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 Maths

Maths is such a unique subject in my eyes because I never write any flashcards or real notes when studying. Instead, I focus almost exclusively on working through practise questions. Here are the three steps in my maths revision process.

Step One : Topic Review

Once I know that an assessment is coming up, I like to work on my “bound reference”, a theory book that my school allows students to take into most exams/tests with them. This is useful as it reminds me of the key formulae necessary and, by including examples, I can remind myself how to solve questions that were covered earlier in the topic.

Step Two : Practise Questions

In this stage of revision, I work through my textbook’s Chapter Reviews or borrow spare textbooks from my school library to access a wide range of questions. Sometimes, I’ll write my own problems and record myself solving them in podcast form as I find it so helpful to solve them out loud.

Step Three : Practise Exam

The final thing that I do before any assessment is to work through previous versions of the task. Earlier exams and tests (either by my own school or found online) help me to get used to the mark allocations for the sections of a test. This is the most useful step as it replicates the assessment conditions most closely and I often like to complete it in timed conditions.

By this point, I’m ready to complete my maths assessments as I have all of the necessary formulae fresh in my mind with examples and practises also under my belt. Let me know if you revise maths in a different way as I think there are so many effective methods to study for this subject!

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.

Functions and their Graphs

Recently in maths, “co-domain” has been a word thrown around everywhere in class that means nothing to me and many of my classmates. I’ve done a bit of research and this is my attempt at explaining this maths term for you…

Co-domain

The important thing to remember is that the co-domain is actually different to the range. It may take a few tries to understand this concept but here goes nothing…

The domain is all numbers that can go into a function. For a function that relates your mother’s age to yours in a particular year, this will be only positive numbers since the time since your birth can’t be negative-something years. BUT, it is also greater than the age your mother was at your birth, otherwise you will be negative-something years old too.

Let’s say you were born when your mum was 30. Any number above 30 up to her current age is part of the domain.
{30, 31, 32, … 39, 40, 41} – let’s pretend she’s 41 years old. So that’s [30, 41].

The rule therefore is (mother’s current age) – 30 = (your age)

Now, the co-domain could be any positive whole number since the formula works for your age in any year and the answer will always be a positive integer of years since your birth.

Let’s quickly recap…
Rule: (mother’s age) – 30 = (your age)
if your mother’s age is (x) and yours is (y), that means –> y = x – 30
Domain: integers greater than 30 –> x ⋲ Z > 30
Co-domain: positive integers –> y ⋲ Z+

And, finally, the range depends on her actual age. Since she’s 41, the oldest you can be is 11 years old. Therefore the range is between zero and eleven.
Range: y = [0, 11]

If co-domain still doesn’t really make sense, you can read Maths Is Fun’s post about it at:
https://www.mathsisfun.com/sets/domain-range-codomain.html

The USQ Approach

I’m one of those people who can’t sit still during a test. By that, I mean if there is any time left, be it 15 minutes or 15 seconds, I will 100% be checking over my answers.

I’ve never taken a specific approach to checking my answers. I typically go back and redo every single problem. Now, that method is probably one of the most useless ones in the book as it doesn’t help with understanding the question at all.

I recently found out about the USQ approach for checking maths questions and I will definitely be making the most of it in my upcoming tests. Having a strategy that I know can help me check my answers will definitely help me to save time when going back over my work.

Here’s a quick guide to checking your answers, the USQ way.

USQ stands for Units, Sense and Question and consists of three steps to checking each question, without having to do the problem again. : )

U – Units

What units does the question ask for? Have I included units and used the correct ones?

S – Sense

Does the answer make logical sense? Does my working out make sense? Does each step follow clearly from the one before?

Q -Question

What did the question ask me to solve? Is my answer what the examiners are looking for? Have I answered the question with a full sentence (if necessary)? Does the number of marks available match with what I’ve provided?

Doing the steps in this order is not always the most efficient or logical way; I prefer checking the question first and then going on to steps S and U. The point is, with a strategy that you know works for you, you won’t be wasting time redoing all of your questions!

Maths can be a difficult subject to study for but you can use my tips to maximise your marks in this notoriously difficult subject. Click here for more!

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!