As midterm season falls upon us, I felt it would be nice to share some of my school tips with y’all. Disclaimer: by no means does me sharing these tips imply that I have my sh*t together. I am nowhere near that, but I do know some good hacks that make school life a bit easier.
- Scan Your Photos
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Need notes from a class you missed? Writing an essay on one paragraph from a book and hate carrying the whole thing around? Need to read and annotate a textbook chapter? Scanning apps are your new best friend. Using your smartphone, you can easily scan these pages by taking photos of them. The best part? The quality is great. I used to hate zooming into poor quality photos of my classmate’s notes. Now, I simply scan them — they are so much easier to read from and you can even print them out. My favorite app is the Adobe Scan App, but there are plenty of great ones, and if you’re an iPhone user the Notes app has a great scanning feature.
- Printing Out Slides
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If your lecture consists of lengthy slides and you find yourself struggling to take down every word, see if your professor uploads the slides the night before and print them out. You’ll be able to follow along and write down any additional important points that were mentioned in the lecture. But don’t worry, I’m not trying to give you a reason to spend all your printing dollars. The way I like to do this is to print four slides on one page using the layout > pages per sheet feature when you click file > print. If you usually print slides, this will be your new favorite trick.
- Google Calendar
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Okay, I know you’ve probably heard it a million times, but Google Calendar is seriously the best thing ever. I don’t know how I lived without it before. Besides it being on me at all times through the mobile app, I love the level of customization it offers. I set different colors for different types of events such as meetings, appointments, school work, etc. Having your life together is so easy with Google Calendar.
- Boost Mobile
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I love using this app, which they have for most campuses, to preorder food or coffee. If you have back-to-back classes then this is especially great for saving time. By preordering, you skip the line and ensure that you won’t be late for class. Even if you’re not running from class to class, it’s always good to grab a quick bite in between classes.
- Audiobooks for Quick Reading
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Have to read a boring, slow book for a literature or history class? Sometimes SparkNotes doesn’t quite cut it when you need to do in-depth analysis. What I like to do in this situation is to follow along with the audiobook on Youtube. It helps the book breeze by faster and requires less concentration for difficult works. The only drawback is that the recordings are usually slow. My pro tip is to increase the playback speed to literally cut the time in half. This one isn’t for everyone, but if it works for you, it’s a real gift.
I hope these tips will come in handy for you as they do for me! Good luck with midterms y’all!!