Marathon-notasprint - To Help Me

child handling for the childless nurse

My current job has me working with children, which is kind of a weird shock after years in environments where a “young” patient is 40 years old.  Here’s my impressions so far:

Birth - 1 year: Essentially a small cute animal.  Handle accordingly; gently and affectionately, but relying heavily on the caregivers and with no real expectation of cooperation.

Age 1 - 2: Hates you.  Hates you so much.  You can smile, you can coo, you can attempt to soothe; they hate you anyway, because you’re a stranger and you’re scary and you’re touching them.  There’s no winning this so just get it over with as quickly and non-traumatically as possible.

Age 3 - 5: Nervous around medical things, but possible to soothe.  Easily upset, but also easily distracted from the thing that upset them.  Smartphone cartoons and “who wants a sticker?!!?!?” are key management techniques.

Age 6 - 10: Really cool, actually.  I did not realize kids were this cool.  Around this age they tend to be fairly outgoing, and super curious and eager to learn.  Absolutely do not babytalk; instead, flatter them with how grown-up they are, teach them some Fun Gross Medical Facts, and introduce potentially frightening experiences with “hey, you want to see something really cool?”

Age 11 - 14: Extremely variable.  Can be very childish or very mature, or rapidly switch from one mode to the other.  At this point you can almost treat them as an adult, just… a really sensitive and unpredictable adult.  Do not, under any circumstances, offer stickers.  (But they might grab one out of the bin anyway.)

Age 15 - 18: Basically an adult with severely limited life experience.  Treat as an adult who needs a little extra education with their care.  Keep parents out of the room as much as possible, unless the kid wants them there.  At this point you can go ahead and offer stickers again, because they’ll probably think it’s funny.  And they’ll want one.  Deep down, everyone wants a sticker.

Hi I’m really indecisive and I’m trying to create an effective note making system for this year. Do you have any tips on how you take notes or use colours, post it notes or anything else? I'm hoping to do maths, science or language subjects if that makes a difference. Thank you! x

Hello!

Personally during high school I kept two notebooks per subject. In general, I used one of them (notebook A) to take notes during lessons, and the other (notebook B) to rewrite them at home adding information from textbooks and making sure I understood everything. 

For maths I followed the lessons on my book and did most of the notes at home. I kept a notebook to write the theorems and explanations I had to study, and an other one to do all the exercises and problems.

For science I had lessons very full of information, so on one notebook (A) I would write really fast everything I could, and on the other (B) I would rewrite everything checking the textbook. When I saw the teacher was following my textbook pretty closely, I just underlined the parts she explained during the lesson and added the extra information she gave in the margins. Then I would write the notes assembling the underlined parts and the margin notes in a notebook (B). If there were any graphs I had to write, I would do that in a different color.

For language subject I’m n to sure what you mean… But if it’s literature, I took notes during lessons on sheets of paper and combined them at home with the information on the textbook in a notebook. If it’s a foreign language, I personally studied latin, and I had a notebook for grammar and one for exercise.

I used highlighters in my textbooks, and even though I didn’t exactly color-code, I did use different colors to underline concepts of different importance. For example, I would use a more visible color such as a green/blue/pink for the most important concepts, and a more subtle one, like yellow, for less important (but still important) things. If there were textbooks that I did not want to ruin, I underlined with a pencil and a ruler, using a double line or a zigzag line for more important things.

In my notes I use colors to write important words or concepts. It doesn’t really matter to me which color I use, but to keep my notes very clean I tend to use black and blue. I use a lot of colors when I condense a lot of information in a small amount of place, like on one sheet of paper. In that case I use different colors for different topics. For example if I want to condense information about macromolecules, I would use a color for carbohydrates, a color for proteins, a color for fats etc.

I only use post-its in my textbooks to find easily where certain topics are, but I don’t really use them in note taking.

I hope I was helpful!

This fake brain actually has the same consistency as the real deal. So now you know how concussions happen! 

To be prepared is half the victory

bi·ol·o·gy \bī-ˈä-lə-jē\ noun - the branch of knowledge that deals with living organisms and vital processes

I’ve noticed that there are quite a few younger studyblrs and since biology is usually the first high school science students take, I thought I’d make a post on how to study for it as it is my favorite subject. 

1. Use Diagrams

Biology textbooks are full of diagrams and they’re there for a reason. Always look over the diagrams and copy ones on important topics (e.g. photosynthesis, taxonomy) into your notes.

2. Memorizing & Understanding

I have heard many people say biology is just memorization, but it’s really not that simple. There is a lot of memorization involved for vocabulary and basic information, but biology is also full of processes (e.g. cellular respiration, evolution). You cannot just memorize the steps, you must fully understand what purpose each step serves. Many tests have short answer or essay portions and there’s no way you can answer them by just memorizing the steps of a process without understanding them. I recommend drawing out diagrams and mind maps for understanding processes and cycles as that really helped me. Once you can teach someone else how that process/cycle works, then you really know it.

3. Color code

Color coding is useful for many subjects including biology. Color code your diagrams (it always comes back to the diagrams) and graphs as it makes looking back over your notes much easier and it keeps things organized and easy to study which is important since there are many complicated processes and cycles (e.g. DNA replication, transcription, & translation) that can get confusing if drawn all in one color.

4. Pay attention to labs

You’ll probably do quite a few labs during your time taking biology. Labs serve to let you see concepts in action for yourself which can really aid understanding. Always record data down in your lab notebook and do the conclusion questions. The conclusion questions gauge how well you understand the labs. Most importantly never ever record results you didn’t get. A lot of times (especially in basic high school biology), you will go into a lab with a pretty good idea of what will happen, but if your results don’t match your hypothesis, it’s okay. I remember once I did a lab involving different sugars and enzymes and I was sure of my hypothesis, but my results didn’t match my prediction. After a class discussion, we found out that quite a few other people didn’t get their expected results either and it turns out the enzymes we were using were expired. So if you don’t get the expected results, maybe you did the lab wrong or maybe not, either way don’t fake data, talk to your teacher instead.

5. Learn your word roots

A lot of biology terms (particularly anatomy and biomed) are from Greek and Latin roots. Now you don’t need to go take a Latin class or anything, but look up etymologies and focus on recurring prefixes and suffixes (e.g. hemo-, hypo-, -cyte, -derm) and soon you’ll begin to be able to predict what a term means before looking it up. 

6. Review

A lot of concepts in biology are interconnected and you need to know one topic to understand another. For this reason, always review anything you’re rusty on especially if you plan on taking other biology classes in the future. 

The Best Study Techniques:

I’ve recently come across a 2013 study which aimed to compare the efficiency of different study techniques.They evaluated whether the benefits of the techniques generalised across learning conditions, student characteristics, materials, and criterion tasks. Here is a summary of their results:

Least Effective Study Techniques:

Highlighting — including underlining textbooks and other materials

Rereading

Summarisation

Keyword mnemonics — the use of keywords and mnemonics to help remind students of course material

Imagery use for text learning — creating mental images to remind students of material

Moderately Effective Study Techniques

Elaborative interrogation — uses “why” questions to get students to make connections between new and old material.

Self-explanation — prompting students to provide their own explanations for problems while learning material

Interleaved practice — mixing different kinds of problems or material in one study session

Highly Effective Study Techniques

Practice testing — any form that allows students to test themselves, including using actual or virtual flashcards, doing problems or questions at the end of textbook chapters, or taking practice tests.

Distributed practice — studying material over a number of relatively short sessions.

(Source)

My exams are rapidly approaching (just 9 days left!!) and amongst all the study tips posts that are popping up, I wanted to do a post about those days when things don’t go as planned. Be it that you walk out of an exam and feel like you bombed it, or that you get back a disappointing score. We all know the feeling. So here are some things that I like to do to make the day suck a little less!

Have some chocolate (light/dark/milk, hot/cold/whatever as preferred)

Have a bath, or a long shower

Go for a walk or a jog, preferably surrounded by nature

Find someone/something to cuddle

Even if you have things to do, give yourself a break

Tidy your room/flat/whatever to get a fresh perspective

Open all windows and air out your room

If you have things that need to be done, make a to do list and sort your brain out

Organise your clutter/notes/room/whatever

Do come colouring in a colouring book (these are awesome)

Try your hand at painting, even if you’re terrible at it

Make yourself some tea

Bake something (and eat it without feeling guilty afterwards)

Light a nice-smelling candle

Spend time with the positive forces in your life, be it parents, friends or pets

Watch your favourite movie (preferably with someone who loves it as much as you)

Go on spotify, pandora, soundcloud, 8tracks or wherever and look for new music

If you find some really good music, have a dance party

Put on your favourite outfit (+ makeup look if you’re into that)

Paint your nails, shave, moisturize, wash your face and pamper yourself

Check out universityandme​‘s “You are a force of nature” tag

If you need someone to talk to, send me an ask, either here or on my main blog, saturdaystudying

“I’ve been living alone so long, everything about me’s private. I’m surprised anyone’s able to understand a word I say.”

— Kurt Vonnegut, from Mother Night; “Werner Noth’s Beautiful Blue Vase,”

eEEYYYYY the studyblr community has some amazing note taking methods and so i wanted to put a bunch of them in one place :]

flashcards:

fc: cute language ones

fc: biochemistry paths

fc: disease summaries

fc: pretty biology ones

fc: the leitner methods

fc: ap us history ones

fc: o chem + color code

alternative 2 flashcards

sticky notes:

printing on sticky notes

take notes from textbook

plot summaries [literature]

many ways to use post its

english reading summaries

character maps 4 english

outlines:

color coded + neat

cornell + color code

digital cornell notes

learn from mistakes

super duper cute

outline with onenote

the margin method

in class / lectures:

for all classes + color

spaced out + pretty

for all classes / hw

advice @ infographic

2 notebook method

organized + colors

reference sidebar

method infographic

specific classes:

sciences + maths

history methods

learning types

sketchnotes:

introduction to it

cute symbols to use

+adorable symbols

+insp @ nice symbols

how to draw ribbon

illustrating ur notes

over the top amazing:

homemade textbook

digital study guides [1]

revision study guide

mini moleskine guide

digital study guides

handwritten studying

masterposts!!!

productive summers

starting a study blog

time managements

succeed @ school

ap world history

web resources

ap psychology

bullet journals

ace ur exams

stress reliefs

annotations

essay writin

printables

sat help

+more

hope this helped u all with taking notes!!!!!! xoxo sareena 

It is important to believe in yourself. And never give anyone a chance to make you question your strengths. It can be hard, but not impossible. So I want to be doctor, and I am ready to give my everything, so my dream would come true.