That’s Louis Rossman, A Repair Technician And YouTuber, Who Went Viral Recently For Railing Against

6 Things I Learned From Studying For Exams in College

If you skip a topic or don’t study it thoroughly enough because you think it won’t be on the exam, it will be. Study that in particular so you won’t be surprised when it shows up as the first question. Unless your professor explicitly states that it won’t be on the exam, don’t skip any topics.

Put aside the content you’re comfortable and familiar with and start studying the things you don’t know. It’s hard and time consuming but that’s where the actual learning happens.

Start studying at least 4 days in advance. I always regret not starting earlier when I’m at the library 24 hours before the exam and not even close to being done. When I’m having trouble focusing, I’ll sit there and imagine myself an hour before the exam scrambling to finish up a topic, wishing that I had these extra few minutes, hours, or days that I have now. Take advantage of the time you have right now.

Changing up my location helps a lot when I’m studying. If I study in the same corner at the library, eventually my brain will start associating that spot with everything I do in that chair, including wasting time. For me, new location + new material = focus. A few location ideas: a quiet corner in the library, a noisy floor in the library, at your desk at home, a room with a view of the outdoors from high up, a bench/table outside, a cafe or brunch place.

Stay on top of studying and homework from day 1, not after syllabus week and not a month into the semester. When you submit a homework assignment, make it a point to 100% understand everything you just handed in. Homework is assigned for a reason; they’re meant as practice exercises for the material you learned and exams often mimic them. Once you hand in homework, you should know and understand the material. This saves you time when it’s finals week and you have old and new material to study.

Well before the exam, make a list of topics you don’t understand and get your questions answered. There have been so many times where I didn’t fully understand something and thought, “It’s okay, they’re probably not going to ask that,” and it shows up on the exam. When you get your question answered, branch out and ask things like, “What if it weren’t this particular situation/these particular numbers but a different one instead. How would you work through it this time?” (physics/math) or “What caused that/what came after that as a result?” (history). Try to understand all possible scenarios if you can.

A Year of Code

A few weeks ago, I marked a year since I started coding every day. Last year, for me, began with a breakup. I remember c…

“Someone special I knew wrote, “The price we pay for living full authentic lives is occasionally having our hearts broken.” I think that that’s true. Pain isn’t beautiful or poignant, but sometimes, if you can get through it, it contextualizes what comes later. A year is a short time. You never think that that’s long enough to substantially change what you’re capable of doing, but what you choose to do every day eventually shapes who you are. A year ago, as much as I loved tech, I wasn’t sure I’d ever want to be in engineering or study computer science. Since then, I’ve learned six programming languages, taken seven CS classes, and worked on twenty-odd personal projects. There’s nothing intrinsically meaningful about a GitHub streak, but, somewhere along the way, I started remembering what it felt like to be myself.”

holy smokes. #GOALS

I’m tearing up and inspired. This is amazing.

real talk tho you might feel like you aren’t doing enough or you’re behind or you haven’t set yourself up well enough and you aren’t in the right place but you can still work it out and there are beautiful, amazing things ahead of you. two years ago I had a 2.8, was on the verge of losing my scholarship, had no idea how to study, and wouldn’t have been able to handle a research position even if I knew how to get one. now I’m working in a lab, have tons of research experience, co-authored a publication, have an amazing advisor who is helping me with a honors thesis, and am set to do eight months of paid research abroad next semester. (and the 2.8 is now a 3.6). it’s not over, it can get better, you aren’t a failure, and wonderful things are waiting.

for no reason in particular i was looking at a list of nocturnal animals on wikipedia and

one of these is not like the other

Ah, old good switch-a-roo ;)

Credit: Eric Burk

tumblrfolk, we are so much more skilled than we think

one thing I want to say today relates to my current job. (As you guys know, I’ve left off working in science labs to work an office job in sci comm. My role is kind of … nebulous and involves a lot of “oh, Elodie can help you with that, she does weird stuff. Train Elodie on that.”)

Because it’s an office job, the mentality is for everyone to present their workflows as incredibly difficult and skilled, requiring a lot of training and experience to do properly. Which is fair enough! These skills are difficult!

“Elodie, today we are going to train you to use… A HIGHLY COMPLICATED AND DIFFICULT WEBSITE INTERFACE. You will need to take a lot of notes and pay careful attention, because it is extremely advanced. ARE YOU READY”

“… This is Wordpress.” “…No it isn’t! it says something different at the top. And it’s very complicated, it’s not something you can just know already.” “Nah son, don’t worry, it’s Wordpress. I mean, God knows I don’t blog much, but I can manage me a bit of Wordpress, it’s cool.”

“No. You can’t. Don’t worry, it’s very difficult. Now sit still and be trained on how to upload a photo to Wordpress.”

“All right.”

—-

“Elodie, do you think that you can MANAGE SOCIAL MEDIA? It is INCREDIBLY HARD and may involve THE HASHTAGS”

“… I think I’ll manage.”

—-

“Elodie, can you put a HYPERLINK in a thing? Think about it before you answer.”

“Is it like a BBCode kind of thing, with the boxy bracket things, or do you want it in HTML, with like angley bracket things?”

“It is a button that you press that says HYPERLINK.”

“I can do this thing for you.”

—-

“Elodie, can you write a punchy summary that will make people want to click on a special link that says “read more” to read all of the text?“

“Probably?”

—-

“Elodie, this is how to use TAGS on CONTENT. TAGS on CONTENT are important because - because of THINGS. Things that are too arcane and mysterious for anyone below the level of Manager to know.”

“Cool, I can tag stuff for you.”

—-

“Elodie, this is obviously a ridiculous question, but can you edit videos?”

“Not very well, and only if you want to make it look like there is sexual tension between characters from different forms of visual media, or perhaps to make a trailer for a fanfiction? Which is not necessarily a good use of my time and I’m not sure why I felt it was so cool to do to begin with…”

“What?”

“Actually, upon further reflection: no. No. Nope. I can’t edit videos. They’re completely beyond me. Not in my wheelhouse. Hate videos. Hate them. No innate skill whatsoever.”

“That’s what we thought”

—-

“Elodie?! You can use PHOTOSHOP?!”

“Yeah, I mean, I usually just use Pixlr. It’s free, it’s online, it’s powerful, you don’t have to download anything…”

“but you are not a GRAPHIC DESIGNER!!” “Er… no.”

“Next you’ll be telling us you can MAKE AN ANIMATED PICTURE.”

“I mean, I haven’t really done a lot of it since Livejournal, and they weren’t that good anyway, but yeah… I can do you reaction images.”

“THAT IS WITCHCRAFT”

“Yes. Definitely.”

—-

What I’m trying to say is: a lot of people talk a lot of crap about what we Millenials do on the Internet, because there is NO CAPITALISTIC VALUE in the screwing around we do with our friends. “Ughh why are you ALWAYS on the computer?” our parents whined.

“How did you make the text go all slanty like that?” our bosses wonder.

We have decades of experience in Photoshop. We know how to communicate; we can make people across the planet care about our problems. We know how to edit media to make two characters look like they’re having the sexual tensions. We can make people read our posts, follow us, share our content. We run and manage our own websites - and make them pretty. We moderate conversations, enforce commenting policies, manage compromises, lead battles, encourage peace, defend ourselves from attack, inspire others, and foster incredible levels of communication.

We produce our art. We advertise our art. We engage with others through our art. We accept constructive criticism and dismiss destructive trolling of our art. We improve our art. Our art gets better.

We narrate our stories.

All by ourselves. Our pretty blog backgrounds, custom-edited themes, tasteful graphics, punchy content, clever gifs, our snappy putdowns and smart-ass text posts, even our familiarity with fonts and composition - all of these skills we’ve casually accumulated for fun/approval are MINDBLOWING LEVELS OF COMPETENCE IN THE WORKFORCE.

When these skills are sold to you - when they’re packaged and marketed, and when you pay to consume them and have the Elders rate you on them - they are incredibly valuable. They are Media and Communications degrees. They are marketing internships. They are leadership workshops. They are graphics design modules. They are web design courses. They are programming courses. We are good at this shit; we have it nailed down.

You can’t put “fandom” or “blogging” on your CV, but you deserve to. You should get this credit. You should claim this power and authority.

Claim these skills. They are valuable. They are important.

Everything you have ever done is a part of your powerful makings.

all these studying tips saying ‘stay away from your computer’ and ‘use these apps to control the sites you can access’ and I just keep thinking

i’m a computer science major

I have to use programs to write code

I have to check websites

how exactly am I supposed to do that and still get work done