Sick Sunday

Laying in bed, hacking up a lung, wishing I had my mom's homemade chicken noodle soup to cure my icky feeling that keeps overwhelming me. Halloween weekend, always gets you sick, I still don't understand why my favorite holiday, Halloween, can't be in August instead of freezing October. Tonight I plan on going to bed unrealistically early, in hopes that it will help heal how disgustingly sick I feel. Usually I make these blogs super pretty too, but for some reason it doesn't seem as appealing this particular Sunday as it usually does. But I'll try my best. Also, all of my never ending hours spent living in Bird these past two weeks has payed off, because I don't have a ridiculous amount of work to do tonight besides start to finish up my Exam Experiment! So, for this weeks blog, we can write about whatever we want to, which is great. For me, I decided to pick the Target Planner of course, as well as 20 Minute Test Prep!

For Target Planner I decided to use it for my exam in Astronomy coming up, which I am also doing the Exam Experiment for! Astronomy for some reason just doesn't like me, I continuously struggle with it. Last semester, so second semester of freshman year, I took Astronomy 104 thinking I would be looking at constellations. Oh boy was i wrong! You do physics, and math, and everything confusing for a person who doesn't understand math or science. So, being my stupid self sometimes I decided it would be a fantastic idea to take Astronomy 101 this semester thinking I would be prepared and k

now what to expect. Worst idea ever. So now I am stuck taking this horrible class, which is why I chose to use it for the Exam Experiment! Even though I have already begun to study for the upcoming exam by simply doing my experiment project, I wanted to make a target planner for my study schedule because seeing it layed out really helps me to prepare. So now I have a organized way to know what my study schedule should be in order to succeed on my test. This strategy for me really helps me evaluate not only what I should be doing, but it helps me learn what to do in order to fufill the expectation of the professor.

Then there is the 20 Minute Test Prep and for this I did something similar to Joy. There are a lot of definitions to know so I mixed the 20 Minute Test Prep and Jeopardy Notes! They are kind of similar and I like both of them a lot so I combined them and made up my own way that better helps me which is also a very simple strategy.

Bird Library is Officially My New Home

Another Sunday is here, and once again I am stressed with loads of work hanging out in Bird Library until morning. I even brought a toothbrush with me because I know I will be here until morning. Lucky me again. I had thought that the work load wasn't fading out, but I have never been so wrong. My work load is miserable, I don't even like think about what I have to do because it is so overwhelming I can't even decided where to start. Another week where professor's decide to pile everything they can up and have it due on the same exact day just to laugh at all of their student's freaking out! At this moment I am attempting to juggle studying for my AST101 midterm coming up, my essay for PHI197 which is my midterm, and my SOC essay midterm as well.

Of course I have been preparing and doing my Fritter Finder and even the Target Planner but sadly, like Joy, the majority of my classes are essay based. Actually all of them are essay based with no tests. For me, this is great because I don't do well with tests, essay's are easier for me because do better in an English course and Reading/Writing, not Math and

Science. So for this week's strategies it makes it tough, but I did my Plug -In Notes similar to Joy and used them to help me plan out my essay's. My first essay due is my Sociology ess

ay, so I applied the Plug-In Notes for that class because I figured it will help me to get started since I am having a major essay block.

Plug-In Notes was actua

lly somewhat challenging for me because I had to think of questions that would help me to write my essay, it was almost like an outlin

e for me. However I feel as if it would be easier to do with an actual test, so when I have a test in one of my classes which probably won't be for a while since I usually have essay's due instead, I will apply this strategy to it. Now when I write my essay I will have somewhat of an idea of how to begin because I created questions which make an outline for me to follow and start off with.

So next I tried 1 Plus 3 Notes which I used for my Astronomy class since I struggle with this class in specific. This strategy helped me mo

re than I originally thought it would. I created the chart and it helped me take specific topics which I didn't necessarily understand completely and break them down so I could more easily understand them. This strategy helped me use L.A.M.E to it's full advantage! Usually I don't understand how it effects me, but this time it broke it down so I could realize exactly what I had to learn, what plan of action I was going to take to learn all of this material. Which 1 Plus 3 Notes helped me to accomplish, and then how the teacher is going to evaluate me after! For once I actually understood the f

ull meaning for L.A.M.E! As my blog comes to an end, I remember Dr. Blumin's word's which I think of more frequently than I suspected I would.

"If you continue to do what you've always done, you will continue to get what you have always gotten."

So, don't continue to do what you have always don

e, change it while you can, which is what

I am trying to do!

Stress Be Gone!

Once again, another stressful week is ending, and another is coming to a start. Lucky me! My parents came up this weekend for my sororities Parent's Weekend. Of course it was so nice to see them, but also it made me more stressed, not only because my mom was here to nag me about my dirty room. But also because the work I was supposed to do on Saturday day, but didn't because I was with my parents! Luckily, this week in CLS we had new strategies to try out, and one that I wound up trying out, and loving, was "Ranking Problems." This particular strategy was most useful to me.

"Ranking Problems" is almost like taking a planner to another level. It has me first look at what I have to do. Next rank them based on their importance. For me, the due date of a project is what determines what homework I tackle first. So, for the "Ranking Problems" strategy I wrote down the assignment which was due the soonest. Then, next to it, I put down

either an A1,A2,B1,B2,C1, and so on. My CLS project of course has an A1 next to it because it is due Monday. After that I put down my COM 107 essay. That is also extremely important to me because although it isn't due for another week or two, it happens to be 40% of my grade. So, that gets next for top priority. And my list continues on ranking my work to be done based on due date which is what matters to me.

This particular strategy really worked well for me. Of course this week I still did the Fritter Finder and a Target Planner because that is what works well for me. Doing those two strategies makes me able to visualize what work I have to do and when I will be able to do it. However, those two strategies are not in this weeks topics. So sadly, I can't focus on them in the blog again. Instead I tried out the "Ranking Priorites" which has the same approach as the Fritter Finder and Target Planner!

Another strategy which Dr. Blumin had us try out was in the book. However this one didn't really work too well for me. It was almost too specific for me I guess? I didn't want to have to think about what would happen if I didn't get it done. I just wanted to get it done and not have the option of even thinking for a second that may not do it! For me that isn't the right kind of mindset!

So to basically summarize, I like the more visual strategies because I am a visual learner so those are what work for me!