College Student Attempting to Naviagate Life @notsamjohnson - Tumblr Blog

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boguskudos

Things I Never Learned In High School

w0lf-eyes

How to do taxes

What taxes are

How to vote

What political parties are

How to write a resume/cover letter/anything related to getting a job

How to write a check/balance a check book

Anything to do with banking

How to do loans for college

How to jump start a car or other basic emergency things

How to buy a car or house

but I’m so glad I know the fucking pythagorean theorem

thank you

jedi-giraffe

didn’t learn any of this in college either

clevergirlhelps

yoooooo (part II)

How to do taxes

What taxes are

How to vote

What political parties are

How to write a resume/cover letter/anything related to getting a job

How to write a check/balance a check book

Anything to do with banking

How to do loans for college

How to jump start a car or other basic emergency things

How to buy a car or house

BONUS

How the stock market works (and how to invest)

How insurance works (house, car, life)

Good meals for under $10

#resources

los17aurelianos

P R O D U C T I V I T Y

30/30* - personal favorite, I always use this to study and manage time.

Essential productivity apps for any student*

Top 5 productivity apps for iOS (video)*

Top 5 productivity apps for Android (video)*

StayFocusd*- limits the time you can spend on time-wasting websites

Time Warp* - keeps you from procrastinating

Self Control* - blocks websites

The science of productivity (video)

The science of procrastination and how to manage it (video)

7 brain hacks to improve your productivity (video)

The simple science of getting more done (in less time)

Productivity tips

About power naps

How to pull an all-nighter effectively

O R G A N I Z A T I O N

My Study Life* - It’s a planner to help you remember when your homework is due and stuff like that

Free printable planner

To do list

How to make a study schedule

Class folder organization

S C H O O L // S T U D Y I N G

Inkflow Visual Notebook* - I haven’t used this one, but it’s for note taking (if you’re a visual learner it’s probably quite useful

Free Flashcards Study Helper* - Create flashcards and carry them around to study anywhere

Apps for students*

Tips and trick to help you get good grades

Learning how to study

Cornell note taking method

BBC Bitesize

Studyblue - flashcards, quizzes, review sheets, study guides, etc.

Essay writing

Textbook masterpost (and other stuff too)

Wolfram Alpha for research

Memorizing dates

Making a good study guide

Note taking like a pro

Online calculator

Finals survival guide

How to survive finals

School survival guide

Free online courses

Scholarpedia

Mathway

Khan academy

Quizlet

Homework help

Exam survival tips

Studying for an important exam

Answering multiple choice questions

Guide on punctuation

Science simplified

How to answer exam questions

How to study

Useful websites

CrashCourse

How to write an essay

Duolingo

P R O J E C T S

Public speaking

Annoying Power Point presentation mistakes

Power Point presentations

Prezi

Emaze - similar to prezi

Rawshorts - video presentations

If it has * it’s an app

#resources

tolzmannia

There is this website called Thrift Books and I just got $66.90 worth of books for $19.93 (five books). Shipping was free. You’re welcome.

wldsunflwr

Yes! I just bought $82 worth of books for $17.85!

ghdos-blog

!!!

sweet-wednesday

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

#resources

antivian

When I was first starting the whole process of finding applying to colleges, I was blessed enough to attend one of the best charter schools in the country, with several great teachers and a CAP Advisor that put so much time and effort into helping us figure out what we were going to do with our futures. I know not everyone is so lucky to have access to the same sort of people or resources, so here’s a long masterpost of many useful links and lots of great information you can use. If you ever want advice or to talk about college, feel free to message me!

antivian

Guides and Articles to Help Decision Making and Overall Process

For first-generation college students

For finding colleges and scholarships (A MUST CLICK FOR ALL)

Questions to ask yourself when deciding your major

Should you double major?

Is studying abroad right for you?

For High School Students

Check out fee waivers for AP testing AND the SATs

How do things change from high school to the real world?

11 college tips they won’t tell you in school

9 myths about college life that aren’t necessarily true

10 common mistakes made by college freshmen

15 tips on conquering your college freshmen fears

For Students in Florida

MDC is a great+cheap place to start your college education

Even better if you can apply and study in their Honors College

Attending MDC? See if you can be an American Dream Scholar

Check your eligibility for Bright Futures Scholarship

For College Students

How to pass a college class

What to do if you failed a class

10 college mistakes to avoid

A student’s guide to surviving college finals

A guide to surviving living on campus and having roommates

GED

What is the GED test?

What is on the test?

Free online GED prep course

Sample GED test questions

Free practice GED test

Multiple free GED practice exams by 4Tests

SAT

What is the SAT?

When to take the test

Official SAT Question of the Day

Official SAT practice questions

Help donate rice to the hungry by answering practice questions

5 sources for free SAT Prep

ACT

ACT Test 101

Official ACT test prep

ACT Question of the Day

ACT practice questions and sample writing prompts

Free ACT practice exam by 4Tests

7 sources for free ACT practice

21 strategies to improve your ACT score

TOEFL

What is the TOEFL?

Here’s a free TOEFL practice exam

Free TOEFL practice exam by 4Tests

Financial Aid

College financial aid terms defined

What can I use the financial aid office for?

Common financial aid myths

Important college financial aid deadlines

FAFSA deadlines by State

10 tips for getting the most out of college financial aid

Apply for Federal Student Aid (Which you NEVER have to pay for)

Paying for college with grants

The ins and outs of scholarships

Scholarship for women/POC studying to work in video games

Student Loans

Student Loans 101

Federal Student Aid - What you need to know about loans

8 tips for taking out student loans

Volunteer for the community and get help paying off your loans

Saving, Managing, and Making Money

Buying/renting textbooks/learning materials at really cheap prices

35 discounts your student ID could get you

5 way to relax for under $5

Managing and saving money in college

5 ways to track your college expenses

20 different ways to make money in college

You can travel cheaper as a student

Youth and student discount cards

Scheduling Courses

4 tips for creating the perfect class schedule

Do research on the professors of the classes you want to take

Tips for Using the Rate My Professor Website

High-Quality Studying+Productivity Resources (FOR FREE!)

Free lecture notes, textbooks, exams, and videos from MIT

Khan Academy - Free for everyone, everywhere, about everything

Take your notes and flashcards with you everywhere you go

Help donate rice to the hungry by studying any of these subjects

6 free online courses that can improve your life

25 apps college students shouldn’t live without

10 study tips to improve your learning

23 science-backed study tips

Intense study tips

Improve your studying skills

How to get motivated to study

Google smarter

Getting even more out of Google

Project Gutenberg offers over 45,000 free eBooks

Writing Essays + Papers

The 5 best free word processors

Writing resources to use use general

When you’re not sure where to capitalize in a title

Help in building your works cited

For when you need even more help making citations

For when the word you want is on the tip of your tongue

Use Google Scholar for finding credible sources + info

Alternatives to the word “said”

Common errors in English usage

Common English grammar errors to avoid

The importance of the oxford comma

Other Helpful Resources

How To: Become An Adult

Really long and great masterpost that I use all the time

Good advice for submitting art school portfolios

Musical Theatre Auditions Masterpost

A Self Help Masterpost of Masterposts

Recovery resources

Contraceptives Masterpost

Essential Productivity Apps for any student

How to keep your laptop in tip-top shape

#resources

boomeyer

Do yourself a favor. Learn to code. Here's how.

I’ve said this to my non-techie friends countless times. It’s no secret that being able to code makes you a better job applicant, and a better entrepreneur. Hell, one techie taught a homeless man to code and now that man is making his first mobile application.

Learning to code elevates your professional life, and makes you more knowledgeable about the massive changes taking place in the technology sector that are poised to have an immense influence on human life.

(note: yes I realize that 3/5 of those links were Google projects)

But most folks are intimidated by coding. And it does seem intimidating at first. But peel away the obscurity and the difficulty, and you start to learn that coding, at least at its basic level, is a very manageable, learnable skill.

There are a lot of resources out there to teach you. I’ve found a couple to be particularly successful. Here’s my list of resources for learning to code, sorted by difficulty:

Novice

Never written a line of code before? No worries. Just visit one of these fine resources and follow their high-level tutorials. You won’t get into the nitty-gritty, but don’t worry about it for now:

Dash - by General Assembly

CodeAcademy

w3 Tutorials (start at HTML on the left sidebar and work your way down)

Intermediate

Now that you’ve gone through a handful of basic tutorials, it’s time to learn the fundamentals of actual, real-life coding problems. I’ve found these resources to be solid:

Khan Academy

CodeAcademy - Ruby, Python, PHP

Difficult

If you’re here, you’re capable of building things. You know the primitives. You know the logic control statements. You’re ready to start making real stuff take shape. Here are some different types of resources to turn you from someone who knows how to code, into a full-fledged programmer.

Programming problems

Sometimes, the challenges in programming aren’t how to make a language do a task, but just how to do the task in general. Like how to find an item in a very large, sorted list, without checking each element. Here are some resources for those types of problems

Talentbuddy

TopCoder

Web Applications

If you learned Python, Django is an amazing platform for creating quick-and-easy web applications. I’d highly suggest the tutorial - it’s one of the best I’ve ever used, and you have a web app up and running in less than an hour.

Django Tutorial

I’ve never used Rails, but it’s a very popular and powerful framework for creating web applications using Ruby. I’d suggest going through their guide to start getting down-and-dirty with Rails development.

Rails Guide

If you know PHP, there’s an ocean of good stuff out there for you to learn how to make a full-fledged web application. Frameworks do a lot of work for you, and provide quick and easy guides to get up and running. I’d suggest the following:

Cake PHP Book

Symfony 2 - Get Started

Yii PHP - The Comprehensive Guide

Conclusion

If there’s one point I wanted to get across, it’s that it is easier than ever to learn to code. There are resources on every corner of the internet for potential programmers, and the benefits of learning even just the basics are monumental.

If you know of any additional, great resources that aren’t listed here, please feel free to tweet them to me @boomeyer.

Best of luck!

phreequea

These resources are super useful, even for a CS student! :) Also if you have any local hackathons in your area, I would recommend ya’ll to attend. It helps focus you because you essentially have to do a project for 24 hours with a couple other people (teams are usually made there or beforehand) and you can ask any programming questions to the professionals supervising. You learn so much there and you literally need little to no experience to attend as a prerequisite for some of these events.

notsamjohnson

L.P.

#resources