Leo Studies @leo-studies-psych - Tumblr Blog

hello fellow grad students, i need some help finding literature from outside my discipline.

does anyone on here do psychology (or tbh any social science would help) and know of literature on what characteristics people look for in mentors/role model? thank you in advance x infinity!

nd-studyblr

some tips if you're mentally ill and just trying to scrape through university

(for reference, i'm still only a first year and this is just what i've found works for me. im also in humanities, and don't write any exams, so my advice might not work for everyone.)

1. don't even look at supplementary readings. write them down or save them somewhere along with what topic/module they're related to so you can use them as references if you have an essay on that topic. a lot of the time you probably don't even need to do primary readings; the lecturer will go over the most important stuff in the lecture.

2. make a list of the bare minimum you need to do each week. for me this is attending tutorials - because of covid everything else is still asynchronous for me, so for participation marks i just need to show up to tutorials and do the weekly questions. i can catch up on other stuff when i need it for assignments.

3. take your meds (if you have them). set alarms, set multiple alarms, ask a friend to bug you about it, whatever. i have too many times fallen into the trap of forgetting my meds because i feel like i don't need them, getting too depressed to take them, and then getting even more depressed, and having no motivation to work. my meds always help more than i think they do.

4. get a study buddy. this doesn't even have to be someone in the same courses as you! they don't even have to be a student. just get someone to sit in a room with you, or be on a video/voice call, and hold you accountable. for adhd people this is like a hack to our brains! no clue why, but for many of us it seems that just having someone else in the room (or on a phone call) makes it way easier to avoid procrastinating.

5. water and food! especially if you're on adhd meds, make sure to eat before you take them, or have something to snack on while you work. i often forget to eat and then wonder why my brain feels like slush. (also, have a big water bottle so you don't have to fill it up as much).

6. don't worry about your notes looking pretty. this has honestly been one of the hardest things i've had to get over, for some reason. i really enjoy making pretty notes, but they just aren't practical for my brain, especially now i'm in university. because of adhd, my brain doesn't remember shit if i just wrote it down once. instead, i've started focusing on just getting down key words and phrases, with a simple two-colour highlighting system (colour 1: main heading; colour 2: subheading; colour 1: key words/definitions). this way i can easily find what im looking for when im referencing my notes for an assignment. (NB: since i don't write exams, i don't need to memorise anything - if you do need to do this, i recommend flashcards; either physical ones or quizlet).

7. talk to your lecturers/tutors! not all of them are gonna be nice, but more often than not, i've found my lecturers and tutors to be very understanding and accommodating (although i might just be lucky). if you can, ask older students about which lecturers and tutors are lenient and if there are any you should avoid. i've found that especially since tutors tend to be younger (and often are students themselves), they're very understanding with mental health. if your university has a disability service, sign up with them if you can, and inform your professors at the start of the semester that you may need extensions on assignments due to [insert mental illness/medical problem]. if you tell them in advance, they'll probably be more likely to hand out an extension or give you leeway.

8. this has gotten long, so im gonna end it here with: go easy on yourself. uni is hard enough without also being mentally ill, and the fact that you're even trying to do it is impressive. you're working three times as hard as other people, and it can be frustrating when it doesn't feel like you're getting results that represent the effort you've put in. i'm proud of you, even if you haven't managed to get any work done.

lifeofthegrind

this is mostly a joke

etherealacademia

today is the first day of winter term! im so happy to be back.

kaylapocalypse-deactivated20201

Kayla I'm sure someone has asked this but like... how the hell do you as a person with ADHD make yourself actually fucking write? because as someone who has AT LEAST some irritating executive dysfunction problems, I am Suffering. I know not every day or even every week can be a good creative time but I feel like I'm not even trying and it's seriously getting me down on myself

The entire concept of writing “regularly” like every day or every week is… just not realistic.

So, instead, i just binge write! I can do like 20 pages in a day and then nothing for weeks. One week I had a deadline and I wrote 178 pages that week. It’s better to make long-term deadlines like “I will finish this book in 5 months. I will write 100 pages of it this month” and then relish ur time laying around and binge like a bunch of pages in a sitting.

Also!! I put a lot of emphasis on “writing when inspiration strikes”. Like you know how sometimes you’re out in the world and you’re like “oh man i have a good idea. Like.. whip out your phone and do an outline and just jot down your thoughts in an organized way. That way when you next sit down to binge write, you have reference material to help you power through. If your executive dysfunction isn’t super hardcore/you have the time, you can even write whole pages in the notes section. I also like to write late at night. I only write in the daytime during deadlines. I get my best natural writing out at 1-3am and there is nothing anyone can do about that so its best to just find the time writing comes easiest to you and only (mostly) do it then!!I also like to create moods with other media. I watched the film Interstellar 8 times while writing The Weight of the Stars. I also create playlists that i listen to Before my writing. I find that listening to music at the same time is too much of a distraction so I force feed myself media (generally before a deadline when i can’t rely on inspiration writing and have to Force the words out) for a while, then sit in complete silence and write with whatever it was i was watching/listening to, echoing in my head.

You should also figure out a writing style that comes easy to you. I literally just…can’t write regular chapters. I got so much shit from fellow people trying to get published on here when I was like “im just gonna submit this book in a series of posts”. Like more than 8 people were like “that style is unprofessional” and I was like “yeah thats the only style my ADHD will allow me to write in, so like, im going to do my best with it.” and at the end of the day, writing in a style that comes naturally to you works better than forcing yourself to write in styles that dont come as easilly to you (unless you’re trying to teach yourself new skills, in which case, persevere!!!)I also like to have my own passages read back to myself, just so I can hear the rhythm of my own words. I downloaded a text to speech app for my phone and sometimes when I’m settling in to write, I’ll make it read the last few pages back to me so I can quickly get into the headspace of the world I’m making.But the most important thing is not!! to get down on yourself!!! making art is supposed to make you happy. Just because you can’t do writing like neurotypical people do doesn't mean you can’t figure out a schedule that works better for your ADHD and wind up with the same amount of content at the end of the day.

There is no shame in procrastinating for 3 months and then writing 200 pages in one month when u have a 4-month deadline. So many of my writing friends from my past used to ride my ass about not doing nanowrimo well and succeeding or writing 1,200 words a day or being able to brag that I hit wordcount but 4 years later im literally the only one of us with an agent and a book on shelves. So who is riding who now? whO IS RIDING WHO NOW JENNIFER?

Put emphasis on Finishing than on anything else. AIts easier to edit than to write tbh. However you write, as long as you finish it, you’ll be fine. <3

@batmanisagatewaydrug

batmanisagatewaydrug-deactivate

@kaylapocalypse all of this is amazing and affirming and good (thank you!!) but also I’m SCREAMING @ you writing 178 pages in a week what an icon

#adhd

gowns

tips for reading w/ ADHD

i’ve had a few conversations with fellow attention-deficit friends lately, about how to read + retain information. here are some tips that i have learned:

don’t be afraid to skim. skimming for information is not “fake reading.” you’re still getting the main idea. sometimes i find it takes skimming a page 3-4 times before i’m ready to either 1) actually slow down and read the page or 2) decide that whatever it is (maybe a detailed description of a wallpaper pattern, something not essential to understanding the text) has been retained enough and i can move on to the next page/section.

for non-fiction essays, medical and legal information, and theory: the main idea is at the beginning and the end. if you like it and/or understand it, then read the middle bits to learn more of the “how” and “why.”

don’t be afraid to only read something partway. you’re still getting new information. you’re still getting new information! even if you don’t read a book cover to cover! you can decide “you know what, i get the point” and then skim the rest. or just chuck the book behind the couch and never look at it again

don’t be afraid to look up wikipedia summaries, reviews and responses. i was always told that cliffnotes / wikipedia was “cheating” so i was afraid of looking those up, and would instead falter somewhere around page 10 of a book, and not get any information at all. look. it’s ok to “spoil” a book. (honestly, if it weren’t for detailed plot descriptions, i wouldn’t have been able to get all the way through jane eyre, or decide that i didn’t have to to finish the last 1/3 of 100 years of solitude.)

it’s OK to spoil anything! do you know how substantially my life got better after i realized i could look up the plot summary to ANY movie, tv show or documentary? allowing me to actually pay attention for the next 40-60 minutes so i could watch how the plot points happen??

don’t be afraid to read multiple things at once! i am queen of the “stack of books” / stack of magazines / many open tabs reading technique. if you get restless halfway through a paragraph, just bounce to something else. know that you will return. know that you will retain the info eventually.

if you doodle while reading or listening to something, or write down words / quotes that stick out to you, it can help you retain information! this is something i have been doing since i was in elementary school, and i used to get comments about it from teachers or classmates. but for me, retaining information is connected to a kinetic + visual understanding. so when i pair an action (moving pen on paper) with a visual (doodle / written-out keywords) then it clicks a lot more than if i had “just” read and/or listened to something.

another tip for kinetic learners: feel free to pace around the house, read upside down, read while cooking dinner, read while doing yoga poses. you don’t have to sit down to read!

related to those last two points: everyone has different kinds of learning styles. for me, and a lot of ADD and ADD-adjacent people i’ve talked to, we have issues with retaining purely auditory information. so the best way to cope with that is to always turn on captions, or to find transcripts for podcasts / documentaries when possible… or to take your own handwritten notes if you’re listening to a lecture where you really want to retain the info. or! maybe you’re someone who struggles with retaining info through strictly written/visual info. then you’d flip it around, and stop and read passages out loud to retain it more; or listen to podcasts, youtubes, radio shows, etc, that explain the information. for scientific concepts, i find it REALLY difficult to wrap my mind around if i’m just reading about it, and i often have to stop and look up videos on youtube to understand. and that’s OK! all of this is OK. none of it is “cheating.”

and if you don’t retain every bit of information that you set out to understand… it’s OK. it’s really, really OK. we are not androids. we cannot retain and understand every single thing. if you’re struggling with something and it’s causing you pain, you can just let it go, and move on to something else. maybe one day, you will return to the concept that you were struggling with, and it will suddenly click and make sense. (or maybe it won’t! someone out there understands it! it’ll be your task to understand & convey something else!)

–

for years and years after graduating college, i was in a rut. i found that my fear of not reading books “perfectly” or “correctly” or “neurotypically” kept me from reading books… for years. literally years. it’s so silly. it’s just a mind trap.

release yourself from the idea that you have to read everything “word for word,” “cover to cover,” and you can read so much more. even reading one page is better than reading random ppl’s social media posts (for my eyesight + brain). social media is often too fractured, like endless channel flipping. a book or long article is more like a conversation, or meditation. and – most likely – the more that you swim in those waters the more it will help your attention deficit! build those muscles!

#adhd

happyhemostudies

ochem (study tips & tricks)

Hi there! Long time no see. I am officially through my first term of organic chemistry (out of three), and I have gained some tips & tricks to make it a little bit more manageable! (I got a B, and I know that some people on studyblr are happier with an A but a B in my first upper division science is more than I was expecting so I’m happy about it!)

Get a molecular modeling kit!

The beginning portions of ochem ask you to understand nomenclature (naming), functional groups, isomers, and stereochemistry. Functional groups are what I feel like you could maybe muscle your way through without ever seeing it in 3D but for everything else, make sure you use a model! It helps tremendously when you’re trying to learn what molecules look like in space. I lost mine in a box halfway through the term (at the beginning of isomers, rip me) and felt so lost with stereochemistry until I found it again. Make mini models of all your functional groups and learn what they look like. Make cis & trans models. Do what my friends and I did and stick random things together and learn how to name them properly. I got mine from Amazon for about $12 and it was worth every penny.

Preview notes/book before class.

If you’ve ever met me, you know that I’m full of anxiety and hate reading before class because I get anxious when I realize I have no idea what I’m reading. Don’t be me! Realize that reading beforehand can only help you solidify your understanding when you relearn it in lecture! It is totally okay to not know it while you’re reading as you’ve obviously never learned it before. This comes in super helpful because there’s a lot to cover in lecture, lots of diagrams and molecules to draw, and you likely won’t have enough time to write out all of the good book-type words you want to know too.

Watch additional videos.

I would like to tell you the wonders of videos for ochem. Since it’s such a visual course, it is SO much more helpful to learn from a video than a book! Honorable mention for @ TheOrganicChemistryTutor and other ochem videos on YouTube, but the real shoutout goes to @ Leah4Sci on YouTube and at leah4sci.com As my lab partner texted me at 1:14 am the morning of our second exam, “This woman is a godsend.”

Study with a group (and a whiteboard!)

In gen chem I made an awesome group of friends who now suffer through ochem alongside me. You would not believe how helpful it is to study with them, explain hard concepts, and work out problems with other people. We reserve a room in our science library and get to working out problems on whiteboards. Highly highly recommend. Especially if you can reserve a room once a week to go over the week’s materials.

Use colors in your notes.

One of my best friends writes her notes in strictly pencil and as a pen gal, it hurts a little. I cannot keep track of anything at all if it’s written in one color and I smudge pencil really badly as a left-handed human. So, I write in pen and make sure that I have at least a highlighter and one colored pen on hand. The highlighter is to highlight important concepts and circle my nucleophile and electrophile at the beginning and ending of a reaction. The colored pen is to track electron flow.

Attend (and try to enjoy) lab if you’re taking it alongside lecture.

My lab partner is lowkey the best frat boy I have ever met and has always made sure that I don’t have to fly solo in lab like other lab partners have made me do, leaving me with all the work. About half way through the term we no longer worked with partners but we worked together during lab if one of us got stuck and would work on post-lab reports together because the questions were always insane. Lab is an amazing break from lecture and a wonderful way to apply what you’re learning. You’ll also meet a bunch of cool people in lab, and I highly suggest forming study groups with your lab partner or lab bench as you spend so much time together every week.

Make a second notebook specifically for ochem!

You know how some people manage to make super beautiful notes during class? And if you’re anything like me you’re trying but mostly just scrambling to write down everything? If this rings true to you just know that I wholeheartedly get you. This is your chance to make your notes insanely pretty or colorful while also reviewing! I bought a composition notebook and I take about 2-3 pages to explain ONLY the important stuff from each chapter. This is my “cheat sheet” going into the test and you’ll usually find me looking over it the morning of my exams (because my exams are at 9am :( it’s rough out here).

Hope this helps! Best of luck to those starting ochem and best of luck to those continuing on into their next term/semester of ochem.

#ochem

determinationandcaffeine

Some Tips On Organic Chemistry

When you’re looking at two compounds and wondering how they may react, pay attention to the carbons - if they are bonded to a halogen or something more electronegative than them, then they have a partial positive charge and they’re going to want anything that will give them more electrons (a.k.a. a nucleophillic attack). If they’re bonded to hydrogen, they have a partial negative charge and they become your nucleophile, which will want to give those electrons to something that’s lacking them. Once you get these basics down, mechanisms become much easier to memorize because you can see the logic in them and sometimes predict them.

Get the basic mechanisms ingrained in your brain. Think of SN1, SN2, E1 and E2 as your new multiplication table. Make flashcards about them and take them to class. Or put them at the back or front of your notebook. Just have them handy at all times.

Draw the final steps in 3D. ALWAYS. You can draw the mechanisms and the first steps in 2D because it will make it easier to understand, but never forget that you’re working with a 3D structure that can flipped (and attacked by nucleophiles) every which way. Also, if you don’t know the basic perspectives used in orgo (Fischer, Newmans, sawhorse, wedge-dash) please take half an hour to learn them. Mainly wedge-dash and Fischer, but Newman is very useful when deciding which position you should put your atoms in if you’re dealing with sin and anti.

Colors. If you’re one of those people who ONLY writes in black pen, awesome, keep using it for WRITING. For reactions though, you’re going to want options. you’ll need to differentiate between:

The molecules (same color for atoms and bonds, unless you want to finish your notes on your deathbed).

Your three types of arrows: electron flow, actual steps in the reaction (think intermediates) and steps you may take to make it clearer for you but that happen at the same time.

Formal charges

The electrons that stay with its original atom and the ones that are given/shared, if you’re like me and you like your mechanisms to be spelled out.

This is not an excuse to go nuts with the coloring, 3 colors are enough. Personally, I use purple for molecules, electrons and reaction arrows, black for electron flow arrows and charges and light blue for clarification step arrows. Also optional but to denote a homolytic fission I usually write a blue line perpendicular to the bond. Similarly, if two atoms share one electron each, instead of just one them donating both electrons, I link said electrons with blue.

Remember to be consistent, otherwise you’ll end up like me, looking at your notes from the beginning of the semester and wondering if that dash is a bond or a -1 formal charge (to avoid this, preferably circle formal charges. Lol I never do this but I should).

Flashcards are so helpful! Write the reactants on one side and the mecanism and products on the other. Test yourself until you are one with the electrons.

If it’s a concerted mechanism, number the arrows. You’ll thank yourself a month from now.

Khanacademy. Khanacademy will save your butt when it comes to mechanisms. Chemwiki is likely to have anything that Khanacademy doesn’t. If it isn’t in either of those, Google images just became your new best friend. Books also tend to explain those nicely but I personally find them to be poorly structured and they usually include much more info than what you’ll actually be requiered to know. If you have the time to read two pages on a reaction though, by all means go for it.

Study in advance. Good luck studying for your final two days before if you don’t understand the mechanisms and you don’t have your material organized. Seriously, don’t do it. A week before the exam you could make those flashcards mentioned above. They’re a great way to review but it will be impossible if you are learning these things from scratch.

Get your hands on past tests. This goes for any subject but especially for orgo. Try to get a past test or at least ask an upper-classman who’s taken orgo with that professor. Does his/her tests focus on mechanisms? Retrosynthesis? Or does he/she give you the reactants and ask what the product is or what environment they should be in to obtain x? Ideally, you should be able to answer any of these if you know the material. However, if they focus on retrosynthesis, it may be a little tricky, so make sure to cater your study techniques to that.

You should also check out @colllegeruled’s Surviving Organic Chemistry, it’s super helpful and it has lots of resources (seriously, you introduced me to Khanacademy, I OWE YOU MY LIFE).

So, this is what I can offer so far. I hope it shines at least a faint light into the dark path that is organic chemistry.

Other masterposts

How To Stop Procrastinating

Memorization Tips

Skincare 101

Taking Notes in College

#ochem

an-academic-resource

Some Helpful Academic Links!

I saw a post sharing academic resources, and can't find it now, so I'm starting my own.

Not that I'm condoning pirating, but library genesis.

Math

Integral calculator - With steps not behind a paywall

PatrickJMT - His YouTube videos have gotten me through calculus and differential equations.

3Blue1Brown Essence of Linear Algebra - Really smooth animations and a good conceptual understanding for linear algebra. Highly recommend!

Chemistry

Huge sheet of gas constants and their units

Spectral Database for Organic Compounds - I mostly use it to compare HNMR spectra and give me an idea of which peaks correspond to which parts of the molecule. But there's also CNMR and IR spectra (and a whole host of others).

NMR Predictor - This makes predictions for where HNMR peaks fall and their corresponding location on the molecule.

MSDS - This is the word you're looking for when you're trying to find things about molecules, like molecular weight, melting point, boiling point, hazards, etc. Stands for material safety data sheet.

Organic Chemistry Lab Techniques - In case you're writing your pre-lab and don't remember how to vacuum filtrate (plus others). Has pictures and step-by-step instructions.

Master Organic Chemistry - Great diagrams, great explanations, and more study guides!

A great cheat sheet for hydrolysis of nitriles

Writing

Purdue Owl - I always end up referencing my citations against them

Chemical Engineering

NIST table for compressed water and superheated steam - NIST is well known and accurate, and it's a huge 60 page document.

LearnChemE - YouTube channel going over with examples chemical engineering concepts. Kind of hit and miss.

bananamiii-deactivated20250402

25 June 2021 // Notes on alkene stability and classification. As soon as my professor mentioned trans alkenes, I knew my color scheme had to be the trans flag.

theclassicalmind

Here’s some advice on how to get around subjects you dislike. This is my first infographics post here. Hope it’s helpful ♣️

mamoru

moleskine = bad

lettering-is-my-music

IT'S SO BAD AND I HATE IT

mamoru

moleskine makes people hate pens and is probably a huge part of why so many people give up on good pens.

to folks who might not know, moleskine is extremely famous AND infamous. they are hardcover notebooks with elastic enclosures. they are expensive, and sold everywhere from pharmacies to bookstores, and does collaborations with a variety of brands including james bond and pokemon. moleskine has tried to establish itself as a luxury notebook, which it technically is.

as long as you do not write in it.

moleskine paper is wholeheartedly shit. it is complete fucking garbage. you might wonder, what makes good paper? well the first thing is how well it can be written on. good paper can handle ink well. good ink handling means clear, solid lines without any feathering (fuzzy spreading), not bleeding through the page, and not ghosting. basically, you want paper that can do crisp lines with a variety of different inks and be used on both sides.

moleskine does not do that. anything more than a ballpoint or pencil will look fuzzy and gross and bleed right through the fucking page. the paper is shit. and that makes people think their pen is shit. and ballpoint pens can be seen on the other side of the page.

common knowledge is that fountain pens, rollerball pens, gel pens, felt pens, and more work better on good paper. good meaning good with ink. but when many people think good paper without knowing any better, they will reach for a moleskine notebook. because moleskine is expensive and advertises itself as good and is widely available. so people try out actually good writing implements on this shit paper, see how bad it works, and then blame the pen.

fountain pens, gel pens, and rollerball require much less pressure than ballpoint pens. they are ergonomic. easier on joints, easier for chronic pain. and moleskine makes people give up on them. nobody wants shitty bleeding feathered lines.

in the united states, our ideas of good paper and good stationery in general are extremely warped. so much of this is because paper here fucking sucks. a lot of paper performs like moleskine. there is shit paper at all price ranges. but you can pick up caliber brand paper (the ones that say made in vietnam) from cvs and have infinitely better performance for pennies. even though it looks low quality, caliber paper (vietnam) can even handle calligraphy ink clearly. bad paper makes people hate good pens and bad pens make people hate writing.

another thing really important to mention, a lot of people think thick paper is always better. this is extremely wrong. in terms of being able to handle a wide variety of inks clearly and cleanly, some of the best paper in the world is tissue thin (tomoe river).

do not buy moleskine. even if the stand is right there. they have some of the worst paper you can get at that price point. expensive paper is not always good paper, good pens need good paper, moleskine paper makes good pens seem awful, and moleskine is something you should only give to someone you loathe.

mypunkpansexualtwin

marloviandevil

There are so many great options:

- Leuchtturm;

- Rhodia;

- Clairefontaine;

Notebooks made by pen manufacturers.

Seriously, there are so many options, just ask other pen buffs.

Also, if you have to use shitty paper (besides Moleskine, bc Moleskine sucks), then mind nib size and ink.

I could correct copies with a M nib TWSBI Eco with Iroshizuku ink and no bleedthrough. (On moleskine, though... yes.)

workmantwerkman

the discourse I’ve been waiting for

essayisms

Good morning, I’m wishing everyone a productive day today. This week I’ve really focused on setting goals and accomplishing them and it’s going well so far. I’m feeling very balanced and content.

ig: rhiharper

myhoneststudyblr

my masterpost | my studygram | ask me anything

[click images for high quality]

[transcript under the cut]

Other advice posts that may be of interest:

How To Study When You Really Don’t Want To

Active Revision Techniques

How To Do Uni Readings

Keep reading

docbrownstudies

been a little while since i made a new spread in my journal! i did a little experimenting, but i love how it turned out!

ex-injuria-jus-non-oritur

27.03.21// hello everyone! My apologies again for a lack of personal posts. I’ve been quite ill and trying to figure out what’s going on! Thank you all for sticking around! Here’s to the end of the term almost being here!

Sending everyone good vibes and energy to get these assignments done 💕