“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat” — Winston Churchill

It’s 9:25. You have five minutes until your test. You decide you had better start reviewing your lecture notes. Here are two methods.

Method A (for students with good memories): First, read through your notes for the class, lecture by lecture. Second, make mental note of which concepts/facts you understand and which one’s you don’t. Third, read through your notes again, skimming over everything you grasp and focusing on the rest. Repeat until ready. If there are some facts that are simply too technical and/or dry and/or memory-resistant, slay them with a mnemonic.

Method B (for students with bad memories): for some, simply reading over your notes won’t cut it. For these students, there are several options:

• Create an outline. Take all of the info in your notes and restructure it into an outline that organizes the material into a logical framework.
• Draw pictures. It worked for this guy. Whenever was walking down the street, minding his own business, and had a brilliant thought, he drew it.
• Pull aside a random person and start teaching them. Well, maybe not a random person. Your room-mate might be a better choice.
• Organize a study group. Study groups are great ways to memorize via teaching (and they let you spare your room-mate).

For more memorization techniques, go here.

Disclaimer: this is Peter O'Tool, not to be confused with Lawrence of Arabia. Why I included a picture of this fellow, I have no idea.

Lawrence of Arabia — Blend in and win over the locals. To beat the Turks, Lawrence needed the help of the Arabs. That’s why he didn’t stumble into Arabia dressed in khaki and speaking English. He learned Arabic, dressed in Arab garb, and won the trust and confidence of important Arab leaders. This made blowing up Turkish trains that much easier.

In the same way, when you write an essay you have to speak the language of academia. I had one professor who threatened to lower a paper by a whole letter grade if he saw any “isn’t,” “didn’t,” “I’m,” or “wasn’t” in the paper. Things like that hurt you. But if you learn to speak like the locals you can win over their hearts and minds. This is important if you have any interest in scholarships, internships, or graduate school, all of which require letters of recommendation.

"I like Ike" — Indiana Jones

Eisenhower — Make a plan. The task wasn’t too hard. All he had to do was take over an entire continent controlled and defended by hundreds of thousands of troops armed to the teeth with machine guns and working for one of the most dangerous totalitarian regimes of all time. So what did Ike do? He made a plan. A meticulously detailed plan. He and his generals figured out the best places to land in France; they figured out where to strike first, where to strike second, where to strike third. They planned out where they’d put their base camps, where their supply lines would be. They created a plan to keep the men supplied at all times with plenty of ammo, coffee, and cigarettes (the G.I. Joes drank so much coffee that the caffeinated beverage has been called “a cup of Joe” ever since). It worked.

Planning at the beginning of the semester leads to success, less stress, and more free-time. It allows for greater efficiency. It allows you to study smarter and have more fun.

The Viet Cong

The Viet Cong — Guerilla warfare. How did a rag-tag, ragamuffin group of ruthless communists drop-kick the most powerful military in the world? They did it by constant and unrelenting guerilla warfare. They hid in villages and jungles, popping out occasionally to kill. They faced a huge army; and they won by consistently continuing a sporadic attack. In the same way, you can deal with a huge load of schoolwork by simply doing a little bit consistently. If, instead of procrastinating, you just keep harassing your homework, you will have a greater chance of success.

“Take chances. Make mistakes. Get messy!” — Ms. Frizzle

Today I am going to blog about tips on how to totally and utterly fail, flunk, and flop your finals!

1. Memorize information at night. After all, night-time is the best time for memorization. The middle of the night is when your brain is at peak performance and bits of information just stick to it like flies to flypaper. Of course, be sure NOT to review what you “learned” the next morning; you won’t need to, because all-nighters are completely sufficient.

2. For math, physics, chemistry, and computer science classes, DON’T do practice problems. Instead, just look over the concepts quickly and hastily. No practice is necessary.

3. For essay exams, DON’T prepare a mental outline for answering the question. In fact, don’t prepare at all. Wing it. Fudge it. Live on the edge. After all, we all know that it is impossible for professors to tell when a student is just blowing smoke.

4. Study all at once without any breaks. Your brain works best if you study all in one session. Don’t spread your studying out into a longer period interspersed with breaks: that’s for A-students. We don’t want that.

5. Don’t learn from your mistakes. Don’t assess your professor’s difficulty level. Don’t assess what your professor wants of you. Don’t look over your professor’s comments on papers. Don’t look over your previous assignments to learn what you did wrong. No. Do it again.

Don’t worry about failure. I mean, you have your whole life to finish college.

“An optimist is a person who starts a new diet on Thanksgiving day” — Irv Kucinet

Just a quick announcement.

The time for turkey, pumpkin pie, and chronic overeating is at hand. I will be travelling this week. And for that reason I will be taking this week off as a thanksgiving break. I’ll be back to blogging next Tuesday. See you then!

“You see those two weevils, Stephen?”

“I do.”

“Which would you choose?”

“There is not a scrap of difference. Arcades Ambo. They are the same species of Curculio, and there is nothing to choose between them.”

“But suppose you had to choose.”

“Then I should choose the right-hand weevil. It has a perceptible advantage both in length and breadth.”

“There I have you! You are completely dished! Don’t you know that in the navy you must always choose the lesser of two weevils?” [Laughs hysterically] — Conversation between Captain Jack Aubrey and naval surgeon Stephen Maturin, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

Depending on your major, you may have between 1 and 20 elective classes to kill. So here are some things to consider when considering electives.

1. As I have said before, NEVER TAKE CLASSES WITH VAGUE TITLES. It behooves oneself to avoid “Introduction to Western Culture”—unless one has no objection to the possibility of spending a precious semester studying the feminist and paternalist implications seen in Greek pottery. I say again: these classes have vague titles for a reason; no one would take them otherwise.

2. Take classes to see if a field/career is right for you. Think you might want to become a doctor? Take some physiology classes. You can sample the goods so you can choose career or graduate-school paths more intelligently.

3. If you want it easy, take classes that match your strengths. If you want to slack off, figure out what academic activities are easiest for you and then choose electives accordingly. For example, if memorization is your strong suit, take Biology, Earth Science, Astronomy, Art History, and other classes which are pure memorization. If writing is your forte, take history, English, and literature classes. This is a great way to cut down on the sweat. Conversely, if you have short-term memory loss it behooves you to avoid classes like Biology and Earth Science. If writing is torture to you, consider not taking that English Lit class.

FTC Disclosure: Adobe supplied me with a complementary copy of Photoshop for this post.

Adobe has a new Facebook application out called Photo Awesomizer (go here for its Facebook page). It lets you take photos and mess with them, tweak them, and/or awesomize them. Of course, those affluent enough to afford Photoshop have been awesomizing photos for a while. But what makes the Awesomizer unique is that it brings in a social dimension to photo manipulation. You can share awesomized photos with your friends and let them judge them.

Speaking of judging, to kick off the launch of this app Adobe has a six-week Awesomizer contest. It works like this: tweak photos using Adobe’s new app and submit them. Each week there is a new theme; for example, this week’s theme is “favorite college memories”; next week’s theme is “vintage college.” Prizes vary by week. This week and next week the winner will receive a copy of Photoshop CS5. Prizes for other weeks include things like a year’s worth of book rentals from Chegg.

Unfortunately, one week of the contest has passed (it started on October 11). But there are still five weeks and five themes to go.