How to Recover from Study Burnout

It happens; sometimes you can work too hard without realising it, other times it hits right before exam season. Burnout can happen to anyone and it’s important to address it as soon as possible so that you can get back on track. Today we’re discussing the top three things you can do to recover from study burnout and if you’re interested in study-break-related tips to help prevent it, you can click here. Otherwise, without any further ado, here are today’s tips!

The first anti-burnout strategy you can undertake is to set time for yourself to do what you enjoy. You could journal, go for a run, do some yoga, watch a TV show or read a book. All of these things can be really beneficial to your mental health and will assist you in rediscovering your passions. I think this step is really important as sometimes, studying makes it feel like there’s nothing more to life than school. Doing something you truly enjoy can definitely improve your mindset and mood – it’s a crucial part of my recovery strategy.

Next, do something to look after yourself (mentally, physically, emotionally and/or socially). Spending time to reset your daily routine and make yourself feel good can prepare you for the next chapter of your life. You can go to a spa session, cook one of your favourite meals or catch up with your friends. This doesn’t have to be anything fancy but it can make you feel physically better, subsequently improving your mental and emotional wellbeing.

Lastly, make sure you’re sleeping well. Physical fatigue is a huge contributor to study burnout and feeling tired can make it difficult to retain new information at school. Go to sleep at a decent time for an entire week and set an earlier alarm in the morning. By improving your sleep schedule, you can get into healthy habits for later in life as well as feeling super refreshed.

That’s it for my top three burnout-curing tips, I really hope you found them useful. I’m not trying to give medical advice here so make sure you consult your GP if excessive fatigue is plaguing you and take these tips as simple suggestions. Remember, support is always close at hand!

How I Revise for English

For me, finding the motivation to study for English can be really difficult. Mainstream English (as we call it here in Australia), includes various essay formats that we need to know and can be monotonous and difficult to study for. This year, my exam includes a comparative argument analysis essay and a comparative text response essay. This is how I’m revising for English:

I think that the most important thing to do to begin with is to start writing! Even if you’re not confident, type up a practise essay (to save time instead of handwriting it). This will help you identify your strengths and weakness, showing you how much you’ve remembered compared to how much you thought you knew.

The next step is to write a couple more practises (mainly digitally). By honing on your skills a little more (all the while remaining in a low-pressure situation), you can develop on what you identified as your weaknesses. At this point, peer or teacher feedback is still not entirely necessary.

After that, I like to draft a few plans without writing out full essays. This is just to ensure that I’m ready for any prompt I may be given. At this point, remembering key quotes is a priority and I work on memorisation by creating flashcards (if you want to know my tips on memorising quotes, click here).

By now, I will have drastically improved writing from the beginning of my revision process. It is at this point that I time myself in an exam-style situation, writing all the essays I need to have done in the correct time frame (that of the exam). Upon completing my essays, I will hand them to my teacher to be marked. This step is crucial as it shows me how my work would be marked by an examiner and it’s the last element of my personal revision process.

I hope you found my tips useful! Feel free to let me know how you revise for any subject, I’m always on the lookout for new revision ideas!

Comparative Text Response Writing Prompts

I’m back with another English resource – today, it’s a list of essay prompts for a comparative text response on Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies! Feel free to add any other possible prompts in the comments if you like. However, without any further ado, here’s the list:

1. How do the characters in both texts grapple with the changes in their identity?
2. What do the authors present as defining features of a dystopian society in the texts?
3. How does fear affect the actions of the characters in their respective texts?
4. The authors argue that societal regulations are needed to keep humans in good order. Discuss.
5. The authors assert that democracy is an ineffective form of leadership. Discuss.
6. The authors justify savagery in their respective texts. To what extent do you agree?
7. The authors present texts proving that goodness cannot withstand evil. To what extent do you agree?
8. How do the authors present social interaction and connections as a positive aspect of life (that can improve living conditions and help to combat inequality and fear)?

How to Memorise Quotes

Writing an English essay for an unseen prompt can be REALLY hard. Especially if you need to remember a bunch of different quotes for all the possible prompts! Today I’m sharing three ways that you can try to remember quotes more efficiently so that you can blitz your English exam or assessment…

1. Act (or draw) it out!
   Linking movement to words can be a great method for memorisation, and images can be really helpful too. Moving around while reading aloud your quotes is particularly helpful for plays or poems as the language can be really descriptive. Similarly, you can associate a certain finger (or other body part) to each word in a quote like this; thumb: TO, index: BE, middle: OR, ring: NOT, pinky: TO, hand: BE (and so on, do you get the gist?). However, if you’re less of a kinaesthetic learner and more visual, consider drawing out quotes or even just writing them out with nice fonts and different colours.
2. Stick it on the wall.
   If you’re a visual learner, writing your quotes on sticky notes with lots of different colours and images can be a great way to memorise quotes. What’s even better is to put these up where you’ll see them. You can put them in the bathroom (for when you’re brushing your teeth) or in the kitchen (for when you’re eating breakfast). The possibilities are endless!
3. Say them aloud in different accents or voices.
   I can’t confirm if this is just a mind trick or it actually works, but this is a funny idea for learners who like listening to information.

I hope you find all my tips helpful! I found some of them on this site which has heaps of tips for school. Enjoy!

How to pick your Year 12 subjects

Subject selection is in full swing here in Australia and all I can think about is how to choose which subjects I want to do in Year 12. In the past I was very determined about what I wanted to do but I’ve been worried that not changing my mind may lead to regrets in Year 11 and 12.

Today, to help you out, I’ve decided to create the ultimate guide to subject selection which you can use for any year level’s subject choices.

Do you already enjoy the subject?

Choosing a subject that you don’t like for your last two years of schooling is not a great idea; it can make your teenage years feel like such a drag. And anyway, you’ll do much better in a subject that you like than one you don’t as you’ll probably be willing to dedicate more time and effort to it. Don’t forget that you’ll also be meeting other people with similar interests to you so it can be a great way to make new friends.

Does it complement the other subjects that you’re doing?

Are you doing any similar subjects that would give you the contacts of teachers and friends who can help you with the class content? If so, choosing this subject can be a great way to strengthen friendships and create a support network of teachers and students at school. On the other hand, you may be trying to choose too many subjects with a large workload or lots of content. Make sure that you think through how you much work you would need to do for your subjects to not overwork yourself. You definitely don’t want to spend two whole years of your life doing nothing but studying!

Is it the last chance you have do to do this subject?

In other words, will you be studying it in further education? If you love the subject but won’t have any other chances to work on it, you should probably pick it. Firstly, it will give you a foundation for the topic if you ever change your mind and decide to go back to it but secondly, it will allow you to connect with other people who have similar interests to you. You never know, it may change your university and career preferences, maybe even your whole life!

Is it a pre-requisite for any courses you wish to complete in further education?

From what I’ve heard, universities are really strict on pre-requisites. If you don’t complete a subject required, you will be automatically be disqualified from gaining a place in the course. Choose various courses of a similar scope as there can be very similar classes at different universities that require different foundation subjects. Often, the more specific a course is, the more pre-requisites it will have but you may be able to achieve a similar degree with fewer pre-requisites. On the flip side, don’t lock yourself in too early. Make sure you achieve the pre-requisites for some university courses that you might be interested in taking as lots can change in two years.

Will it have enough other students to go ahead?

At my school, if a subject doesn’t have enough students undertaking it, it won’t run and the students who had picked that subject need to choose a different one. Be strategic in your back-ups and don’t just pick random subjects that you’re not interested in. If there aren’t any other ATAR-contributing subjects that you enjoy, consider applying to university extension programs, TAFE courses or applied learning subjects. These can be fun subjects that you’ll look forward to every week rather than boring ones you only picked because you had to.

I hope this post helped you work out what subjects you want to do in upcoming years. If half the words on this page are jibberish to you, it may be because all my advice is directed towards Australian students. Our final two years are graded differently to many other countries and applying to university is done with your final score. If you’re interested, you can read more about Australian schooling here.

The Mind Map. A True Hero.

I love mind maps. It’s true. I think they’re an amazing tool for understanding ideas in the humanities and the sciences. They make it really clear to see how different aspects of a concept relate and I use them all the time.

Today I wanted to share some resources for improving the way you mind map. I’m sure you know what one is and how to use it so instead of me repeating everything again, I thought I could help you to increase your efficiency in making a mind map.

1. Add colour!

If you’re a visual learner (like me), coordinating colours to mean different things is an effective way of remember particular key words. You can also use colour to create categories for different words (for in English, this could mean character, plot and themes in different colours).

2. Include more than just key words.

I know that the mind map concept was pretty much created as a tool for summarising, but it can be extremely useful as a page of interrelated concepts. I don’t think it matters if you need a few more words to get your point across, the map can help you to understand how things link and sometimes it’s necessary to add detail for something to make sense.

3. Experiment with different lines (in thickness and style).

Coordinating key words with zig-zag lines and numerical information with straight lines is a cool idea that can help visual learners. I’ve never done this before but I think it would help with classifying information very specifically, helping you to remember particular details in a test.

Here’s one of my mind map pages on characters in Macbeth. I decided to put all of my mini mind maps on one page to create a resource bank for exam revision. I think English is a topic where mind maps are lesser used but still incredibly helpful. What do you think? Let me know in the comments below!

Character Analysis – All you need to know

In English lately, we’ve been studying Lord of the Flies, a novel written by William Golding. We’ve begun to analyse some of the characters in it and I wanted to help you out with writing an A+ character analysis! To be honest, this is really interesting for me; there’s so much to learn about the motives and actions of the characters in a text so please forgive me if I get carried away with academic language… 🤓

Here’s a quick list of things I think are important to include in any analysis of character:

1. Development

How has the character changed throughout the text?
How does this character drive the plot of the story?

2. Backstory

What is this character’s past? How does it affect their actions?
Is this backstory helping to provide a moral for the text? Why does the author want us to know this about the character?

3. Motives

Why does the character have these motives?
What is the author trying to tell us about the motives this character has? Does the author agree with them or not?

4. Relationships

Who is this character friends with? What does this say about them?
How does the character’s relationships shape them?

Now, you may have noticed that I have not included appearance in my list at all and that’s because I believe that it’s less important than the other headings I mentioned. However, it can definitely be included to add detail, particularly if the character in question is stereotypical as this can help to understand the author’s purpose.

For each section, I recommend writing a short paragraph stating your interpretation of the character. Make sure you use decisive language, making your point seem official and well-planned.

Enjoy! 📚

The Lotus Diagram

I’ve got another super useful study resource for you all today, The Lotus Diagram. I found out about this revision technique at school in my forensics class and I think the Lotus Diagram is an amazing way to revise for subjects with a lot of content.

I used it for science, biology in this case, and I think it’s a great way to define key concepts and summarise information. Since it doesn’t always provide enough space for writing, I used sticky notes to add detail but please leave me a comment if you have another idea for including more information! But for now, make the most of the Lotus Diagram…

Straight lines aren’t your thing? Check out the Lotus Diagram’s curvier relative, the Mind Map, here.

How to get ALL your questions answered…

A New Discovery…

So, I don’t want to be dramatic today this but I honestly think this study technique is amazing and could help SO MANY people learn better. If you’re a person who learns best when someone else is explaining something, This. Is. For. You.

I found this study hack on the ATARNotes website, an awesome resource for students in Australia so I wanted to give them a quick shout-out. I love their site because it not only has really interesting articles but also includes heaps of study resources for pretty much every subject!

And so, without any further ado, the life-changing study technique I have discovered is …

make a shared document with your friends for all your homework-related questions

Ok, I get it. It’s not even that revolutionary. I just think it’s the smartest thing ever, though. I guarantee you that as soon as I finish writing this I’m going to create this doc for my class and share it with everyone. It’s an amazing way to get all of your school-related questions answered in a formal context. You could even include your teachers on the document and ask them to contribute too!

You may not be fangirling over this as hard as I am right now, but I highly recommend using this technique. If you do, let me know in the comments below! I’ll be sure to keep you updated with what I’ve learnt.

Want more study tips and tricks? Everything you need is right here.

‘Til next time!

How to: Analyse Language Comparatively

Argument analysis is a huge part of Year 12 and also the lead-up to that hectic final year. Here’s my ultimate guide to analysing language in a comparative essay. Follow this in your exams to achieve an A+ for analysis!

This guide is aimed at comparative analysis structured with the weaving method (where two or more texts are analysed in the same paragraph according to the arguments they present).

1. Scan Both Texts

• look for images (location, size, tone)
• find changes in font or text size (Why has the author done this?)
• identify the paragraphs (Are there any sentences left separate for impact?)

2. Read The Texts

• highlight the contention and three main arguments
• identify the tone, audience and purpose (TAP) – write this at the bottom of the page
• begin mentally comparing the texts (How do the points of view/stylistic approaches differ?)

3. Annotate

• look for persuasive techniques and find two or three for each main argument

4. Plan Your Essay

• organise the points you are trying to make (two/three persuasive techniques per argument)

5. Write!

a) INTRODUCTION

• set the scene
  – context
  – issue
  – text information (author/s, title, etc.)
• specify the points the texts made (contention, arguments)
  OPTIONAL = declare your points (which techniques help persuade the audience for which arguments)

b) BODY PARAGRAPHS

• begin with a strong topic sentence that describes the main argument of the texts
• focus more on the attempted effect than the techniques used themselves

c) CONCLUSION

• sum up your own points (this is your chance to mention the techniques in relation to the arguments by the text authors)
• conclude with a final comparative sentence based on tone or stylistic approach

I hope this guide will help you with analysing language. Don’t forget to like this post for more study guides and tips like this. See you soon!