Language Learning Tip: An Interpreter’s Guide To Learning Vocabulary

some outfit designs

To Witches Who Are Going Back to School

For those in the broom closet, or for those who are open, for baby witches and for the experienced, here are some back to school witch tips to help your school year be magical and spectacular <3

Draw sigils on assignments for good grades/to have your teacher appreciate your work, scratch them out really hard/fast or erase them to charge.

Charm your lip balm to be persuasive, or to be heard!

Draw a tarot card in the morning to see what you should be aware of for the day, or what you need to work on for the day.

Stir your morning tea or coffee counter-clockwise to rid bad energy, and stir clockwise to bring in good energy, luck, and any other sort of positive intention.

If you have a binder that acts as a book of shadows, place sigils on them to keep wandering eyes away.

Glamours, glamOURS, GLAMOURS!!!!! They work so well if you’re running late. I like to mumble them to myself and mediate on Rose Quartz when I’m in a rush.

Eat small snacks to keep yourself grounded, and don’t forget to breathe after each class. Trust me, I know it can get frustrating with obnoxious people.

Charm talismans/amulets/bracelets to help you be on time/remember your homework.

Put satchets in your lockers/decorate your locker to make it a little safe space or school-friendly altar.

Keep the list going! I started school Monday and I’m eager to see what else witches can do for school!

a college au scully!! ✨💫

being compassionate to yourself involves making it a discipline to do the things that you love, no matter how many times you attempt to convince yourself that it’s no use. being compassionate with yourself involves sitting down and writing, even when you feel insecure about the work you’re producing. being compassionate with yourself involves taking a walk outside because you haven’t had any fresh air the whole day. being compassionate with yourself involves committing yourself to learning something new even if it hasn’t gone well many times before. being compassionate with yourself is about committing to the discipline of self-betterment and healing.

Loneliness

it's never too late to start your day

insomnia got you sleeping in until 2 pm?

that's okay. get yourself some coffee and go thrift shopping, no one will know

anxiety got you staring at walls until 8 pm?

it's going to get better. start a load of laundry and take a hot shower, so you go to sleep clean

depression keep you locked in your room until 11 pm?

it'll be alright. drive to walmart and buy some nice candles for your night, you'll wake up with something new

you don't have to start your day in the morning. i start at 5 pm sometimes and let me tell you, doing something almost always feels better than doing nothing. it doesn't have to be big or important. it doesn't have to be too much to handle. it's enough to wash your face, or comb out your hair. if you feel tired, it's enough to make a list of things you want to do tomorrow. don't let the clock hold you back. it's a piece of glass and plastic. you get to decide what a day is.

GOOD STUDYING VS BAD STUDYING

GOOD STUDYING

Use recall. When you look at a passage and try to study it,  look away and recall the main ideas. Try recalling concepts when you are walking to class or in a different room from where you originally learned it. An ability to recall—to generate the ideas from inside yourself—is one of the key indicators of good learning.

Test yourself. On everything. All the time. Flashcards are your best friend. Use quizlet if you don’t want to hand-make flashcards. Get somebody to test you on your notes.

Space your repetition. Spread out your learning in any subject a little every day, just like an athlete. Don’t sit and study one subject for 2 hours, do half an hour every day.

Take breaks. It is common to be unable to solve problems or figure out concepts in math or science the first time you encounter them. This is why a little study every day is much better than a lot of studying all at once. When you get frustrated, take a break so that another part of your mind can take over and work in the background. You need breaks in order for your brain to retain the information. Try the Pomodoro method if you have trouble timing breaks!

Use simple analogies. Whenever you are struggling with a concept, think to yourself, How can I explain this so that a ten-year-old could understand it? Using an analogy really helps. Say it out loud, like you’re teaching it, whether it’s to an imaginary class or your sister who couldn’t care less.  The additional effort of teaching out loud allows you to more deeply encode.

Focus. Turn off your phone / iPad / any distractions and clear your desk of everything you do not need. Use apps like Forest if you can’t stay off them!

Do the hardest thing earliest in the day, when you’re wide awake and less likely to push it aside.

BAD STUDYING

Avoid these techniques—they can waste your time even while they fool you into thinking you’re learning!

Passive rereading—sitting passively and running your eyes back over a page. This is a waste of time, frankly, and doesn’t do anything to help information pass into your brain without recall.

Over-highlighting. Colouring a passage of text in highlighter isn’t helpful at all. It’s good for flagging up key points to trigger concepts and information, but make sure what you highlight goes in.

Waiting until the last minute to study. DON’T CRAM!!!

Doing what you know. This isn’t studying! This is like learning how to juggle but only throwing one ball. 

Neglecting the textbook. Would you dive into a pool before you knew how to swim? The textbook is your swimming instructor—it guides you toward the answers. 

Not asking your teachers for help. They are used to lost students coming in for guidance—it’s their job to help you. 

Not getting enough sleep. Your brain practices and repeats whatever you put in mind before you go to sleep, as well as retaining information and repairing itself. Prolonged fatigue allows toxins to build up in the brain that disrupts the neural connections you need to think quickly and well. 

make your next semester better

so your last semester wasn’t as good as you would have liked it to be. 

some classes were good, and some were not. honestly, applying to universities and scholarships and just the stress of trying to get in has been getting to me. it happens to everyone at some point, whether you’re in currently in, pre, or post secondary-school. 

here’s how we’re going to make the next semester better! 

1. have a good first day.

a big mistake is to be hard on yourself on your first day. being disciplined is good, but when you push to hard you will break sooner. wake up as early as you need to be ready, but don’t push yourself to be up at some crazy hour of the morning. set our your stuff the night before so you can have an easy morning. treat yourself to a healthy, delicious breakfast, it’s really important to eat something first thing in the morning to get your brain working. try not to stress yourself out too much, especially if your last semester kinda sucked, and it’s VERY important not to let yourself automatically associate school with negative emotions like fear and stress, because that will paralyze you down the line when things get more difficult closer to exam season, etc.

2. don’t be afraid to drop

when going to all your new classes, really seriously evaluate your ability to succeed in a class with that time slot/professor/etc. and whether or not the class will really benefit you in the future. last semester i took a kinesology class, which has some relevance to what i want to do, but i didn’t need it. after realizing how much studying i was going to need to do, i dropped it so i could focus more on my other classes that i needed to get good grades in. or try and take it again next semester if it fits!

3. limit other activities at first

your first couple weeks of the new semester, cut back on other activities. do what you enjoy and what will ultimately de-stress you, but if you can, cut back on club meetings, or sports practices this will be best until you get back into a good flow. this will help you get used to the pace of all your classes without being stressed out by other things, it helps you reorganize your priorities and put school first

4. try out something new organizationally

typically, i am a very organized person, and being so i like to reorganize and try out different methods with my planners, folders, notebooks, etc. this helps me to keep me on my feet, remembering that i need to make sure i keep track of assignments, test dates, and anything else. try to find a strategy that works for you, and make it work!

so there are my tips, let’s start get this new semester off to a great start! 

me: trying to do schoolwork

my brain: oofjan stevens

Until2022′s Guide to Catching Up When You’re Drastically Behind in Study:

I. Assess the damage

The first step in the plan is to confront how bad the situation is and then make some calls about what you can realistically achieve in the time you have left. 

List everything you have to do, down to exact detail - don’t write ‘catch up on readings for Virology’, but instead note down every chapter. This will make it a lot easier to gauge how much time and energy you need for each assignment or exam, and will help to motivate you as you work through. 

Use an Eisenhower matrix to sort these tasks:

Important and Urgent: Any and all compulsory assignments, exams, tests, etc. 

Important but Not Urgent: Lectures for upcoming exams, compulsory readings or labs, etc.

Urgent but Not Important: Additional homework or tasks that are due soon but aren’t worth much, like logbooks or small quizzes

Not Important and Not Urgent: Additional readings, nice lecture notes, and other ‘good-to-haves’

Now cross out everything that you can afford not to do. That’s going to be everything in your ‘Not Important and Not Urgent’ zone, and probably all of the things in your ‘Urgent but Not Important’ zone. I know that it’s annoying not to get everything done, or to sacrifice the 5% that you could have gotten, but unless you can do it in 10 minutes and it’s really worth it you simply don’t have the time to spare here. 

Having said that, if a class has lots of small assignments due, don’t overlook them because they’re not worth much on their own - make sure you take a look at the overall percentage left to go in that subject. If you can dedicate a whole day to just that subject and smash through all those assignments in one, you’re crossing a lot of work off your list. For example, I have weekly quizzes and 2% labs in my Pathology course - if I’m behind, I’ll dedicate a whole day and do all of those assessments. That’s 20% out of the way and a big leap towards catching up. 

II. Tackle the low-hanging fruit

Seeing the product of countless days of procrastination is probably pretty daunting right now. I could offer you platitudes here but it’s a lot easier for you to actually take some action and feel better about it yourself, so:

Do everything that will take you less than 10 minutes to complete. Reply to those emails, the messages in the assignment group chat, upload your peer assessment, do all the little things you need to do for someone else. That should cross out a big chunk of things from your list, and you’ll be left with the important stuff like finishing assignments and studying for exams. 

If you’re panicking (seeing the huge list of stuff which you have to finish in an impossibly short time will often do this!) then try an easy square breathing exercise. Breathe in for a count of 4, hold for a count of 4, exhale for a count of 4, hold for a count of 4, repeat. Splashing cold water on your face is helpful too, as is having a glass of water. Do not use this time to procrastinate! It might sound like a good idea to relax by watching Youtube or Netflix, scrolling through Instagram or playing a video game, but you’re going to be sucked back into the procrastination game that got you here in the first place. 

III. Create your plan of attack 

You’ve left it too late to be regularly revising, so our plan of attack is basically going to be: cram every subject consecutively. This is the best way to get everything done when you’re pressed for time like this - don’t switch tasks or subjects. Interleaving subjects is great when you’re on schedule, but right now you don’t want to spend quarter of an hour getting into the groove of a certain subject and then switching before an hour has passed. 

University is just one assignment after another, no breathing space in between, especially towards the end of the semester. All you need to do is work out what’s due first and what’s worth most, order everything according to those criteria and then focus on the first assessment until you’re done. Once the assignment is handed in or you’ve sat the exam, then you can move onto the next task.

If you have two different assignments due for different classes on the same day, plan ahead so you can dedicate a full day to each subject instead of working on both at the same time. 

Plan out every single day - make sure you’re scheduling in time to eat, shower, sleep, and take breaks as well as to study. Be specific when planning your time out each day as to what tasks you’re hoping to achieve - don’t allocate too much time to any single lecture, but at the same time, be realistic about how much you can cover in one hour. 

Choose wisely based on what you do or don’t know. There isn’t much point in spending this precious time revising the things you already know you’re good at, so suck it up and schedule in the hard stuff first up, but be prepared to move on if you can’t get it down. You’re far better off going into the exam knowing 10 things badly, than 1 thing really well, so focus on the basics and if you have time to learn the more complex details then go back and do that later. 

You also need to be flexible and prepared to adjust - sometimes an assignment will take longer than expected or a day just won’t be as productive as you thought it might be. Don’t panic, just re-plan and shift things around so you keep moving in the right direction. 

IV. Grind it out 

Now that you have a clear idea of what you need to achieve and when, it’s time to get it done.  

For once, you shouldn’t need to worry about simple procrastination. You’re  probably already panicking, so turn that anxiety into motivation which will fuel you and let you focus for long time periods. Fear can be a great driver - when the threat of the exam is looming over you, it’s amazing how well you can knuckle down, assuming you don’t want to fail. 

Pack a bag with everything you need - your laptop or tablet, your charger, headphones, a water bottle and a travel mug, snacks and meals for the day, and anything else you like to have with you when you’re studying. Then take yourself to the library, the local coffee shop, the office - wherever you like to study, but don’t sit at home. There’s too many opportunities for distraction and you cannot afford that right now. Being in an environment where other people are working will motivate you to do the same. 

If you’re working on an assignment, the best way to get things done quickly is to let go of any preconceptions of doing a great job, or having a perfect draft, and instead just focusing on having a draft. Bash out the worst draft you’ve ever written, fill it with run-on sentences and spelling mistakes. But make sure you finish a draft. Then all you have to do is edit it, and it’s a lot quicker to do it this way than it is getting bogged down in the details before you’ve even begun. 

When you’re studying for exams, the number one way to learn is through active recall. There is no point in wasting time writing out a full set of notes if you’re two days out from the test. Even if you feel like you don’t know a single thing, start off straight away by testing yourself - do past exams, drill flashcards, try and write outlines or mind maps and then check your notes or textbooks and fill in what you’ve missed. If you don’t know the answer or you get it wrong, look it up and try to understand it, and then test yourself again in twenty minutes. 

It’s important to strike a balance here: don’t overextend yourself, but don’t continually take breaks. If you think you need a break, you probably don’t. Take two minutes to stretch your legs and drink some water, but do not pick up your phone. If you’re starting to feel mentally fatigued, especially after a few hours, it can be helpful to switch locations - go outside and study on a park bench, or shift to the dining hall. Sometimes the change of scenery is all you need to feel refreshed. 

V. Rinse and repeat

This is your life now. Make sure you stick to a regular sleep schedule - aim for at least six hours a night - because otherwise your fatigue levels will seriously impact your memory, retention and critical thinking abilities. It’s not worth the few extra hours you might get in, and you probably won’t be productive anyway. 

Remember that the advice I’ve given you here is based on what I do when I am severely behind, not how I study on a daily basis when I’m on top of everything. These tips aren’t all great for long-term learning, but are the most efficient way to cram when you’re behind and under pressure. 

You’ve got this.