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Re-examine setbacks
It’s easy to say that you didn’t do well because the instructor was an asshole, but there’s usually something on your end as well. Be critical about your study habits! Sometimes the reason is not as obvious as “I just didn’t go to class and crammed everything in the last week.” Maybe it’s because you’re studying to music with lyrics and you need to listen to ambient sounds instead. One of the best apps around is called “Noisli;” download it onto your phone and get ready to focus like never before.
Learn to adapt
There’s no one way of studying that will get you a 12 in all subjects, so make sure your study method is appropriate for what you’re trying to do. This will increase your likelihood of success and minimize wasted time. If you need to memorize a boatload of notes, you want to test yourself with cue cards (or the like) and not just read your notes. If it’s a problem-based course, you want to do as many practice problems as possible instead of focusing your time on reading the textbook.
Time to get organized
In your planner or calendar, mark down all the quizzes, tests, and assignment due dates for all your courses. This way you can plan ahead and know when you cannot afford to go to Motown. If you want to be even more detailed, set your own due dates for when you want a part of your assignment, or a reading, to be done. That way you won’t have a revelation at 2 a.m. that you have a 2,000 word essay due in a week.
Get a fresh start
If you need to get the sour taste of those 6s from last semester out of your mouth, get a fresh start by getting a new set of stationary and notebooks. Clean up your room and start a new routine. These changes require time, preparation and commitment, so don’t be discouraged if you don’t succeed initially. Actually sleep at appropriate times. Don’t fixate on your bad marks, because you can’t change those and they just add an unnecessary pressure.
Pencil in a break
Your mind tends to become petrified into stone when you continuously focus on one task for too long. Take 10-minute breaks for every 40 minutes of studying. Switch subjects every few hours. Go to the gym or even the grocery store. To ease your guilty mind when you’re not studying, know that your break can still be productive in some way. Try downloading the Pomodoro Timer on your laptop or phone, a great app to help you keep track of your work and of your breaks.
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After paying a couple grand for course enrollment per year, students have to dole out another hefty sum to purchase courseware. Many classes require textbooks, with midterm and exam questions being drawn from their pages. Reluctant to spend what is often upwards of $100 on a textbook that is likely to be only opened once or twice, students are forced to either forego the textbook marks or pay the cost and walk out of the campus store textbook in hand.
MSU President Ehima Osazuwa has been very vocal about his hope to reduce tuition, and now he turns his attention to the other major absorber of student funds: courseware.
“We tried to see if we can tackle the issue by having more courseware printed at Underground, because right now the majority of courseware is printed by the University and it is significantly more expensive than printing through Underground,” Osazuwa explained.
Printing through Underground, a full service media and design center located in the Student Center, would reduce costs per textbook by around $20 according to Osazuwa.
Ultimately, however, it is at the discretion of professors to decide to make the switch. The biggest challenge lies in incentivizing professors to print through Underground.
“We are trying to tackle the issue as a one-on-one relationship with the professors, especially those who teach big classes and have a lot of students.”
Implementing this philosophy is up to the President of VP Finance Daniel D’Angela as well as Underground employee Justin Barnes, whose goal has long been to increase courseware printing.
“Last year we ended up with $19,000 in sales from courseware, with the first semester making up only $3,000 of that portion,” said Osazuwa. He hopes that the increase will continue in the years to come.
Yet Osazuwa does not want to stop there. “The second thing was to make a Materials/Textbook Committee, because in my opinion the future of textbooks is online.”
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By: Christine Chow
Coined as a portmanteau from the words “study” and “Tumblr,” a “studyblr” is exactly what it sounds like: a Tumblr blog used for the purposes of studying. While many types of Tumblr blogs exist, ranging from hipster to fandom to social justice blogs the way stereotypical cliques mark their territory in a high school cafeteria, the studyblr is a strange attempt at reconciling the polar opposites of academics and procrastination (by means of social media).
As opposed to the average gifset, studyblrs tend to post or reblog aesthetic pictures of personal workspaces. These are often filtered shots of desks topped with nice plants, glossy computer screens, post-its, and neatly arranged sets of notebooks. Other reblogs show close-ups of notes in a combination of different colours and fonts, surrounded by an array of classy pens.
The obvious judgment is to dismiss these blogs as pointless. Reblogging or liking pictures of other people’s study set-ups in no way helps you get your own studying done, and if you’re too busy ooh-ing and aw-ing over the aesthetics of someone else’s workspace, trying to capture the perfect angle of your own, or beautifying your notes, then you’re wasting valuable time you could otherwise be using to mentally process what you missed out on during that lecture you fell asleep in.
However, if you’re like the majority of the student population, you’ve probably already come to terms with your inherent inability to stomach the multitude of information that gets vomited up by the course syllabus. You sit for hours on end in the same spot, staring at the same generic word document of notes you’ve managed to compile over the span of the term and flipping through the same tasteless PowerPoint slides your professor has probably recycled from last year. By comparison, venturing into the depths of Mordor seems like a much more appealing task.
A closer look at the Studyblr community reveals a group of like-minded individuals who are willing to empathize with the chronic symptoms of studying. In addition to sharing pictures, bloggers also share solid note-taking tips. For instance, how to start a bullet journal: a current popular technique for organizing all your tasks and to-do lists by code. Further investigation reveals self-care tips for mediating study stress, as well as favourite stationary types and methods of condensing information that have helped individual bloggers succeed.
Tumblr’s rise to fame in the past couple of years is accorded not just to its standing as a social media platform, but to its creativity and adaptability for multiple demographics – a metaphorical Room of Requirement. Though the effectiveness of its “study group” aesthetic is definitely questionable, its unique attempt to incorporate what all students dread into a leisure activity ought to be admired. Everyone studies differently, so there’s no harm in trying out different studying methods until you find out what works best for you.
Check out these studyblrs:
Photo Credit: Pretty Studying
This coming September, Assistant Dean of the Bachelor of Health Sciences program, Delsworth Harnish, will be stepping down to take on an Associate Dean role with the larger Faculty of Health Sciences.
“As an academic administrator, you’re only supposed to do two five-year terms, it’s rare to do more than that, and I’m in my third five-year term. It’s time to step away, new blood is always really important,” said Harnish. “I’m happy to be stepping away from it, although I will miss it.”
After having founded the undergraduate program 15 years ago as a research initiative and working to help develop it into the well-known program that it has become today, Harnish will be moving on to another venture with the university, one that involves bringing aspects of the BHSc program to other faculties and programs.
“We’re developing new programs with Engineering and Business,” said Harnish. “Business is actively collaborating with us on a couple of things. It’s largely true that students benefit from interdisciplinary perspectives, and this new program [we’re working on] was built with enough elective space to encourage students to take courses in Humanities, Social Science, Science, etcetera.”
Along with this proposed Commerce program, Harnish is also working on developing something in Engineering that will attract students interested in both Engineering and Health Sciences.
“We’ve tried that twice before but we really haven’t had the formula right. I think this time there are a lot of people engaged in it.”
In the past, the BHSc program has received backlash from the public about its perceived semphasis on grades, with articles being written in Maclean’s, the Toronto Star, and a variety of online blogs, harping on their application process.
While it is true that programs with lower acceptance standards can lead to the same technical outcome as a BHSc degree, its content and style provides a unique multi-faceted experience beyond its perceived reputation, and it is hard to deny the positive influence the Health Sciences program has had on a number of McMaster programs.
Since the implementation of the BHSc program, McMaster has gone on to create more inquiry-based learning programs and further integrate problem-based learning, experiential education, and interdisciplinary curriculums. Since its inaugural BHSc cohort, McMaster has introduced the inquiry-based Arts and Science and iSci programs, as well as the recent interdisciplinary Sustainability minor, among other efforts.
“Universities are not good organizations for change, in general. Things tend to track along the way they have historically… But I think McMaster more than most universities in the last several years has seen some active change in lots of areas,” said Harnish.
Upon the start of his new position, Harnish’s replacement will be coming in this fall. Her name has not been made available to the public, but we do know that she worked for the program in the past and is well acquainted with McMaster’s culture.
Harnish is looking forward to the future of McMaster, as should current and incoming students.
“I’ve enjoyed this immensely, it is fantastic working with young people.”
