Project Review Sheet: Fill & Download for Free

Study, but study efficiently: I cannot stress this enough. Knowing how you study is one of the most important factors in making the most of your time. While some of us are able to ace tests by reading over the material once, or simply by paying attention in class, the vast majority of students need to do something to make the information stick. You need to figure out the environment and circumstances that make your time the most effective.What type of learner are you?Are you a visual learner, an auditory learner, or a little bit of both? (This is a tired concept—let me rephrase.) What's your personal preference? Do you find that you absorb more information when listening to a teacher or that you understand a piece of literature more when you listen to the audiobook? Or do you like reading and taking notes better? Do you like using flashcards, or writing up an exhaustive review sheet? If you've hit on a method that you feel works for you, apply it. If you haven't, read the next roman numeral.If you're like me, you learn information over a long period of time, with multiple reviews. In an information-based class, like Biology or History, with a lot of facts and minutiae to learn, I start by taking detailed notes. This is when I see the information for the first time. Putting in a couple of hours on the weekend to take the most involved notes that I possibly can means that I have a working knowledge of the material before the class starts. The next step: usually the teacher goes over the material in class, which is when I'll print out my notes and write over them, with the important parts highlighted or underlined and additional info mentioned by the teacher added in the margins. Before the test, I do a huge review. For this, you should use the study method that works best for you—I personally sit down the night before and create a review sheet including both the textbook notes and my teacher's additions. It takes a long time, but it embeds all of the information in my brain.For problem-based classes, like Calculus, Physics, and Chemistry, you'll probably get a lot of problem sets and tests based on variations of certain concepts. The only things you can do to study for them are a) review the theorems and equations you need to know and b) do problems until your arms fall off or you know how to do everything in the textbook. Group work is important everywhere, but especially here. Get a group of friends, or a study group. Review the crap out of those problems.For essay-based classes like English or higher-level Spanish: I'm sorry, but there's a limited amount you can do to study for these. Basically, if you know the topic ahead of time, brainstorm every example that you could possibly use for it. Write some practice essays or write up what you might say based on those examples. When you go into the test, you'll already have a knowledge base to draw from. If you don't know the topic ahead of time (for example, in an AP English Language/Literature practice prompt) the AP has resources like other practice essays that you can write and other student's work to look at. Study those.What is your studying environment? This is incredibly important. A studying environment, as I'm defining it loosely here, includes where you study, who you study with, and what sort of time interval you study for.Do you like quiet places or a little bit of background chatter, a sunny park or an enclosed room with little to no visual stimuli? Figure out which place works best for you. This may change, depending on whether you're alone or not. I have a friend who does all of her homework at various different coffee shops around our town. I personally do my homework and studying at home when I'm alone and at coffee shops when I'm with friends. Some good places to study tend to be: the library, a local Starbucks/Panera, or an office at home. DO NOT study in your bed (your bedroom's fine if it has a desk). Studying in your bed is one of the fastest ways to fall asleep. Trust me.Do you like studying alone or in groups? Generally, I like studying alone except for in problem-based classes like math or science. In those cases, it's probably best to study with another person, because they know how to do problems that you don't, and vice versa. If you're comfortable studying in a group, go for it—they tend to distract me.In terms of time: I like studying in long intervals because I'm one of those rare people with enough focus to study in 4, 5, 6, and 7-hour stretches. However, this depends on what I'm studying for, and I wouldn't recommend it for everyone. I would recommend studying for intervals of 1 or 2 hours, with a 10-20 minute break in between to rest your brain. Halfway through, take a longer break if you feel like it. I use this time to go for a run, because it helps me process what I've learned. During this break, rest or do something that relaxes you, so you're prepped to start the next interval of studying.Some studying DOs and DON'Ts for you:DO: minimize distractions, including your phone and social media; study in a place where you're comfortable; eat a healthy meal on the day of the test; and stay organized!DON'T: drink a lot of caffeine (some may help, don't drink enough so that you're going to crash halfway through studying), study late into the night or pull an all nighter (your brain needs time to process what you learn, and sleep is one of the ways it does that), or leave all of your studying until the last minute.So...what about getting good grades?Pay attention to how your grade is weighted. Others have mentioned checking the syllabus to do this. If your grade is based on a points system, classwork that's worth 30 points will be just as important as a quiz worth 30 points. Put in your effort accordingly. If your grade is 90% test and quiz grades, and 10% homework (like my calculus class), you should study a lot for the tests and keep in mind that homework isn't as important.Do all of your classwork. I can't tell you how many incredibly smart students I know who get okay grades because they don't do any classwork. If you do all of it, depending on how your class is weighted, you'll have a significant point cushion when taking tests.If you don't understand a concept, get help. Most teachers stay after school so they can help students one-on-one. UTILIZE THIS TIME. Come with specific questions written down so you can use the time you have most efficiently. If your teachers are notoriously unavailable or super busy during this period, here are some other options.Get a peer tutor. (Most of the time, this is offered for free through your school. Ask your guidance counselor for more info.)Get a regular tutor (More expensive, but also a good option if you need more time or an expert opinion.)Join a study group. Probably the least expensive, most valuable use of your time. Not only will a study group help you tackle tough problems, but your peers will help explain it to you in ways that make more sense, and you might make friends who will push you to do better.DO NOT PROCRASTINATE. Procrastination is the enemy of good grades. It's easier to produce good work by revising and editing. Additionally, spending a couple of minutes every night on a huge project, essay or presentation breaks up a huge amount of work into manageable segments, time that you might not have the night before something is due. You have no idea what you'll be doing that night, and if you end up having a track meet that ends at 7 and a club meeting at 7:30 the night before a big essay is due (like I did), you probably won't have time to complete that entire essay. Procrastination inevitably leads to pain, stress, and anxiety. Don't do it.This was a long explanation of what took me my four years in high school to learn, and I hope it helps!

I don’t really have a “daily work schedule”.First off, I set my schedule to have work hours relatively fixed. Every workday I wake up around 8AM, and I’m at work usually between 9AM and 10AM, depending on how efficiently do I wake up, do I have to do grocery shopping before work and whether the weather permits biking (the alternative is public transport, which is 10 minutes slower). I leave work between 4PM and 4:30 PM on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and late on Tuesday and Thursday. Late means “once all meetings with US are done”, and “once I no longer feel productive”.When at work, there are three things which decide what I do any given day.First, there’s my calendar. At Google, everybody has access to everybody else’s Calendar, and the standard way to request a meeting is just to drop it in somebody’s calendar. So, first thing at work, I look what are my meetings in a given day. This time of the year, it’s quite a large chunk of my day, with a relatively big project review coming up, planning for next year happening, as well as the standard sync-ups, decision-making, etc. The amount of meetings you get goes up with your seniority; pretty obviously.Second, there’s the interrupts. If someone comes along to my desk asking for help with something, it’s my job as a tech lead to help. This can be consulting a design, figuring out how to solve a particular technical problem that requires domain knowledge, helping to debug something, whatever.Finally, there’s the time I spend at my desk. For this, I usually have a little sheet of paper (yup, I’m old-school) with a list of stuff that I should do, and a list of stuff that’s good to be done. The sheet is usually in first-in-first-out order, although I sometimes reprioritize, and I pick the first item on the list, and start hacking away at it. It’s sometimes design writing, sometimes experimenting or data gathering, sometimes writing production code, sometimes writing code to prototype something.So, I don’t really do planning on a daily basis. I have a long-term plan of what needs to get done; and I have “this minute” plan, when I sit at my desk and figure out what should I be doing with the time till the next meeting.

Well….I like to finish what I start. Unfinished projects drive me crazy and give me anxiety. One of my pet peeves is studying for an exam.Get out my index cards.Print out review sheet, if there is one.There are usually around 40-50 topics I have to memorize/learnOpen computerStart searching each answer one by one, and writing each answer on the index card.No matter how time consuming this is, I HAVE TO FINISH! I drive myself crazy if I do not finish!