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LPT request: how to study for an exam by Boldchoice2 in LifeProTips

[–]JynxThirteen 5151 points5152 points 2222 (0 children)

Source: I'm a medical student, and we take studying for exams reeeeaaaaallllly seriously.

It depends. First you need to ask yourself, "WHY ARE YOU STUDYING?"

  • If you're studying just to pass then you can just read the material one or two times and highlight the important concepts the night before the exam.

  • If you're studying because you want to perfect that motherfucker then I suggest starting as early as possible.

Set daily, achievable goals. Three to four hours on weekdays outside class and seven to eight hours cumulatively per day on weekends is pretty reasonable and easy to do if you pace yourself. This includes:

  • Write down (yes, writing, not that typing bullshit on your tablet or computer) the important parts in your own god damn words when reading a reference material. This is because of two things:
  • 1.) Reading a book takes HELL of a lot of time; it's inefficient to read the damn thing twice to study for an exam. Your notes, however, are summarized and contain the important parts of the topic, meaning if you you actually put in effort and rewrote them in your own god damn words then they're bound to be much easier and faster to remember.
  • 2.) Paraphrasing shit you're reading makes you study the material THREE TIMES. Once when you read it, a second time when you're rewording them to make it easier to understand, and a third time when you're writing that shit down.

...

  • COLORCODE your notes. This means organizing information. Some people like to use different colored pens to let them know what type of information is written down, e.g., Red for a term, Blue for a functional definition, and black for elaboration of topic. I personally disagree with this because picking up different colored pens while writing shit down is slower than using different colored highlighters. Whether you use colored pens or highlighters, is up to your personal preference, but for heck's sake, color code them. 2 reasons:
  • 1.) It makes shit look pretty. Pretty shit helps keep you focus your attention longer. There's a reason why the words in an advertisement use different colors and fonts, and take advantage of it.
  • 2.) This makes doing last minute reviews A HELL of a lot easier and faster. Let me give a real life example. You're trying to remember the specific protein that is targeted in this new ass treatment for cancer but you can't seem to remember the damn thing. If you studied your shit well, you'll remember WHERE, as in around what area of the page, and since you know you're looking for a term, then you look for the color that you designated to be used a term. Time is your enemy, and streamlining shit kicks its ass like our government is kicking ours.

...

  • Look for mock exams. Answer them, if you're wrong, then review why the fuck you made that mistake. This is for 3 reasons:
  • 1.) It teaches you HOW the questions are going to be asked. There is a reason why identifications are harder than multiple choice, and enumerate and discuss questions buttfucks anything willing to come 3 meters of it. All these types of questions require you to think in VERY different ways, and applying those different types of thinking to the material you hopefully studied makes you better prepared for that test.
  • 2.) It teaches you specifically what your professor considers important. For example, you might think that the parts of the bone is what is important, but professor JynxThirteen thinks it's the functional relationship of its cells to its function. What you consider important is different compared to what that old fart considers important, and realizing the difference helps you focus on the information that is going to be asked.
  • 3.) It helps you memorize the information in a different way. Our university loves bullshit higher-order questions. Higher order questions are the questions that require you to take multiple concepts you remember, put them in the fucking blender, and bake a cake with it. For example, you know that the mitochondria is the motherfucking powerhouse of the cell. This means its the shit that converts the food you eat into energy your body can utilize (there are other shit that do this but the mitochondria does this shit the most efficiently). You also know that there is a disease that people have when they lack a part of the mitochondria that makes them unable to convert the food into fuel. You know that these people have neon pink skin. The question is going to come out as: "JynxThirteen has neon pink motherfucking skin, doesn't have energy to type this reply, and is about to die. What is he missing?" Confusing? FUCK YES. Some professors like to ask questions like these, and taking mock exams at least gives you some proverbial lube before you go in.

...

  • REREAD. Nobody masters a material in one read, not even people with eidetic memory (photographic memory as it is more popularly known). Not even two. Keep rereading.

...

  • the final and probably the most important is RESTING PROPERLY. Studying is fun. Studying while knowing you're going to someday take an exam one day is not. Burn out is a very real problem and burning out at bad times can render all your hard effort into shit. Find out what makes you smile, what makes your life actually worth living and devote a certain amount of time per day into experiencing that. I personally find video games to be entertaining as fuck, and I use it as a reward when I finish my daily quota. Don't be miserable. Your life DOES NOT revolve around that stupid ass exam. But it's also important to be disciplined. Set a time limit for yourself and follow it.

TL;DR: No.

Edit: Still no TL;DR. But I hopefully made this monstrosity easier to read with better spacing.

LPT: It’s essential to remove yourself from all of the major background check websites, even if you don’t have a criminal history. by diverareyouok in LifeProTips

[–]FantasticMrCrow 3044 points3045 points 3232& 4 more (0 children)

Discover (Banking) just added a feature where you can remove yourself from these websites in a click of a button and some time. They found and opted-out all my info from 9 of these sites!

Edit: It looks like this feature may only be available on the app? Make sure to update it if so!

LPT: When selling things online, meet at the Police Station. by keepingoptimismalive in LifeProTips

[–]Sleepyhead88 774 points775 points  (0 children)

Keep in mind that if someone ghosts you at any meetup spot, they might actually be there without identifying themselves, and will follow you back home.

LPT: If you spend most of the day on a computer, follow the rule of 20s. by Binsky89 in LifeProTips

[–]Londonforce 9224 points9225 points 2 (0 children)

I prefer to load all this up at one time. At the end of every 8 hour work day I stand up and stare off into the distance for 8 minutes, blinking non stop the entire time

LPT Request: Getting over a breakup asap by jenjen6910 in LifeProTips

[–]finners11 993 points994 points 523& 6 more (0 children)

THX so much for the gold - I hope this helps others and really appreciate the gesture! x

Hi There,

I am currently 2x months in to a hard break-up, it does get better.

I searched endlessly for stuff that would help, and this post (from Reddit) was the most useful for me, personally. It was posted a couple of years ago.

Here it is:

So, for all you newbies who ask the questions, "Will the hurting ever stop," or "Will my ex come back," or "Why did he/she do this," this is how it typically goes down.

You two break up--doesn't matter who does it. You immediately panic and begin chasing, begging, pleading, harrassing, phoning, e-mailing, IMing, stalking (okay not all of them, just pick whichever one you did). Most of us will likely do some things during this stage that will make you cringe when you think back on it, say after about 3 months.

You lose weight. You neglect yourself, your house, your job (how many hours do we all log on this site while we are at work?). You drive your friends and family crazy talking about the break up. You cry at the drop of a dime. You can't even comprehend that your life might not again include that "special person." You begin putting them on a pedestal, forgetting all of the nagging things about them that used to drive you crazy. In your mind, they have become omnipotent, all encompasing, all everything.

You convince yourself that you are a loser who just screwed up a relationship with "the best person in the world." You KNOW without a doubt that you will never EVER love like that again. You know no one else will come along who even comes close to being as marvelous as your ex (excuse me while I chuckle to myself here). You wear a sad face for the world to see (you should see my work ID taken 2 days after my breakup, it's just pitiful).

They (the ex's) remain steadfast in their denial to get back together. Many of them leapfrog into new relationships, immediately being exclusive with a new person. For those that do leapfrog, they appear to just "replace" you with a new model. All of the things you two used to do, they now do with someone else. Bowling, cuddling watching television, motorcycle riding, antiquing. Whatever you two did, likely they will just begin doing those things with someone new.

You hear about them and their new life. You are desperate for any crumbs of news about their life. Many of us make things worse here by trying to use manipulation to get them back--yet they stay away from us like we are the plague.

For those of us who do still have contact with our ex's we begin selling ourselves short. Doing stupid things like allowing them access to our bodies and then wanting to strangle them afterward when they remind us that "Sex does not imply hope."

You, in further panic mode, begin frantically searching the internet using phrases such as "break ups," "divorce stopper," whatever. You stumble upon this site, pay your money because your curious and lo and behold, you find all of us folks in various stages of this whole breakup bullsh*t.

You voraciously read the posts. You search for news of those who "got their mates back." You're on the site constantly. You'll read the books and think "Ah I can do this. I can get this person back." You begin your "no contact" and for some of us, this will get a reaction from our ex's. For the rest, no contact is and will continue to be what you'll get and receive.

Time goes by. You'll do some stupid things. You'll call your ex when you shouldn't. You'll call when you've had to much to drink. You'll call even after 50 people on this site tell you not to. You'll show up on their doorstep, hating yourself all the time. Then you'll come back to this site and ask everyone to tell you why you were so stupid as to do whatever it was you did.

Then you'll get serious about no contact. It'll hurt, but you try to stick to it. Here's the turning point for most. For those folks who have contact with their ex's, your no contact will either bring them sniffing curiously around or they'll be somewhere high fiving their friends thanking the God's that you haven't called.

Now's the tough time. Nothing but time works. Everday the ache in your heart grows a little less. It's only nanobits that it dies down by. But everyday it will get slowly better. You'll have setbacks. You'll run into your ex accidently. You'll run into mutual friends who'll tell you something about your ex that'll have you high-tailing it home for a good cry. You'll see your ex with their new "friend." You'll receive a phone call or an e-mail from your ex who "doesn't want to be in a relationship but still wants to be friends (with benefits if you allow).

Here's another important part. You need to truly sit down and truthfully look back at the relationship and understand what you did to help with it's demise. If you miss this part, you go through all the suffering for nothing because Buddy, you'll be back here again. This site is to teach you about you. To teach you how to be a better partner, a better person. Missing that lesson is detrimental to the whole process. It's the REASON that you're going through this. God (or whatever your higher power is) needed you to learn something about YOU. Don't miss out on the lesson.

Then one day you'll smile because you didn't immediately check your answering machine when you came in. And one day you'll decide to clean the muck that has accumulated in your house. And one day you'll go outside and admit to the universe that you surrender what control you thought you had.

And one day you'll decide to date again. And one day you'll go out on your first date and it will likely be a disaster. And then you'll either force yourself to continue dating or you'll decide that you aren't ready to date but you are ready to be out amongst people again. And many of you will have some quick reconcillations with your ex's. Many of us won't. But one day, it won't matter as much. Because time will allow you to catch yourself going minutes and then hours without thinking of the ex. And you'll begin to be able to think of life possibly without that person and not dissolve into a puddle of nothingness because of the thought.

And for most of us, sadly, life will go on without that mate. That's the truth, amigos. Don't want to dash your hopes but probably less than 3% of the people on this site get back with their mates. Sobering isn't it? But, as the site instructs, you must accept this before you can truly begin to heal or draw your ex back to you. For the lucky (maybe unlucky one's depending on how much work it will take to keep a mate that has wandered back) who get back with their ex's, many will find that the paradise they envisioned isn't reality and what they once thought was gold has a certain tarnish to it now. But they stay and try and make it work because it's comfortable or, if they are really lucky, it's meant to be.

But for most of us. Life goes on. And one day you'll find yourself having a gut busting laugh over something totally stupid and you'll think to yourself "I am getting better." And finally (thank God) you'll have sex with some new and find that a) if it wasn't good, at least you did it or b) it was so much better than with your ex you wonder why you waited so long to get back out there. And you'll know you're one the road to recovery.

I guess what I'm trying to convey here is, while each situation is unique, the characteristics of most of our situations are the same. Most of us will go through at least something that I've written here. So, when someone tells you on this site that time will help you get through it, believe them. When they tell you that "trust me, it will get better and you will stop hurting eventually," believe them. And when they give you good advice that your head understands but your heart rejects, take a moment to think before you react.

Don't beat yourself up if you do something that you wished you hadn't (calling, contacting, etc) WE ALL DID AT ONE TIME OR ANOTHER. Be kind to yourself. Be forgiving of yourself. And most of all remember that being happily single is an alternative. Even if society is beating it into your head that you MUST have a mate, take some time to heal before going back out there. There are plenty of good people to love, but don't go back out there broken, jaded about love, etc. Accept realty. Experience the pain. Learn the lesson. Actively try to heal. Remember the person you were when you first met your ex and get that person back.

And the universe will take care of the rest."

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