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.

Breaking down how I study for finals

This depends greatly on which class I’m studying for, in a biology class, such as my genetics class, I may spend a couple hours a week going over my notes. For a more technical class like my organic chemistry class, I may spend a couple hours a day going over homework problems, practice exams, and notes. Since, I too am going through the stress caused by finals; I will have to keep this post fairly brief. I may at a point in the future elaborate on this topic. For the sake of time, I will attempt to break all classes into three categories: Science-Technical (Chemistry, Physics, Math, etc.), Science-Non-Technical (Biology, Ecology, etc.), and Liberal Arts. Please keep in mind that these are broad generalizations, and may not work for everyone, or work with every course that falls within a certain category. I also focus on science related classes since I am a Biochemistry/Molecular Biology major.

Science: Technical

The only way I have seen that works for courses in this group, is repetition. I once had a math teacher in middle school that loved to say “Practice makes better,” and I don’t think that statement could be more right. You have to constantly repeat the mechanisms, equations, formulas, and methods, in order for your mind to accept it as second nature, and for it to come natural to you. One of the greatest causes of stress for students, taking exams, I believe is feeling unnatural. If you can look at a problem, and recognize it, you can take away a large amount of the initial stress. I have spend hours, repeating the same physics problem over and over, just so that I could understand every aspect of that problem, and solve for every variable, no matter what the professor throws at us. I know the underlying concepts of the problem.

Science: Non-Technical

Keep up with the material throughout the semester, do not fall behind; cramming for classes like these can bury you. The amount of material that you have to know for these exams can seem obscene at times. More than anything these exams are based on understanding and memorization. If you can memorize massive amounts of information, and apply it you will be fine. For classes like this I usually spend 3-4 hours the night before the final exam, going over the notes, since I have kept up on the material throughout the semester.

Liberal Arts

Now, I have the greatest deal of respect for liberal arts majors, but I have rarely found a need to study for most of my liberal arts classes (this is probably due to the fact that most of them have been in the 100 and 200 levels). I usually spend a couple hours before the exam going over notes, and reading up on summaries of the material. This might be, because I am a science major, and my liberal arts classes tend to be some of my easiest courses, or because I enjoy keeping up to date on most of the materials we cover in my liberal arts courses. Either way I would highly recommend that everyone have at least one liberal arts class every semester, they are a great way to not only broaden your mind, but they also give you great analytical skills.

Everyone has to find their own way of studying, some people prefer cramming, some people prefer a long term approach, and others don’t really study. Regardless of your approach, try to structure it in a format that will place minimum stress on you and keep you calm. A stressed student makes stupid mistakes, on exam day remain calm, and think everything out.

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.

Example Case

I am assigned a 6-7 page paper for my Humanities class, it is due in 4 weeks (28 days).

Day 0 (paper assigned): Added to Google Calendar and scheduled sometime later in the week or early next week to write outline.

Days 1-5: Busy forgot about paper, did other things.

Day 6: Scheduled day to write outline, spend 2 hours write outline, schedule 5 hours over the next 4 days to find sources, format citations.

Days 7-11: Spend around 1 hour each day finding sources, adding them to the outline and formatting proper citations for them. (5 hours)

Day 12: Sit down look at outline and length, and assign estimated lengths to all of the various sections, and add sections as needed. Schedule deadline at day 24. (2 hours)

Days 13-16: Forgot about paper did other things

Days 17-23: Wrote approx. one page each day (total page count 8 required page count 7) (4 hours)

Days 24-26: Have paper proof read by student success center, friends, and professor.

Day 27: add final changes, fix paper in the morning (approx 2 hours spent) forget about paper for the rest of the day, read it at night, and make necessary corrections.

Day 28: hand in paper.

Benefits

Using this method you are able to break down the paper in to smaller chunks, and you spend no more than a few hours a day for a few days, to finish the paper, 15 hours/28 days means I spent an average of about 32 minutes a day for the duration of the month. By breaking the paper down into manageable pieces, and having a defined plan, you will not be daunted by the task, and you will resist the urge to procrastinate till the night before. This way you are allowed to deal with the paper on your own terms, fitting it into time that you choose, instead of having the paper make you pull an all-nighter.

By changing the deadline, and setting smaller goals along the way you are able take down the perceived psychological barriers to entry. You don’t think “Oh, I have that 7 page paper due next month, I’ll do it later.” You think “I have to finish the outline for this paper on this day,” or “I have to finish finding my sources on this day.”

The greatest enemies of productivity are psychological barriers to entry, walls you build for yourself, if you break down the wall into smaller more manageable pieces, you remove those barriers, and it becomes easier for you to start a task. Don’t focus on those small details everyone else is focusing on, just try to get those 8 pages done by a fixed date; focus on those big wins, the details will fall into place by themselves. Just get started as soon as possible, and don’t delay it until the last moment.

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.

I’m going to start off with a quick disclaimer, as much as I love computers and technology, I have a tendency to prefer old school methods of organization, I think that the computer has made it a lot easier to remain organized in some areas, and complicated it in others.

3×5 Notecards

These standard note cards are easy to carry around, they fit in your pocket, in your dashboard, in your wallet if you fold them in half, and can be extremely useful. I like to keep 2 in my wallet, and 3-4 in my shirt/coat pockets, as well as a whole pack of a 100 in my glove box. I find these useful for writing down interesting things I hear, or in those situations where someone mentions something, and  you swear that you will check it out when you get home but forget. I’ve used these in tons of situations, writing down assignments in class that I forget otherwise, the names of movies that, seem interesting after I see the trailer, phone numbers, to-do lists, you name it. The standard 3×5 index card is by far one of the best tools for productivity. I usually end up buying them in large quantities from Amazon [link].

Evernote

I like to think of evernote as my virtual notecards, it has the ability to clip portions of webpages, audio clips, and pictures, you can also scan materials and the built in OCR software will convert the text. It syncs everything between my phone, computer, and web account. I can access my notes from anywhere just by logging into the website. I also love the desktop client, and the firefox extension which makes it a breeze to clip portions of websites into “notebooks”. When ever I’m writing a paper for school, or a blog post, I just start a notebook with the title, and as I do my research I clip interesting tid bits straight into my notebook. This way when I sit down to work on the paper everything is right there ready to go. It also gives me the ability to tag, email and print my notes; the tagging feature is especially useful, in the event there is overlapping material in various papers, you can just pull up all the material you have for that tag and use it in another paper.

PB Wiki

PB wiki, helps in outlining long papers, you can create folders and put various pages in there. I also use it to help plan events that may be farther away such as the MCAT, I don’t need the various reference materials, and study tips that I see referenced all of the web, right away, but I can make a page titled MCAT in my work space and place all those materials in there, for future reference. It’s also a great tool for drafts of papers, I can write a paper make a page for it and give editor access to some friends and have them edit it. I also use it for to-do lists, and to list unscheduled events, and to help plan events for various student organizations I’m part of.

Thunderbird/Gmail/Google Apps

If you have multiple email accounts and need to keep them organized Thunderbird is a great tool, I sync my personal Gmail account to Thunderbird, using IMAP, and my school account, as well as my marfeen.com email accounts are all synced into Thunderbird. Instead of using a email solution that is coupled with a hosting provider, I edited my MX records in Namecheap‘s freeDNS service, and use google apps hosted solution for my marfeen.com email address. This gives me all the benefits of gmail, without a @gmail.com email address. All 4 of my email accounts, are synced with Thunderbird as well as my google calendar and contacts. I have 4 add-ons that enable me to do all of this, Google Contacts, Lightning, MinimizeToTray, and Provider for Google Calendar.

Google Calendar

Google calendar, which is synced with thunderbird, give me SMS and emails when events are coming up, plus it is a great tool for scheduling appointments, meetings, and keeping track of assignments, exams and other important events. This is probably one of the most useful tools I have come across. The layout and interface are easy to use, the quickadd tool makes adding new events a breeze, and the format in which events are displayed is easy to understand and not very overwhelming, like some other calendar apps.

Google Reader

Google reader lets me have all the blogs I read in one place, it gives me the ability to add the feeds from all 20 blogs I read. This way I don’t waste hours looking all over the web, I check 3-4 times a day in my reader and read the new postings, going to the blogs to make comments, if I choose. This has save hours, that I would usually spend wandering the internet. This little application alone save me tons of time everyday.

Notebook

A notebook is a great tool for keeping lists, plans, drafts, notes, and bunches of other things. When I go to the library to research a subject for a paper, I prefer using a notebook to keep notes, rather than keeping note on my computer. There are various notebooks for various occasions, going from small memo pads, all the way up to bigger full size notebooks. I tend to prefer something in the middle, like a business notebook. I use mine all the time to keep track of stray thoughts, at the end of the day, I can sit down, pop it open and have everything there in front of me.

Have a great week and stay productive.

Photo Credits: Slimninja via [Flickr]

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0