School week: so what do i have in the end??

So if you followed since Monday (kudos to you!) you know that i have for each class, each month:
-a 200 pages book, with the theories, the exercises, and the paper due;
-extensive notes;
-a summary of important concepts, ideas, and formulas in an A5 notebook.
That'll be a LOT of paper when the end of the term comes!
I discard the scrap paper used for the exercises almost right away. I do keep for the moment my extensive notes, in a regular A4 binder. Not very exciting, i would love to use something nice, but now is not the time to spend monies :)
In the binders the different sections of the classes (one section = roughly one month) are separated with plain ugly dividers. I don't know yet how long i'll keep these notes though, because it's already quite a lot to keep in my cupboard, alongside the books!

And now the mothership from which i command everything, my "classes" section in my Filo!
You saw most of its contents in the previous posts, but here is the structure:
-general info i researched before registering for the classes;
-my "typical" weekly planning (i.e. when and how long i can work, after having taken out working time & fitness time);
-the things i need for the classes (mainly a bibliography of reference books to get, but also stationery i *might* need);
-all my log-ins info (a bunch of different usernames and pwd are used for the different websites we need...);
-the table summing up my deadlines and how the work is planned, from now till June and the first exams;
-the calendar with the deadlines, important meetings and such written.
This is all stored in my A5 Chameleon that's always with me, and i refer to it quite often. When i have a panic-attack wondering how am i doing with time, when planning something with friends or family, and of course when i study!


So there, you have it! I think we discussed all the aspects of my study-organization, what do you think? Is there anything else you would like to see covered?
It was really fun for me to share all that with you along the week, and i hope the few who stayed until today enjoyed it too :)

And here are the results of the poll!
I asked how many among you would consider working full-time and study part-time. 9 of you answered, thanks for participating :D 4 have done it (please let me know how you survived??), 3 would only do it if they could stop working or work part-time (the only sane people here, i'm telling you :) ), and 2 said yes, they would do it.
Thanks for giving me your opinion guys, and reading me all week!

School Week: Revision

Yes I'm back with more! Are you tired of my posts yet??

I left you after i finished all my exercises. Now i have a good understanding of what's important in these chapters, how the concepts work, and what's expected of me on the exam day.
But I have over 50 pages of these notes, and as i told you, some parts are left blank. That means that nothing in the exercises and paper relating to these chapter touched on these parts. And i have other sections full of scribbling and highlighting, not very readable...

The idea is now to condensate the chapter in a readable and transportable way! This is when i stop using my beloved binders and switch to bound notebooks. Clairefontaine, A5, one per class, square paper.

I re-write the now completed notes, and leave blank pages before the next chapter to add stuff later if necessary.

It becomes my own version of the class, my companion of sorts on this journey :) I'll be traveling to take the exam, and this notebook is much easier to transport and flip through than all my notes. Rewriting one more time the same info also helps me remembering it better.
I draw a margin on the outside edge of each page, to add remarks later on, or indicate an important or difficult point.


The poll on the right hand site of the blog is still going on, until Sunday, did you participate? Please hop there and cast your vote! Also, please add any comments you might have in the comments section, let's start a discussion about going back to school ;)

School Week: Note taking 2

Thank you for spending the week with me talking about school organization :)
I find it so hard to stay on top of things between my full-time job and my distance classes that i think it's super important to be as prepared as possible. I'm sure my system is not that good and will evolve during the year, but i hope it might help you anyway!

The course i received is structured in such a way that you have a bunch of exercises to do after you've read through all the 125 pages of theories of the book. I showed previously how i get through that much reading in 10 short days. For me it involves a lot of note-taking, as it's the only for me to remain focus on what i'm reading. I need to write stuff to remember it, i guess that's also why i'm a paper-planner user :) But i do realize that these notes are not very useful in themselves: they don't condensate the book into what i really need to know, i won't be studying from my exams from them. They help me get to the point where i can start working on the exercises though.
So now i have pages and pages of very plain notes, and i start the exercises portion of the book.

I'll dive into the exercises, flipping through my notes to the appropriate section to look up formulas, definitions... and then i'll add my own remarks on my notes, i'll highlight what i now understand to be an important aspect of the class. Also, while working on my notes, I might need to search for some more info from other sources, which i'll add to the same notes.
However, i do not keep the exercises. If they exemplify an important demonstration for instance, i'll write that directly in the notes in front of the relevant section.

So now i have heavily annotated, highlighted, and scribbled on notes. I also have completely blank parts. It's now easy to know what parts to focus on and what has been harder for me to get and required more research on my end.

Now onto the interesting stuff, what stationery do i use! I use the same brand of highlighters as before, only different colors: pink for important to know by heart (such as here the formulas for instance), yellow for important concepts, green for examples. Post-it flags help me recognize important sections. And sadly that's it for now :D

I'll see you tomorrow to show how i use these notes to prepare exams!
And go participate in the poll, of course :D

School Week: Note taking 1

This is the second post on my back to school organization. You can read the first one here. Also please answer the poll on the right hand side of the blog!

So here's the thing: if I only read something, I have a hard time understanding it and focusing on it. I need to take notes along with reading to be able to follow. So here's my tactics for these classes. I first read through a determined chapter (according to my planning), and I take notes on the side. I tend to write almost everything that's in the text, which may seem counterproductive, but it really helps me when I rephrase it and write it down. I write everything with the same color pen, I only underline the titles and such, so as to not make anything stand out yet. You see, I'm just reading the text for the first time, I'm still understanding the concepts, I don't know where the story ends: I don't know yet which are the important parts or the ones that will be difficult for me to understand. So I write everything the same way, which is the most neutral possible.

Here you can see a typical page, looking very blend. But it's the point! You'll see in later posts how I go over these notes later. Right now the note taking is here to help the reading :)

Also, I always use the same format to number my pages, top right corner: date, class number, chapter number, page number / total pages.

And my tools :) I write on a Seyes (French ruled) Rhodia pad. The sheets are already punched. I use my faithful Lamy for most of the writing, and the Stabilo purple pen and the Bic blue highlighter to make the structure stand out a little bit. Finally, an ink eraser, because you know...


I hope this was interesting! I'll continue on my note taking tomorrow :)

School Week: Planning

So to kick off this week, I will describe a little bit how the classes are set up, and explain how I put together my planning.

I registered for 2 different classes this year. I have 6 papers to hand in in each class, up until the end of April. I have specific deadlines to respect for the papers. If they are not met (even once), I'm out. After that I'll first sit for the exams mid-June, then again at the beginning of October. Right after this second round of exams I'll start next year's classes. I sit twice for the 'same' exams (=same program) because the first is just for the degree, the second to work towards a national certification. If all goes according to plan, I'll repeat that for the next three years, and then work on a thesis for another three years, and then graduate and receive the certification :)

Now I'll take you step by step through my planning process. I realize how boring that might sound to some people, and can literally hear the footsteps of my readers leaving... I'll try to add some picture to spice things up though :)
To start on planning this project, I first worked out how much time I could spend on it each week, and when that would be. I jumped to my 'distance degree' project page in the 'Projects' section of my Chameleon. The section already existed since that's also where I did all my research before I actually registered. I wrote down my usual (and optimistic...) working hours, set aside two/three days for 'sports', and figured I could study for 2 hours 2 nights a week, plus a good 7 hours on Sundays. At that time I hadn't realized that I'm not able to study for 7 hours anymore... but anyway it amounted to 11 hours a week.

Then I printed out a yearly calendar to use only for this project, and wrote down all the papers hand-in dates. I figured I would start planning backwards from them, since they are the only thing 'imposing' me a rhythm of work.

From there, I looked into each class what chapters needed to be done for each paper, and, working backwards for the hand-in date, assigned weeks of studying to each part of the class. I summed it up in a table, because it wouldn't be readable if I put it on the calendar (but if you have an idea around it...!!)

Now I can see what chapters I need to have studied each week, and I know I need to study around 10-15 hours a week to get there.
Each week I go over my plan, to see if I sticked to it or not, and write in my diary what I'm supposed to do the coming week. Of course, it's color-coded, orange for my classes :)

I can haz editing skills

My initial plan of studying only three times a week for longer periods of time is not working out too well for the moment, as I already said, so I find myself working around an hour everyday instead, and more on weekends. In order to keep track of the time spent studying, I use this very nice little application, Timesheet. It's intended for much bigger projects than mine, you can export the data and stuff... I use it because it's very pretty and easy: just press start when I start, pause for break time, then done... then I can see the data for that day, that week, and so on.

That's it for the planning part. So I have a section dedicated in the 'Projects' part of my Filo, with my master plan, and then the more detailed program goes into my diary. As for a lot of things, my phone and apps help me :)

Hope you enjoyed this post, and I'll see you tomorrow for the rest of our school-week!

School-themed week!

As I hinted to in this post, I decided to register for a Masters and started taking distance classes a couple of weeks ago. Basically, I received books about Finance and Accounting that I have to read and prepare by myself, and I have papers to send every month for correction. I of course continue to work full time.

There are different challenges here for me to face. The first one is the whole going back to school thing. I always loved studying and always knew I would go back for a degree like that at some point. I'm actually very surprised at how hard it is to go back to that special rhythm, mindset, way of working... that is the one of a student. Even though I graduated only a couple of years back! I feel stupid when I see how long it takes me to read a chapter for instance, or that after 3 hours of studying my brain is toasted... guess it's a good thing I decided to work my neurons out before they all started disappearing!

The second challenge is to balance it all. Right now it means working, managing our finances (we are tight right now and need to work on our debt repayment), taking care of my health after what happened last year, being with my fiancé :), and succeeding at this new project.

I've received my books 2 weeks ago now, and since then I've taken the time to come up with an organization and a way of working, which are still very much tentative. They might get improved or totally changed as things advance.
I thought I would spend this week talking about the different aspects of this organization and what it involves. Nothing groundbreaking, I just wish to share how I do it, since it's been so interesting to me in the past to read about how others do it.
I'll first explain how the class is set up, then show you my overall planning, and how I came up with it. Then I'll talk about the different sorts of note-taking I do, how I work on a chapter, and how I tackle the monthly papers. Then we'll talk about storage and physical organization of all these notes :)

To accompany this theme, you'll see a new poll on the right hand side of the blog, which will be up all week. Please participate, the more answer the more accurate the results will be :)