I apologize for the radio silence throughout this quarter. I ended up getting far busier around my first round of midterms, so I didn’t make the time to write a new entry. Then, in the interim between my two rounds of midterms, I spent a lot of time studying and making sure my grades were in line.
Now that I finally made it to Thanksgiving break, I have some time to breathe. I’ll explain a little bit of what happened over the course of the last 9 weeks, and try to make sense of the flurry of exams, quizzes, and assignments I completed.
What Worked, What Didn’t
As you may have guessed, a big reason for my silence was due to not being prepared enough for the workload of the quarter. That’s really a problem with the quarter system, but it’s something I need to learn to adapt to better; the first 2-3 weeks are pretty easy, no exams, and minimal work. Overall, we hadn’t covered that much material in these weeks, so there isn’t even much to study for the first round of midterms, but it lulls you into a false sense of security. This is what happened to me, and made me overcommit in areas outside of school, leaving me in a bit of a cloud trying to prepare for midterms.
After the first round passed, it became clear to me that I needed to study more if I was going to achieve what I wanted to achieve. As a result, I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about this blog and just tried to keep up with the work.
At the top of the list of things that didn’t work was my “Bullet Journal.” There was nothing wrong with the system or the notebook, but I just don’t have an established habit of regularly checking a planner. Even though I tried to force it a couple of times, I’d exclusively check it on Sunday or Monday of a week to set up the week and then not look at it again until Friday or Saturday at the end of the week, at which point it really wasn’t useful.
I still plan on trying to force myself into using it, because I really do think that it can help me if I actually make an effort to use it. A big part of this is just getting over the stupid fear of having something “good enough” to put in it. I need to accept that it’s there to help me, and that I need to be able to scribble things in so that I know I need to do them, not so that it looks good enough to post on Instagram.
What did end up working really nicely was my Moleskine cahiers. I’ve never used one for more than a single class in a quarter. This quarter, I tried using it in all of my classes, and the readability in these notebooks is so much better than anything else I’ve used before. It made going back to reference them for studying much easier, and an overall much more pleasant experience. I didn’t use the index I put in at the beginning a whole lot, though I did manage to keep it updated over the course of the quarter by filling it in every 3-4 weeks. This may have been more a product of the fact that I’ve never had an index to refer to, so it may take some getting use to, but I think it’ll be good help in the long run.
As far as my instruments of note taking, there was one notable change through the quarter. I bought a Pilot Hi-Tec-C Coleto multi-pen with 0.3mm inserts in the five colors I typically take notes in, and I must say that it dramatically changed my note taking. As I discovered in the first couple of weeks, using the Uni Jetstream multi-pen didn’t make me love using ballpoint pens any more than I did before, and it quickly found a place on my desk in my dorm. However, the Coleto, went above and beyond what I expected. The 0.3mm was beautifully thin, though some of the common issues with the Hi-Tec-C became very apparent to me—I hate the way it scratches the page every now and then, and the pens would frequently dry out for a moment while I was taking notes, which became increasingly frustrating throughout the quarter. Despite this, the pen helped me created really beautiful multi-colored notes and diagrams relatively easily which was really useful when I’d just copy down what the professor wrote down even if I didn’t totally get it, because looking back on it after having studied a bit made it make a lot more sense.
Going Forward
I’m attempting to keep this entry no longer than it needs to be, so I’m going to jump ahead to planning for next quarter.
Next quarter, my workload will be a little different from this quarter’s. This past quarter had a lot of classes based on calculations and information, things that are really easy to write down in a notebook, but next quarter, I have to take another writing class.
The engineering classes should be manageable with my current methods: Mechanics: Statics, Linear Circuits, and MATLAB programming. Of the three, MATLAB will be the one that might be difficult to take notes on, but a lot of it relies on computer programming and actual projects I have to code, but we still have lectures that I assume I’ll need to take notes on. I’m most worried about the writing class because I haven’t taken a writing class since last winter, so I’m a bit rusty. The most annoying part of writing classes is just making sure that I allot myself enough time to write the papers and don’t try to write it at the last moment. It should be a nice change in pace with all of my calculation focused classes—it starts to get overwhelming doing the same type of thing in every class, all quarter.
I’m also developing a better system for keeping on top of my health and productivity so that I don’t stay stuck in this rut that I fell in towards the end of last year.
I have two more weeks left, one last week of instruction, and then finals. All told, this should be enough time to study for finals, but I need to be on top of the work and make sure that I actually study enough over the coming week.
I will check back in over winter break, and try to provide more detail about everything I brought up here.
James
University Standard 