My Top Study Suggestion for my Daughters

Next month my youngest daughter heads into her second year of University and my oldest into her first year of Graduate Studies, and although I've told both of them my various tips and tricks for studying, a good friend reminded me today I've never written them down, so here goes:

Introductory Time Management (a.k.a. Use a Calendar)
Remember how Junior High (middle school) and High School orientation days always included getting a student calendar/day planner? If you were like me, you'd kind of flip through the book, remove any fast food coupons, then toss it to the bottom of you bag or the back of your locker until it was time to clear everything out at the end of the year.

Here's the funny thing, if you actually use that calendar, it can make your life a whole lot simpler.

Personally, I create my own calendar, which is filled out as soon as I get my various course outlines, so that I can step back and look at all of my upcoming assignments, tests, presentations, etc. and decide where is the best way for me to spend my time for today.

Looking at my sample calendar for the month of October, I can see a couple tight spots, specifically at the beginning of the month where two mid-terms and an assignment fall; this let's me know that I should really make sure the assignment is through the rough stages before the tests, only leaving me with revisions after I write a mid-term on the 3rd.

Another great use of this method, is it let's you know at a glance, where the tightest spots are, so that you can go to your teacher way ahead of time and ask if you can hand in/present your work early. For obvious reasons this doesn't work with tests, but a little wiggle room for one paper can give you that much more time to work on your group presentation over the weekend.

Now there are many different ways of getting this type of work done (I've recently been looking at bullet journals as a possible alternative), but for me, the process of creating a term(or semester)-long calendar gives you a great visualization as to exactly where to do your school work most effectively.

You can call me MLIS-ter Bookmonkey!

So here we are, I just got home from my last class of my last course between me and my Master's of Library and Information Studies degree!

A little more than two and a half years after I began I can now say I'm finished with Postsecondary school (my wife says I have to say "for now"), which is very bizarre for me as I started on this road back in 2004 when my seventeen-year-old daughter was my seven-year-old daughter.  It took me seven years to get my Bachelor's degree and almost another three to get this one, but for the first time since my late twenties I no longer have to figure out how to balance school, home and work.

I've got to say, it's actually freaking me out a little...

Things I’ve Noticed: Folks on Flickr are pretty nice!

While working on an upcoming assignment for my Children and Youth Services course, I’ve been scouring the Internet for good animal pictures.  The tricky thing is that some of these animals have pretty specific looks to them.  So I was very happy to find pretty much exactly the picture I wanted on Flickr.

 

To make sure everything was on the up-and-up, I contacted the artist and asked permission to use their picture for my assignment.  Within a day I got a very nice response including permission.

 

As one of the easiest ways I can say thank you is to send online traffic to the Flickr account in question, I heartily recommend that you check out Critters by Chris at:

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/62690732@N06/

 

Have a great weekend everyone!

Things I’ve noticed: All my shows are ending!

Even though it’s May 10 today and I’ve still got a few precious weeks with my regular shows, the end is In sight for each of them and pretty soon I’ll be left to work through all the TV series I’ve purchased on DVD since last summer.

Right now I’ve got a couple shows saved up – both Grimm and The Americans sit with more than 10 episodes on my PVR and although I haven’t seen any episodes of Grimm since it’s mid-season hiatus and haven’t even seen the pilot of The Americans, I’m pretty excited to check both of them out.

Past that I’ve got both a lot of books and a video game going on right now – it’s God of War III, and I’ve spent my last three hours of game play doing the same battle over and over again (just a few more hours and I’m sure I’ll defeat that guy!)

Oh yeah, and I’m taking a class in school right now (Children and Youth Services) which is both very interesting, and a huge expenditure of my time.

Hmmm…. Maybe it’s a good thing my shows are running down.

Things I've Noticed: I'm heading back to school

Today marks the first day in my second year of library school - not that I'm a second-year student (although I sort of am), but as I'm about a third of the way towards my Masters of Library Sciences, and there isn't such as thing as a 1/3 student, I guess I am a second year student.

This term I'm actually taking two classes, a Thursday morning (Organization of Information) and a Thursday afternoon (Multimedia LIteracies), which means that for one day a week I'm not at work but am instead a full-time student (sort of).

It was very cool - I got to have first day jitters, meet new students and get the smell of freshly sharpened pencils (a scent I've connected with school ever since kindergarten).

Anyway, I've seen the early work on the saw-themed banner I'll up next month and it looks pretty cool - and hopefully by the time it goes up I'll be able to understand it's relevance to the series (which I've still never seen) and am pretty excited to spend a month looking at one of the biggest horror franchises of the last decade, so at least I'll be in the know.

Being a student is pretty cool!