connects all the different parts of your project into a cohesive narrative teachers love that it is so important to leave time so that you can all come together and see if your parts make sense together because otherwise you'll just have like a Frankenstein of a project and it'll be very obvious that
19:14 people did their work without ever even communicating with each other and finally number five high five have some boundaries I really try not to do any school work on Sundays of course if it's absolutely necessary I will be flexible but having this rule for myself pushes me to be proactive and be the one who makes sure that our group gets our work done early enough that a Sunday meeting does not become necessary and that I can spend my Sunday just cleaning and organizing and relaxing and in the end this is something that I agonized so much over this semester but if there are group members who aren't contributing make an effort to include them maybe they're just shy and that's why they're not participating but if they've just decided that that they're not going to do any work there's not really anything
20:00 you can do to change that so unfortunately you have to accept it before you go I just want to give you one book recommendation how to be a straight A student by Cal Newport I know the title sounds a little cheesy but this book is gold some of the concepts that he talked about were new to me other things were study habits that I already had been doing and I knew they worked but I couldn't put words to why they worked and he does such a good job of explaining everything you've probably heard of his other books like digital minimalism or deep work so you can trust this guy thank you so much for watching this video I hope you have a fantastic rest of your break and an amazing second semester I'll see you for the next video [Music]
20:56 bye
