Study Tips

Today's post is brought to you by Persephone, a special features correspondent.

As summer is coming to a close and the crazy school year kicks off, I've seen countless tips for a stress-free school year. My writing companion, Maya, had a unique approach to the study habits. Here are some of my tips for the crazy school year that will hopefully make your school year a little less #cray!

1: Tips for memorizing. If you can remember things easier by seeing them over, and over, AND OVER again, then make flashcards! Use some bright, flashy colors, and your nicest handwriting, and write down what you need to memorize. If you can hear a song twice and know the words, you should try recording yourself reading aloud what you need to memorize and play it back to yourself. Foolish? Maybe. But when you know the square roots up to 568204, you'll thank me. If you like to write, and what your memorizing is short (or you have alot of extra time on your hands, in which case I hate you), try to write down your memorizing assignment over and over, thus converting it to muscle memory. This is my least favorite way of trying to memorizing, as I get tired, but if it would work for you, try it!

2: Tips for reading assignments. Here comes the most awful, fattest, most boring book, and your teacher assigns it for a reading assignment. WHAT TO DO?!?! Wait! Don't reach for those Spark Notes just yet. First, see how long the book is. Then see how many days you have to read it. Then simply divide the number of pages by the number of days to read it. TA-DA! That's how many pages you have to read each day. Then do it! Maybe, the book is actually really good once you get past the first chapter or maybe not, but regardless, you read that book in the time allotted! What if you skip a couple days?? Don't break out in a cold sweat. Simply read amount for both days in one sitting. When you get the average number of pages to read a day, take account of weekends, and maybe a couple days in case you don't get a chance to read. I understand! We teens have a life that doesn't involve reading a boring book every single day!!!

3. Writing assignments. So your teacher has asked you to write whopping load of essays this year. No worries! Just be armed with a sharp pencil with a good eraser, a lot of music, and a LOT of paper. First, make an outline. Yep, an outline. It will get the creative juices flowing, get the ideas on paper so you don't forget any ideas, and it will give your pieces of writing more structure. After an outline, write! Following your outline, and the prompt or assignment, write the paper. When you're done edit it, and re-write it. Be sure to check punctuation, spelling, grammar, and that you follow and complete the necessary assignment. Then you're ready to turn it in!

4: "Um, I totally forgot about that assignment." When this happens you may instantly start to panic and try to cram in this last-minute attempt at completing the assignment. First, take some deep breaths, and calm down. You do not do good work when you're in a state of crazy panic. After you're calm, begin the assignment. Here's the trick-- work quickly, but well. Don't rush through pell mell and hand in D work when you can slow down a bit and make B work. Be time oriented. Calm down for five minutes, make a plan of attack in two minutes, and execute the plan. As long as you do the work well, no one need know you totally did the assignment in the last hour.

5: Here's a random bonus tip... MUSIC! MUSIC! MUSIC! Music can help with school work enormously. Drown out other background noise in an easy to ignore music and get in the "Zone". Music can help get the creative juices flowing. It can help calm you down when you can't think what to write next. It's relaxing, and a great homework companion in general. Besides, who doesn't love music!?

Hopefully, these tips can help make your school year a little less hectic. Of course, you can do it! It's all a matter of taking the time to do it, and doing it well!

Good luck!

~Persephone