♻️Zero Waste♻️

20| Environmental Science Major | Living a Zero Waste Lifestyle | Ask me anything!

[ms-zerowaste]

10 Easy Zero Waste Swaps

I present to you ten of the first zero-waste swaps I made when I was starting out because I found them to be the easiest! If possible try to make these swaps...

I made another video! I talk about 10 simple zero-waste swaps that have been the easiest for me to make! 

[ms-zerowaste]

Why you should try a zero-waste lifestyle

In this video, I discuss why reducing the amount of waste that ends up in landfills can help benefit the environment and why making a change in your lifestyl...

Here is why it’s important to reduce your waste and the hazards that come from waste in landfills! Maybe it’s time to take the dive into trying a zero-waste or low-waste lifestyle!

[ms-zerowaste]

Today in my minimalism journey

I went through one more drawer in my dresser! I went through my sock drawer and am getting rid of a bunch of socks I no longer wear or that had holes in them. I also went through my purse and got rid of gift cards with no more money on them, old receipts, and any other odds and ends that didn’t need to be in there! These were two small steps closer to my goal but now I am that much closer!🙂

[ms-zerowaste]

Today in my zero waste journey

I know it’s been quite a while but I accomplished something today that has brought me one step closer to my zero waste goals! I made reusable “cotton” pads! Unlike the store bought ones that create a lot of waste

I have made reusable ones out of scrap fabric I had, flannel and felt. These can be washed and reused instead of thrown out!

I used two peices of flannel and sewed one piece of felt in between. The flannel was from a project I did a few years ago and the felt was from an old Halloween costume I had made! I chose to make them into squares because it was personally easier for me to sew (I used a sewing machine but these could have also been done by hand). I made about 10 of them just for now but will make more if I need! After I made them I stored them in a mason jar I bought secondhand! I’m really excited and proud of this accomplishment!

[ms-zerowaste]

Minimalism & Zero Waste

I am just starting my minimalism and zero waste journey! A few months ago I was introduced to zero waste living and after reading many blog posts and watching many YouTube videos I have decided it is something I want to do. I have always felt strongly about helping the environment but never really knew where to start and I definitely believe this is my start! Minimalism comes in to this journey as well because even though I have heard of minimalism before I now realize that there are many ways to interpret it. After seeing how many people are living both zero waste and minimally I started understanding the different ways people interpret minimalism. 

I always thought that minimalism was living with only the things you need, meaning living with as few things as possible, only the things necessary for you. But I have come to find out that not everybody interprets it in this way. The way I am going to be interpreting minimalism is living with the things I need and the things in my life I value. I want to declutter the many things I own that don’t really make a difference in my life. I have so many shirts but only a select few that I actually wear because they are my favorite. Instead of having a huge wardrobe I want a small simple one made up of only items I love and value as my favorite items. I want to rid of all my “junk” as in all of the items that I’ve stowed away and thought I might use one day but they’ve never seen the light of day.

I want to show my journey as I’m going through it to keep myself motivated. I think I will be overall happier, less stressed, and I’ll be more organized, all things that I want in my life right now.  I’m a freshman in college with finals coming up and so my next post about my journey may be tomorrow or it may be in two weeks! I know this was mostly about minimalism but I figure I should focus on one aspect at a time and minimalism seems to be what I need right now. I plan on slowly incorporating zero waste into my life but I want to get used to one lifestyle at a time. I would love any advice or recommendations that people have for both!

[selenocysteine]

Tips to learn a new language

The 75 most common words make up 40% of occurrences The 200 most common words make up 50% of occurrences The 524 most common words make up 60% of occurrences The 1257 most common words make up 70% of occurrences The 2925 most common words make up 80% of occurrences The 7444 most common words make up 90% of occurrences The 13374 most common words make up 95% of occurrences The 25508 most common words make up 99% of occurrences

(Sources: 5 Steps to Speak a New Language by Hung Quang Pham)

This article has an excellent summary on how to rapidly learn a new language within 90 days.

We can begin with studying the first 600 words. Of course chucking is an effective way to memorize words readily. Here’s a list to translate into the language you desire to learn that I grabbed from here! :)

EXPRESSIONS OF POLITENESS (about 50 expressions)      

‘Yes’ and ‘no’: yes, no, absolutely, no way, exactly.    

Question words: when? where? how? how much? how many? why? what? who? which? whose?    

Apologizing: excuse me, sorry to interrupt, well now, I’m afraid so, I’m afraid not.    

Meeting and parting: good morning, good afternoon, good evening, hello, goodbye, cheers, see you later, pleased to meet you, nice to have met.    

Interjections: please, thank you, don’t mention it, sorry, it’ll be done, I agree, congratulations, thank heavens, nonsense.    

NOUNS (about 120 words)

Time: morning, afternoon, evening, night; Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday; spring, summer, autumn, winter; time, occasion, minute, half-hour, hour, day, week, month, year.    

People: family, relative, mother, father, son, daughter, sister, brother, husband, wife; colleague, friend, boyfriend, girlfriend; people, person, human being, man, woman, lady, gentleman, boy, girl, child.    

Objects: address, bag, book, car, clothes, key, letter (=to post), light (=lamp), money, name, newspaper, pen, pencil, picture, suitcase, thing, ticket.    

Places: place, world, country, town, street, road, school, shop, house, apartment, room, ground; Britain, name of the foreign country, British town-names, foreign town-names.    

Abstract: accident, beginning, change, color, damage, fun, half, help, joke, journey, language, English, name of the foreign language, letter (of alphabet), life, love, mistake, news, page, pain, part, question, reason, sort, surprise, way (=method), weather, work.    

Other: hand, foot, head, eye, mouth, voice; the left, the right; the top, the bottom, the side; air, water, sun, bread, food, paper, noise.    

PREPOSITIONS (about 40 words)    

General: of, to, at, for, from, in, on.    

Logical: about, according-to, except, like, against, with, without, by, despite, instead of.    

Space: into, out of, outside, towards, away from, behind, in front of, beside, next to, between, above, on top of, below, under, underneath, near to, a long way from, through.    

Time: after, ago, before, during, since, until.    

DETERMINERS (about 80 words)  

Articles and numbers: a, the; nos. 0–20; nos. 30–100; nos. 200–1000; last, next, 1st–12th.    

Demonstrative: this, that.    

Possessive: my, your, his, her, its, our, their.    

Quantifiers: all, some, no, any, many, much, more, less, a few, several, whole, a little, a lot of.    

Comparators: both, neither, each, every, other, another, same, different, such.    

ADJECTIVES (about 80 words)    

Color: black, blue, green, red, white, yellow.    

Evaluative: bad, good, terrible; important, urgent, necessary; possible, impossible; right, wrong, true.    

General: big, little, small, heavy; high, low; hot, cold, warm; easy, difficult; cheap, expensive; clean, dirty; beautiful, funny (=comical), funny (=odd), usual, common (=shared), nice, pretty, wonderful; boring, interesting, dangerous, safe; short, tall, long; new, old; calm, clear, dry; fast, slow; finished, free, full, light (=not dark), open, quiet, ready, strong.    

Personal: afraid, alone, angry, certain, cheerful, dead, famous, glad, happy, ill, kind, married, pleased, sorry, stupid, surprised, tired, well, worried, young.    

VERBS (about 100 words)    

arrive, ask, be, be able to, become, begin, believe, borrow, bring, buy, can, change, check, collect, come, continue, cry, do, drop, eat, fall, feel, find, finish, forget, give, going to, have, have to, hear, help, hold, hope, hurt (oneself), hurt (someone else), keep, know, laugh, learn, leave, lend, let (=allow), lie down, like, listen, live (=be alive), live (=reside), look (at), look for, lose, love, make, may (=permission), may (=possibility), mean, meet, must, need, obtain, open, ought to, pay, play, put, read, remember, say, see, sell, send, should, show, shut, sing, sleep, speak, stand, stay, stop, suggest, take, talk, teach, think, travel, try, understand, use, used to, wait for, walk, want, watch, will, work (=operate), work (=toil), worry, would, write.    

PRONOUNS (about 40 words)

Personal: I, you, he, she, it, we, they, one; myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, themselves.    

Possessive: mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, theirs.    

Demonstrative: this, that.    

Universal: everyone, everybody, everything, each, both, all, one, another.    

Indefinite: someone, somebody, something, some, a few, a little, more, less; anyone, anybody, anything, any, either, much, many.    

Negative: no-one, nobody, nothing, none, neither.    

ADVERBS (about 60 words)

Place: here, there, above, over, below, in front, behind, nearby, a long way away, inside, outside, to the right, to the left, somewhere, anywhere, everywhere, nowhere, home, upstairs, downstairs.    

Time: now, soon, immediately, quickly, finally, again, once, for a long time, today, generally, sometimes, always, often, before, after, early, late, never, not yet, still, already, then (=at that time), then (=next), yesterday, tomorrow, tonight.    

Quantifiers: a little, about (=approximately), almost, at least, completely, very, enough, exactly, just, not, too much, more, less.    

Manner: also, especially, gradually, of course, only, otherwise, perhaps, probably, quite, so, then (=therefore), too (=also), unfortunately, very much, well.    

CONJUNCTIONS (about 30 words)

Coordinating: and, but, or; as, than, like.    

Time & Place: when, while, before, after, since (=time), until; where.    

Manner & Logic: how, why, because, since (=because), although, if; what, who, whom, whose, which, that.   

[thepolyglotblog]

Oh i love this concept!

[amateurlanguager]

I love it too! I love it mostly because it makes me feel less overwhelmed. When you break it down like this, everything seems so much more manageable. Like, hey, I could memorize 20 words at a time (even if ‘at a time’ varies wildly for me), and just do that like ten times. That’s a HUGE chunk of a language.

(And since I have the habit of doing languages that are similar to ones I’m already familiar with, the grammar part usually comes pretty easy, too.)

[educatier]

    | Part I/IV of the Back To School Series | Back 2 School Timeline ½ |

 A masterpost on what you should do before you go back to school! The after edition will be released later this week. Click on the picture for better resolution  (so you can actually read this lol) 

[gaystudies]

What to do when you:

Misspelled/messed up a word/phrase

use correction fluid. 

use sticker paper. 

tape or glue a small piece of paper on top of the word.

Botched a doodle

print out an image and glue/tape it over the drawing.

redraw what you meant to draw on a sticky note and cut it out and paste that.

use your imagination and add to the drawing. 

Used the wrong color to highlight

add another color to it to make a new color that you don’t already use and go back and do that to the rest of your highlights.

relate the highlighted word or phrase to the subject you usually highlight with the color you used.

Couldn’t fit all of a word in your banner/flags/etc

add another banner underneath the first and keep going.

color it in and write the word/phrase above below, or around it in some cute and creative way.

if you’ve made the banner too big or added too many flags (etc) then don’t be afraid to use exclamation points!!!!!!!!!! 

 Wrote a few parts in the wrong color

put brackets or some indicator that these notes are {super important} and thus deserve the special color exception.

roll with it. change your color scheme completely (but make a key).

Accidentally tore a page out

cut out the edges of the page and glue it back in on a new page. 

put it in a safe place (folder, notebook pocket, etc) and write yourself a reminder in the rest of your notes. 

copy them onto a new page.

Spilled a drink on them

put notes to the side and wait for them to dry before continuing (this is a must).

doodle something on top of the stain. 

write an important fact/term on the stain.

Color bled to the next page

when you turn to the next page, put cardboard or another expendable surface underneath it to prevent a pattern from occurring (recommended highly!!!).

line up your notes so that you use the same color at the exact same spot.

use correction fluid,sticker paper, or paper and glue to cover the bleeding.

avoid writing notes on both sides. 

a system where there are color notes on one side and plain notes on another may help if you don’t want to waste space.

thanks for reading! if you have any other ways that you’ve “ruined” your notes, let me know and i’ll add ways to fix them on this post!! also, if you would like further examples or explanations about any of these, let me know!! 

 (find my other posts here)

[study-blr101]

I’m gonna post this because it’s a good post but I personally don’t like it when I misspell or color the wrong thing because I’m a perfectionist. Sometimes I do this things when I’m too tired to start again. I don’t start over again to make my notes aesthetic or eye pleasing I just do it because it bothers me seeing misspells or something wrong with while studying.

[studizz]

My 20 Study Tips✏️

Mental health is more important than grades. 

Personality is more important than grades.

Make getting enough sleep a priority.

Only pull an ‘all-nighter’ if absolutely necessary.

Eat healthily, exercise often, all of that stuff.

Clear your room and your desk to clear your mind.

Study frequently - little and often over a long period is more effective than doing 8 hours the night before.

Focus on understanding rather than memorising.

Stay organised.

Don’t beat yourself up over a bad grade.

Remember grades aren’t everything, but that isn’t an excuse to slack off.

Don’t underestimate what you can learn in 10 minutes.

Follow studyblrs for motivation, but remember scrolling though tumblr does not substitute for studying.

Ask questions if you don’t understand something, don’t let teachers or anyone else make you feel like it’s a stupid question - there is no such thing.

Stay focused whilst studying. Remove distractions - change your social media passwords to something you won’t remember (write it down and hide it obviously), shut your door, tell the people you live with you need peace and quiet.

Study with or without music depending on what works best for you, I like songs without lyrics.

Understand ➡️ Summarise ➡️ Revise ➡️ Exam practice ➡️ Review

Read ➡️ Make notes ➡️ Revise (flashcards, posters, mindmaps, up to you) ➡️ Test your self ➡️ Exam questions ➡️ Mark Scheme

Do not compare yourself to others, you only have to meet you own expectations.

Believe in yourself, work hard and you will be successful.

[ashleystudies-blog]

[april 2, 2016] here’s my weekly from march 27 to april 2! i forgot to write the actual dates in it, but i noticed after i already took the photos, so… i’ll add them in later :-)

[ms-zerowaste]

25 ways to show your love, to a busy aspirational student

1. Tell them that they're working hard. Remind them that they are doing enough because self doubt is the biggest bitch.

2. Listen to them talk about what they want to do in the future. Let them share their goals and listen to whatever problems they're having.

3. Buy them coffee (or other preferred beverage).

4. While your at it pick up a muffin.

5. Give them space. They need it.

6. A hug a day keeps the shitty thoughts mildly away.

7. Smile a whole fucking lot.

8. Remind them often that they can take a break and that it will help them push forward not set them back.

9. Ask them if they want a study buddy, sometimes company helps.

10. Respect their wishes. If they say no, let it go, especially if they're having a good day.

11. Make an effort to spend time with them just so they know that you care.

12. Send a text their way before a test.

13. Ask how exams went and not in a 'I want to know if I did better then you say'

14. However a little competitiveness is good (as long as it's not destructive),power both of you to do better and achieve your own personnel goals.

15. Separate your goals! Be individual and don't let your goals pull your loved one back.

16. Be interested in their work!

17. Support their choices. It probably took a long time to figure out what they wanted to do and as long as you don't think the choice is obviously a bad idea you should validate them.

18. Encouragement is always appreciated.

19. Ask and care about how their sleep is.

20. Make an active effort to know a lot about them. It will help out later I promise.

21. Don't pretend to care about things you really don't. Although the effort will be appreciated it's actually pretty discouraging.

22. Treat them every once in a while. The effort will be returned and seriously it's the nicest thing.

23. Keep up communication. Especially during exam periods keep talking to them and let them know your there for them.

24. Share your thoughts and problems, communication is super important.

25. And lastly, just tell them you love them. It's honestly the most uplifting thing.

[dang-doodles]

Scans from my little interactive calculus book :)

[academicheaux]

adapted from this response

1. Write your notes in a way where you can test your retention and understanding. 

Many people write notes that do a great job summarizing their materials but their notes are not designed to promote learning, retention or diagnosis of their weaknesses. But my notes can – and so can yours. Simply put my notes can be used like flashcards because I write them in a form where I separate a “stimulus” from a “response.”  The stimulus are cues or questions (think: front side of flashcard), while the response is the answer to the cue (think: back of flashcard).  But the stimuli are to the left of a margin, while the responses are to the right. The key advantage of this is that just by putting a sheet of paper on top of your notes, you can hide the responses, while leaving the stimuli visible. You can have multiple margins and multiple levels of stimuli and response for greater information density. When you get good at this you can write notes in this form in real-time. To get some idea of what I’m talking about google for “Cornell Notetaking method”. My notetaking method is a variant of this. I usually use completely blank paper to do this because regular lined paper has too small a margin. To give you an idea of how powerful this notetaking method can be, I learned several courses just hours before the exam and still got an “A” in all of them during a difficult semester where I had too many competing priorities to spend long hours studying. Had it not been for this notetaking method I don’t think that would be possible. 2. Develop the ability to become an active reader (this is the perhaps the most important advice I have to share). 

Don’t just passively read material you are given. But pose questions, develop hypotheses and actively test them as you read through the material. I think the hypotheses are part of what another poster referred to when he advised that you should develop a “mental model” of whatever concept they are teaching you.  But a mental model can be much more than simple hypotheses. Sometimes the model resembles a story. Other times it looks more like a diagram. But what they all have in common is that the explain what is going on. Having a mental model will give you the intuition and ability to answer a wider range of questions than would be otherwise possible if you lacked such a mental model. Where do you get this model? You creatively develop one as you are reading to try to explain the facts as they are presented to you.  It’s like guessing how the plot of a movie, before it unfolds. Sometimes you have to guess the model based on scarce evidence. Sometimes it is handed to you. If your model is a good one it should at least be able to explain what you are reading. Having a model also allows you to make predictions which can then be used to identify if your model is wrong.  This allows you to be hypersensitive to disconfirming evidence that can quickly identify if your model is wrong. Oftentimes you may have two or more models that can explain the evidence, so your task will be to quickly formulate questions that can prove one model while disconfirming the others. To save yourself time, I suggest focusing on raising questions that could confirm/disprove the mostly likely model while disproving the others  (think: differential diagnoses in medicine). But once you have such a model that (i) explains the evidence and (ii) passes all the disconfirming tests you can throw at it then you have something you can interpolate and extrapolate from to answer far more than was initially explained to you. Such models also make retention easier because you only need to remember the model as opposed to the endless array of facts it explains.  But perhaps more importantly, such models give you intuition. Of course, your model could be wrong, but that is why you actively test it as you are reading, and adjust as necessary. Think of this process as the scientific method being applied by you, to try to discover the truth as best you can. Sometimes you will still be left with contradictions that even your best models cannot explain. I often found speaking to the professor after class to be a time efficient of resolving these contradictions. I discovered mental modelling as a survival mechanism to pass my studies at the University of Waterloo – where their teaching philosophy is misnomer because their teaching philosophy is to not teach as well as they could. You can see this from their grading philosophy. Although they don’t use a bell curve or other statistical grade adjustment, they make their exams so hard that the class average is usually between 68 (C+) and 72 (B-) in spite of the fact that their minimum admission grades are among the highest in Canada (you need more than A+ to get into several of their engineering programs). The only way they can achieve such low test averages from otherwise high performing students is by holding back some of what they know, and then testing what they didn’t explain well in lecture on their exams; or by not teaching to the best of their ability.   This forces students to develop the ability to teach themselves, often from materials that do not explain things well, or lack the introductory background knowledge needed to understand the material. I realized I could defend against such tactics by reverse engineering the results into theories that would produce those same results; i.e. mental model induced from scarce facts.     Then when I got to MIT I found myself in a place with the opposite teaching philosophy. Unlike Waterloo, if the whole class got an “A” the MIT professors would be happy and proud (whereas at Waterloo an “A” class average would be the cause for a professor’s reprimand). The mental modelling skills I developed at Waterloo definitely came in handy at graduate school because they enabled me to learn rapidly with scarce information. 3. Be of service to your fellow classmates.

I’ve personally observed and heard anecdotal stories that many students in highly competitive programs are reluctant to share what they know with their peers; a good example being the vast number of students in a top ranked science programs competing for the very few coveted spots in med school. I’ve seen people in such situations be afraid to share what they know because the fear it could lead to the other students “getting ahead” while leaving them behind. I would actually recommend doing the opposite: share liberally. You can’t expect help from others if you are unwilling to help others yourself. I spent hours tutoring people in subjects I was strong in. But, conversely those same people were usually happy to help me with my weaknesses when I needed it. I also found it easier to get good teammates – which is essential to getting good grades in team-based classes. I found I learned a LOT from other people. And their questions helped me to prepare for questions I may not have thought of – some of which would appear on the exams. 4. Understand how the professor grades. 

Like the real world, the academic world is not always fair. You need to understand who is grading you and what they are looking for. Oddly, if you actually answer questions as written, you won’t get full marks from some teachers. Some professors expected more than the answer. Some only accepted the answers taught in class as opposed to other factually correct answers – which coincidentally can easily happen if you rely heavily on mental models. Some expected you to not even evaluate whether the answers to their multiple choice answers were true or not; only to notice which answer choices aligned or did not align with the theories taught in class.  Some highly value participation in which case you ought to have a mental model of what they are teaching based on their assigned readings. The sooner you know who you are dealing with, the sooner you can adjust to their way of grading. Thankfully I considered the vast majority of my professors to have graded in a fair manner. 5. Get involved in research while still in undergrad.

Academics is a means to an end. To me that end was “solving problems” and “building stuff” specifically systems and organizations.  Depending on the school you apply for, your research may be just as important, if not more important, than your grades. In fact if all you have are good grades your chances of getting into a top ranked CS program with a research component (e.g. MIT, CMU) are slim to nil; though you might still be able to get into a top-ranked courseware-based Masters (such as Stanford where there is no masters thesis). I did an Artificial Intelligence research project in undergrad and posted it on the internet. Not long after it was cited in three patents from IBM, AOL and another inventor. Then 40 other people cited my work. I feel this helped me get into MIT because they saw that I could come up with theories with practical applications. It also led to internships with top research teams whose work I am still in awe of. This research also helped my graduate application. None of this would have been possible if I didn’t do research in undergrad. 6. Attend classes.

I do not understand the students who claim they did well without attending class. Many professors will only say certain things in class. Many classes only present some of the material in class. If you don’t attend class you simply won’t get that material. You also won’t be able to ask immediate follow-up questions. I also found speaking to the professor after class was an efficient way to resolve contradictions I had found with my mental model. 7. Time management is key – especially in undergrad. 

In my competitive undergrad program I once learned that a friend who achieved top 5% status actually timed how long he ate. While I do not suggest going to such extremes I offer this modest advice. I suggest spending no more than 30 minutes trying to solve a problem you can’t solve by yourself before appealing to office hours or another knowledgeable student. I also suggest you ask questions of your professor during or after class as opposed to leaving the class confused. This reduces wasted time in an environment when time is a very precious commodity. 8. Going out and having fun is conducive to good grades. 

In my early undergrad years I studied as hard as I could. And I thought this meant putting in as many studying hours as possible. But I later realized that going out and having fun refreshed the mind and increased grades. Unfortunately it took at least 2 years for me to understand this lesson. 9. Learn how to do advanced Google searches.

This is an essential skill that enables you to answer your own questions, quickly. At a minimum I suggest you learn how to use the following Google search operators  ~, -,*, AND,OR, and numeric ranges via the double dot (“..”) operator.  The “site:” operator is also often helpful. I also found adding the word “tutorial” to a Google search often yields great introductory materials. 

10. Turn weaknesses into strengths.

While studying for standardized exams I learned the importance of addressing one’s weaknesses as opposed to ignoring them.  If you make a mistake on a question, it is because of a weakness within you. If you do not address that weakness it will follow you to the exam. I learned this lesson when studying for standardized exams. I was able to legally buy 30 old exams and thought the best approach to studying for the exam was to do as many old problems as possible. But as I completed each exam I kept getting the same score  (+/- 5%) over and over. I had plateaued! But then I made a tiny tweak and my scores kept going up. Specifically, after each old exam, I would identify my weaknesses that led to each wrong answer, prioritize the weaknesses according to the degree to which they affected my score, and would address them in that order.  When I did that, my scores increased steadily all the way to the highest possible percentile (99%). I later realized that such standardized tests are designed to provide consistent scores (if the student does not study in between the subsequent exams to address their weaknesses). In fact that is one of the statistical measures used to measure the quality  of a standardized exam and it’s called “Reliability”  (Google for “psychometric reliability” to see what I’m talking about).