100 days of productivity | 62/100
First day of spring semester!
I can’t believe past me thought 4 classes in one day would be ok I’m so tired
I believe in free education, one that’s available to everyone; no matter their race, gender, age, wealth, etc… This masterpost was created for every knowledge hungry individual out there. I hope it will serve you well. Enjoy!
FREE ONLINE COURSES (here are listed websites that provide huge variety of courses)
Alison
Coursera
FutureLearn
open2study
Khan Academy
edX
P2P U
Academic Earth
iversity
Stanford Online
MIT Open Courseware
Open Yale Courses
BBC Learning
OpenLearn
Carnegie Mellon University OLI
University of Reddit
Saylor
IDEAS, INSPIRATION & NEWS (websites which deliver educational content meant to entertain you and stimulate your brain)
TED
FORA
Big Think
99u
BBC Future
Seriously Amazing
How Stuff Works
Discovery News
National Geographic
Science News
Popular Science
IFLScience
YouTube Edu
NewScientist
DIY & HOW-TO’S (Don’t know how to do that? Want to learn how to do it yourself? Here are some great websites.)
wikiHow
Wonder How To
instructables
eHow
Howcast
MAKE
Do it yourself
FREE TEXTBOOKS & E-BOOKS
OpenStax CNX
Open Textbooks
Bookboon
Textbook Revolution
E-books Directory
FullBooks
Books Should Be Free
Classic Reader
Read Print
Project Gutenberg
AudioBooks For Free
LibriVox
Poem Hunter
Bartleby
MIT Classics
Many Books
Open Textbooks BCcampus
Open Textbook Library
WikiBooks
SCIENTIFIC ARTICLES & JOURNALS
Directory of Open Access Journals
Scitable
PLOS
Wiley Open Access
Springer Open
Oxford Open
Elsevier Open Access
ArXiv
Open Access Library
LEARN:
1. LANGUAGES
Duolingo
BBC Languages
Learn A Language
101languages
Memrise
Livemocha
Foreign Services Institute
My Languages
Surface Languages
Lingualia
OmniGlot
OpenCulture’s Language links
2. COMPUTER SCIENCE & PROGRAMMING
Codecademy
Programmr
GA Dash
CodeHS
w3schools
Code Avengers
Codelearn
The Code Player
Code School
Code.org
Programming Motherf*?$%#
Bento
Bucky’s room
WiBit
Learn Code the Hard Way
Mozilla Developer Network
Microsoft Virtual Academy
3. YOGA & MEDITATION
Learning Yoga
Learn Meditation
Yome
Free Meditation
Online Meditation
Do Yoga With Me
Yoga Learning Center
4. PHOTOGRAPHY & FILMMAKING
Exposure Guide
The Bastards Book of Photography
Cambridge in Color
Best Photo Lessons
Photography Course
Production Now
nyvs
Learn About Film
Film School Online
5. DRAWING & PAINTING
Enliighten
Ctrl+Paint
ArtGraphica
Google Cultural Institute
Drawspace
DragoArt
WetCanvas
6. INSTRUMENTS & MUSIC THEORY
Music Theory
Teoria
Music Theory Videos
Furmanczyk Academy of Music
Dave Conservatoire
Petrucci Music Library
Justin Guitar
Guitar Lessons
Piano Lessons
Zebra Keys
Play Bass Now
7. OTHER UNCATEGORIZED SKILLS
Investopedia
The Chess Website
Chesscademy
Chess.com
Spreeder
ReadSpeeder
First Aid for Free
First Aid Web
NHS Choices
Wolfram Demonstrations Project
Please feel free to add more learning focused websites.
*There are a lot more learning websites out there, but I picked the ones that are, as far as I’m aware, completely free and in my opinion the best/ most useful.
Use your intrapersonal intelligence. Ask yourself when and why you procrastinate. Use your insights to identify the appropriate strategy to deal with those issues.
Identify a purpose or meaning. Sometimes, it simply isn’t enough to do something for the sake of doing it. Know why you want to do it, it’ll be easier then. List down your goals, and beside it, identify the benefits. So that, when you feel your spirits drooping, you can look at the list be reminded of why you have to do it.
Take charge of the situation. Gather up all the supplies and materials you need to get started. Choose a work environment where you can really really focus on what you are doing. Take responsibility!
Prioritize and stick to the order. When you feel overwhelmed, make a list of tasks that needs to be done. Tackle the high-priority tasks first.
Relax your personal standards. If you’re a serial perfectionist (like me), lower your unrealistically high standards and expectations. You can still continue to produce quality work without it always having to be the BEST.
Face your fear of failure. Focus on your positive traits. I’m hella sure you’ve got plenty of those! Focus on your accomplishments, and the skills you’ve acquired! Go in front of your mirror and tell yourself affirmations and positive pep talks!
Visualize success. Visualize yourself working through the task, feeling positive about your work, and complete the task on time. Believe you can do it and you will!
Many students—including myself at one point—tend to think that making big strides towards their academic goals means also making drastic changes to how they’re used to approaching academics and studying; however, making big strides towards your goals oftentimes only requires that you make small changes in your day-to-day behavior. For instance, you can replace small unhelpful habits (like checking social media between classes) with small helpful habits (like reviewing notes or flashcards between classes). These little behaviors accumulate over time to lessen the burden of big tasks. They can also build a stronger sense of self-efficacy and mastery, both of which go a long way to motivating you when it comes to the bigger goals. Here are 6 small but powerful study habits that you can adopt:
Doing this will help you identify what you don’t understand early on so you have time to learn and ask questions. It also gives you a chance to practice and quiz yourself on material you may feel confident about. As a result, you might be able to narrow your focus on what you truly need to study come exam time and not waste time reviewing material you’ve already mastered.
This is one of the simplest yet most important steps you can take towards better academic performance. It ensures you meet your deadlines and can help you realistically visualize the time you have available in comparison to all your other tasks and events. If you don’t have an accurate sense of the amount of time and energy you have to complete a certain task or meet a deadline, you won’t be engaging in other small, helpful habits to work towards that goal.
During class, ask yourself if you’re understanding what the professor is saying. While taking notes, reading, watching an educational video, or doing any other study task, ask yourself what the key points were and try to identify areas that you can’t articulate or summarize well. If you identify these areas and come up with questions, be sure to write them down and fill in the answer at a later time to measure how well you addressed those lapses in comprehension. If you find that the answer still seems confusing, you can then ask your professor for additional guidance.
Make sure that your notes for each class are separate from other classes and grouped with other related notes. It would be even better if each subject was filed or organized in a way that you can easily distinguish between units and sub-units within each class/subject. Keeping your notes organized allows you to easily revise and review. It also creates a mental image of the information. For example,if you have a specific method to organizing your notes and use that method to review them, then you may be able to imagine going through your notebook or binder to find a particular piece of information during the exam.
Extra reading reinforces the ideas that you’ve learned in class and places them in a wider context. It also strengthens your critical thinking and comprehension skills.
The more specific you can be, the better you can identify solutions to improve. It’s also helpful to ask these kinds of questions after big events like the end of a project, essay, exams, and the end of the semester.
Best Wishes, Bujo Paper Creations
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Tumblr: Bujopapercreations Instagram: bujo.papercreations YouTube: Bujo Paper Creations
Can we romanticize humble academia?? Be in love with sharing your knowledge with others. having a sheepish smile on your face as you clumsily explain a concept that you fully understand but haven’t read up on recently. Happily help someone understand a complex concept that you do understand. Roll your eyes and make funny faces at people purposely being pretentious. Give away or sell at a reasonable price old textbooks that you know are still in use. Lend and exchange notes with other genuine acedmics. Encourage others with whatever their studies/aspirations are.
Pretentiousness in academia is so outdated, and frankly off putting. Romanticize the academic practice of being kind.
emeritus: a well-meaning retired professor who still frequents the department. occasionally seen jogging up and down the halls of the lab. it’s how he gets his daily exercise. his field of research is obsolete and he spends most of his days making art based on physics equations. asks all of the female undergrads if they plan to teach high school physics.
star child: no one will measure up to this alumnus. they started research in high school, graduated from undergrad a year early with a few papers already under their belt, and finished their phd (at a very prestigious university) in two years. they visit occasionally to present their research and talk to the undergrad physics students. very down to earth and kind. undergrads, grad students, and professors alike are in awe.
father figure: this prof’s lectures are full of dad jokes, metaphors comparing the behaviors of particles with sugared-up three-year-olds, and digressions about something that’s more fun to talk about than the subject matter. says “i’m not angry, just disappointed” when the class does poorly on an exam. when you go to his office hours there is almost always a child or two underneath his desk or drawing on his whiteboard (the bottom third of which is always covered in stick figures and scribbles). intensely watched the construction from his office window as a new laboratory was being built.
academic rival: you were friends over the summer when you were both doing research but they became distant. small talk always turns into bickering about the importance of your respective research when you run into each other getting coffee in the common room. begrudgingly you admit to yourself, they’re really good at what they do. thank god you don’t belong to the same research group.
harsh but kind: brilliant researcher with high expectations of their students. will offer and make you tea as they grade your problem sets (with commentary) in front of you. after your semester in their class, you buy a bag of loose-leaf jasmine green tea because they got you hooked on it.
the politician: buddies with some higher-ups in university admin and the heads of other colleges. your peers derail class by bringing up current events. has a fixation on swords and genealogy. a bit of an anglophile. you took apart a transistor radio with them once. will make formal complaints to the math department on your behalf.
melancholy teaching professor: very cynical from a career in academia but here to have fun. one of the friendliest faces in the department. organizes the students and faculty to do outreach and lugs physics demos all around the tri-county area. talks to the undergrads like they are people. always kind of sad, it makes you wish you could fix all of the ills of academia for them.
drink more water instead of more coffee.
weekly goals are bullshit. set yourself 3-day goals. you’ll be less laid-back.
don’t just mindlessly stare at words. before you start studying, know your approach to it. have a plan.
summarizing the concept in your own words is the key part of taking notes. don’t just copy things down, convert them into your own way of talking, your own vocabulary, no matter how dumb and unprofessional it sounds.
don’t let the “studyblr aesthetic” fool you. studying doesn’t have to be pretty. summaries and notes can be messy as long as they’re comprehensible. you can always rewrite and reorganize them later. (honestly, you better do. and you better keep them.)
don’t throw away the papers you’ve solved your problems in. staple them to the fucking textbook. you need to see them constantly. cause you’ll need reminders of how far you’ve came, when you’re feeling discouraged.
don’t be an armchair analyst for your issues. if you have an idea then act on it.
remember: the exact point where it becomes difficult, is where your growth begins. take a deep breath, and try to focus on the paragraph in front of you.
get off your high horse and understand that if you’re a zero, you won’t go to 100 in a couple of days. first, you’ll need to reach 30, then from 30 to 60, and then from 60 to 90. nobody is 100 everyday. that happens very rarely.
you need to have fun everyday. you need to have peaceful time every single day. even on exam night. especially on exam night, actually. so make sure you’ve studied enough so you can have some time to yourself.
once you’re on a roll and in need of some challenge to stay on track, start writing down your studying hours. tell yourself you’re not allowed to do less than 80% of what you did yesterday. whatever the hell it was, even just one hour. so if yesterday you really studied for like, say 8 hours, today your goal is to study for at least 6 and a half hours. if you can’t keep up with that, make it 70%, or 60%.
be forgiving of yourself. be kind to yourself. even if you bounced back and lost your streak. start again. as slowly as you did before. take your time. it’s okay, you were there once you can get there again.
Podcasts
astronomy cast : hundreds of podcasts! Great for beginners and general facts, but keep in mind that those are from 2006, so some technical things may no longer be relevant
Videos
crash course : amazing synthetic videos about astronomy, those are my personal favorites
Websites
astronomy basics : all you need to know if you’re a great beginner!
Free online courses
probably the most complete one I’ve ever seen
khan academy astronomy courses are quality af
Books
list of books about what to see and how with a telescope
another list of books about astronomy in general
telescope books
astrophotography
Sky maps
sky maps per month
very good starwheels aka planispheres
How to observe
basic skills
10 steps to begin
the perfect all-in-one stargazing guide: I can’t recommend this highly enough!!
Telescopes and things
telescopes
telescope reviews : aka what to chose for what you want to see
everything about telescopes : super useful when you start using one!!
Starting
everything you need to know depending on what equipment you have!!
all you need version 2!
General
catching the light
hundreds of tips
For computers
stellarium
googlesky
astroplanner: plan your observation!
winstars: 3D planet/stargazing!
planetarium
+ full list of softwares and websites
For mobiles
starwalk2 (android version): alright guys, this one is my absolute favorite at all times. Like, really. Have you ever wished you could point a device at the sky and know exactly what’s above you? And have a description of those things? Even in the middle of the day?? Well, now you can yaaay! :D
astronomy.com
universetoday
skyandtelescope
space.com aka my personal favorite
astronomynow
sci-news
All the random facts
here +other links: x x x x
Backgrounds
hubble site gallery
ESA/Hubble gallery
HD wallpapers
NASA gallery
Even more resources
friendsoftheobservatory
NASA
European Space Agency
ISS Live
I really hoped it helped! Thank you very much for reading! Zoya
Source
“Saturn in the twelve Signs of the Zodiac.” Clipped from a celestial atlas by Alexander Jamieson, 1822.