Minimalist Learning

As many of the people in my environment know, I have specialised on learning as much as I can in as few time as possible. That means while others revise frequently in order not to lose the connection to topics that have been dealt with a while ago, I prefer to start learning about a week ahead of the exams. Well, okay, let me be honest: I should start a week ahead, but I usually end up having only a few days left when I realise just how close the exams really are. So, let me explain to you how I try to get as many facts into my head as possible during just a few days.
Warning: this is not going to work for everyone. People are unique and the way they learn things best is as unique as they are themselves. These are just my tips that I can give you from my own experience.

Before we start: Do NOT make a tutorial while you should be learning. Yeah, I'm basically doing exactly that right now. Anyway, let's get started!

First of all, I personally find it quite helpful to use a binder for my learning purposes. I'm currently studying tax law and we have to be prepared to know everything we ever did at this course of studies for all of the exams in the future. That is why I think it is incredibly important to stay organised from the very beginning. So I have a binder for my summaries and I will divide it for each subject and keep adding my future summaries to it so that I will have everything in one place. Bonus tip: take photos of the summaries so you can learn anytime on the go as well.

Speaking about summaries, summarising what I have to learn is an essential step for me and it does make up most of my learning in the end. I need to get an overview of how much it is that I really have to learn and by going through my notes and thinking about what is important and what isn't, I already revise everything. That is why I actually prefer to do this close to the actual exam instead of frequently doing a little at a time. Well, procrastination probably tells me to do so anyway. 

So, now that you grabbed a binder and you've summarised your subject, what's next? Try to use as many senses as possible while learning! Don't only read it in your mind; get creative! When I find myself learning early enough, I sometimes draw a little picture besides some facts that I just can't seem to remember which has something to do with the words. Like some puns in drawn form. That way, when I try to remember these facts, I'll think about that picture and this will take me to the actual facts that I wanted to remember. Sarcastic comments are frequently found in my summaries as well. Those summaries are for you, no one will judge.
If you're short on time, make a voice record while reading it out. You can listen to it later while doing other stuff. 
If you happen to have the exam of last year, now is the time to check if you can answer all of the questions and if you can't, you'll know what you have to take a look at again. If you aren't as short on time, take your summaries, try to solve a problem without looking at it, check with your summaries and jot down what you've forgotten about. Repeat with a different problem until there are no points left.
Buy a scented candle that has a somewhat unique or unusual smell and put it on your desk while learning (don't light it though, just smell on it while reading through your summary). Each subject should have a different candle. It works like the well-known chewing gum method, except that it is usually not forbidden to place an unlit candle on the desk at school as long as there are no words written on it or something. The human memory largely developed from what was used for identifying scents in the past, so connecting memories with scents happens a lot. We can use that to our advantage! Just make sure your candle scent doesn't bring back other memories.

I hope some of these tips were helpful. If you aren't as prone to procrastination as I am, please do not start that..! It's always better to keep repeating so that the contents of your subjects get into your long term memory - my method is just trying to make the best out of my bad habit to only think about tests when they are imminent. 

About the Black Holes Inside the House

Everybody loses a few of their belongings every once in a while. While almost every sort of item that can be moved will get lost at some point, there are some that disappear particularly often - socks, hair elastics, pens, cellphones, keys. Why that? Well, one might say this is due to the fact that these are handled pretty often and that this might lead to forgetting to place them back to where they were taken from or that they are small enough to disappear among other stuff. But that would be too easy. 

The truth: there's a magic black hole in every house. And it seems to be located right below the washing machine. 

You might be shocked at this realization, but don't worry, there must be a fix for it somewhere, right? Right. So here are my tips for minimizing the amount of items that get lost in daily life. 

Take some sort of clip to join the two matching socks right when you get them off your feet. In a bigger household, you might also want to consider a seperate container for collecting the used socks and washing socks only among other socks to prevent them from getting lost inside a shirt or pillowcase. 

Buy the same socks multiple times. Well, this isn't as much about preventing them from getting lost but rather a quick fix in case one sock got lost somewhere or a sock had a hole or something like that. This way, you can match a different pair of socks from two socks that lost their mate. 

Have a distinctive place for every sort of item. Like hair elastics. Keep them at one spot and force yourself to put them right back as soon as you take them out of your hair. This is easiest if you have that collecting spot at a place where you usually take them on and off, for example in front of the bathroom mirror or on the bedside table. You can set up multiple spots for the same sort of item too and distribute the items evenly every once in a while when you run out of them in one spot. 

Don't ever put your phone to silent mode when it is not required. That way, you can simply call your own phone and listen to where it rings if you can't find it. There are some apps doing the same job, too, telling you where your phone is at the moment from another device. Certain keychains will light up or make a sound when you whistle, so if you keep losing your keys, this might be a good investment for you. 

And lastly and most mighty: ask mom. An item is only lost if mom can't find it. 

Getting Melted Plastic off the Stove

I messed up in the kitchen today. While cooking, I placed the plastic spatula beside the stove and it slid onto it unnoticed. When I saw it, it was too late - the edge of the spatula was already melted, leaving both the spatula and the stove a mess. I was pretty panicked, I mean, I just melted one pretty expencive (tupperware....) spatula and there was a melted puddle of it on the stove top..! My desperate tries to get it off while the stove was still hot were useless, it somehow didn't seem to move at all. 

So I turned off the stove, let it all cool down until I could touch it and then I tried to figure out how to get that plastic stain away from the stove. And here's what I came up with.

You will need:

* Baking soda or Cream of Tartar (some sort of chemical base that isn't going to cause damage if it ends up in your food)

* Vinegar (lemon juice should work too, since it's just an acid needed)

* some sort of hard object (e.g. a plastic spatula for a ceran stove, or a blunt knife for those ridged stove tops)

* a spray bottle

* a sponge or dishcloth

Sprinkle some baking soda onto the hardened plastic puddle, making sure to cover the edges. Fill the spraybottle with vinegar and spray some of it onto the soda. This will form some bubbles. Use the hard side of the sponge and rub over the plastic stain until you can't see the baking soda mixture anymore. Don't worry if it doesn't come off that fast, just keep repeating this and use your fingernails and a plastic spatula or blunt knife to try to scrape the plastic off the stove top. It took an hour for me to do this on one of the ridged stoves, so be patient. 

But what about the melted spatula? Well, if it smells like burnt plastic, you should better throw it away. In my case, the spatula didn't have any weird smell. So I carefully cut off all the protruding edges around the melted tip of the spatula with a utility knife and used sandpaper to smooth it all out. And it actually looks pretty exactly like it did before, except for the fact that the spatula is now slightly shorter. That was one quick fix and the spatula is working fine again. 

I hope I could provide at least some of you with a possible solution for this very nasty problem. Have a good day ^-^

Final Exam Survival Tips

Finals are really stressful for many of us. The preparations are one thing - making a check-list of what to learn, planning when and in the end actually learning it all. But when the exam is actually taking place, there are a few additional challenges to face which no one really thinks about beforehand. 

1. Get up early the day before the exam, too. If you have to get up at 7 am, it could be a good idea to get up at half past six the day before to be prepared to go to bed earlier that evening. 

2. Don't learn too much one day before the exam. It's okay to do a few quick exercises, but you should be done with all the topics up to this point and therefore should not have to learn anything new anymore. Instead, just repeat what you've already learned and take a bath before bedtime if you like. Do something relaxing. Thinking you will have that one essential realisation is probably an illusion anyway, so you should concentrate on not worrying too much instead. 

3. Don't let the others get you nervous. When you're having your final exams, you're usually asked to come a bit earlier than you're officially required to. Chances are that you'll stand in front of the room you'll be taking the test in, together with some of your fellow students. Try not to talk about the subject of the exam and if someone does, don't worry if you don't understand what they're talking about - you probably won't need that anyway and even if so, you'll understand it a lot better when you read it during the exam. 

4. Take a safe item with you. Exams can be extremely stressful and frustrating at times. That's why I'd suggest taking something nice with you, such as a lucky charm or a small plush toy. Just make sure that it's something that is allowed to be brought with you. 

5. Take some candy with you. Of course you shouldn't forget something "normal" to eat and a bottle of water either, but candy really helps calming down and thinking more clearly. And it'll treat you quite a bit, most of all if you choose chocolate. But get rid of any loud wrappers before you leave the house and just put the candy into a small lunchbox so that you won't disturb your fellow students during the exam.

6. Check how much time you needed for each assignment. In exams like this, you'll have a lot of time and a ton of assignments. If you're just a tiny bit too slow, the time loss could build up throughout the exam and you might not be able to finish all the assignments on time. So be careful to check the clock after at least every other assignment and adjust your pace accordingly.

Bonus tip: Use a biro for writing. What has been written with a biro can't be washed away by water (in contrast to ink). So if you accidentally spill your water over the paper, the thing can still be read and you won't have to start all over again. And you won't have any trouble with a leaking pen cartridge either. I suggest taking at least three biros with you, just to be sure. 

So those are my tips for final exams. Do you have any additional tips or did something different? Let me know in the comments. And for those who haven't had their exams yet: good luck and don't panic!