What I’m about to tell you sounds like it’s straight out of a horror movie, but trust me, it’s real… midterms are right around the corner.
There’s no need to panic (too much), though: Spectrum is here to distract your studious minds with a new social media free-for-all contest! The prize this semester? Something that’ll pretty much pass your exams for you…
We all know you’re spending an enormous amount of time studying like a good student setting up your studying aesthetic. So, we want to see your gorgeous notes, aesthetically pleasing pens, study spaces, or all-nighter selfies.
If the usual prizes (fame and glory) aren’t good enough for you, we’ve decided to give the winner free Muji pens for their ~aesthetic~ needs. Ikr. Such aesthetics.
Want to enter and maybe win some sweet aesthetic stationery? Snap us @CUSpectrum or scan the code below, or tag us on Instagram.
Spectrum holds a bunch of contests. Some give you Muji pens, some give fame and glory. Why not join in on the fun? Be sure to check out party confessions and best dorm room decor.
Huber Gonzalez is a Columbia College sophomore and Spectrum’s associate editor in charge of user-generated content. He tries really hard to have aesthetically pleasing notes, but fails every single time. Reach him at huber.gonzalez@columbiaspectator.com to give him your condolences (and notes.)
Gif via giphy.com.
by Karthikkeyan Krishnamoorthy Premkumar (Peer Helpers Batch of 2020)
JC is undoubtedly a very academically packed 2 years of our life and we are all looking to maximise our learning. Making the best use of our time to effectively juggle our commitments is the ultimate end goal. There are certain proven study methods to adopt and simple tweaks you can make to your lifestyle to see drastic improvements, yet still have free time.
1) Minimise distractions
Distractions are the obstacles to overcome in becoming a more productive person. Sometimes, it just seems that even if you spend countless hours in your room studying, you do not retain much information and you have not done work proportionate to the time you have spent on it. This is because many hours tend to be lost in distractions like social media, texting and games. What may start off as just a 15 minute break morphs into an whole hour and trying to get back in the “zone” of studying once again is even harder and time consuming. It is best to keep your phone as far away from you as possible and only use it during pre-allocated times and stick to your usage schedule. After all, it is not the total hours of “studying” that matters but the net total of effective studying that matters.
2) Learning in school
Overall workload is greatly decreased when you can maximise learning in school instead of trying to catch up on schoolwork at home. When over 60% of learning is done in dedicated school time, then homework or trying to catch up is not a problem anymore. However, learning new things rapidly in school is never an easy task. Thus, it would be very useful to study the basics of a topic beforehand and allocate just an hour or two to skim through to make learning in school much more effective. Otherwise, school time goes to waste as you are completely lost not knowing the basics. One more thing to take note is to consistently revise the week’s work every weekend or so in order to get over learning humps quicker and in a stress-free fashion. Not clarifying doubts earlier on and leaving these doubts near exams can lead to unnecessary stress and the need to do catch-up on topics that might be very foreign to you due to lack of exposure earlier on.
3) Trying out exam papers
Knowing the necessary content for our exams is only half the battle won as time management and familiarity with the commonly tested questions will help us mentally prepare ourselves for the upcoming exams. Trying out past year school papers under timed conditions will help us better manage our time and make some tweaks to our exam strategy., It will also help us specifically point out areas of improvement required. However, doing exam papers is not a substitution to revising content thoroughly as the exam papers are more of a benchmark to assess your current knowledge rather than a way to cover content itself. Getting acquainted with very commonly tested questions can also save time during the actual exam. However, it is never advisable to spot questions based on past year papers as it might not always go as planned.
We hope these study tips will be helpful to you in preparing for your examinations!
RAFFLES PHP 