Mohammad Arfeen

I would like to take this space to welcome any readers from HackCollege. Also I would like to thank Kelly for appointing me as one of the first moderators on Discuss Campus. To my regular readers, please take the time to visit both sites, I assure you that it will be worth your while.

Finals, that time of the semester is upon us once again. Most college students will spend most of their student lives stressing over them. Why, they feel unprepared, they neglect studying, or they try cramming everything into the last few days. Needless to say this isn’t a great idea; it’s a perfect recipe for burning out. I tend to prefer a more structured approach to finals; break down your subjects, decide which ones will take the most effort to prepare for and start early. Read the rest of this entry »

I am starting a new series of posts on productivity. Occasionally I will write a post on one aspect of my productivity methods.

My Strategy

When it comes down to tackling a paper I usually start on the day the paper was assigned by adding it to my Google calendar. Then I break down the paper and systematically go through it, one part at a time. I will schedule in a time, to sit down and write out an outline for the paper, and each section of it. Then I will spend a few days doing the necessary research, gathering sources, writing out the citations, and pulling out the necessary quotes and data, with the correctly formatted citations, into a word document. I use Endnote X2 to format my citations and manage them, free alternatives include Zotero and Mendeley. After I have all of these materials gathered together. I look at the length requirement, then next to the various sections on the outline, I write a projected length. I set a deadline for myself to complete the paper at least 3 days before it is due. After I complete writing the paper, I use those 3 extra days to have my paper proof read by at least 2-3 other people. Then I sit down incorporate the final changes and submit my paper. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m a huge fan of productivity tools and software, I’m always trying out new programs, and methods I read about online. I can see how the choices can be overwhelming for someone looking to find a good software. My goal in this post is to pretty much summarize what I think are the most useful and best productivity tools. Everyone is different in how they remain organized and may find some of these tools more useful than others. I am going to mention some tools that I think most people already use, or have heard of before.

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