You guys are the smartest people that I know! :)

[YeahPete]

I recommend spending your time putting your notes in class into Audio and listening to them. Definitions and all. Listen to it ALL the time. Go for long walks and LISTEN to them.

Take yourself AWAY from the distractions. Do not study at home. Go to library and bring food. I highly recommend the audio.

Uninstall WOW. If you want to do something great in real life you must stop wasting time in the virtual life which gets you nowhere in real life.

[Xist]

Originally Posted by Diesel_Dave

I just want to say that when I saw your title that "You guys are the smartest people I know", my thought was:

That may be more of a reflection on the people you know than it is on Ecommoder

Ha!

I have not been very good at staying focused. I just spent my third weekend in a row studying for an anatomy practical this Tuesday. I kept getting on my computer to look up something and thinking that I was probably not going to find it on Facebook.

Whatever it was...

I finally put my computer to sleep, and then my next flashcard seemed incorrect, so I got back on the computer...

It is interesting to try to catch up quickly.

Arragonis, welcome back! I was always a little sad to see posts from someone that had left.

All right, I need to go hide for another while. You guys take care!

[Xist]

Well, grades are in: B in Physics, B in Anatomy, and a B+ in Introduction to Human Communication Disorders. I spent most of my time trying to study for Anatomy, but I realized at the end that I did everything [well, many things wrong] with the first two classes. I honestly do not know what I could have done with Miscommunication. Each week we needed to read a chapter and watch a "tutorial." Then we had half an hour to take a ten-question quiz. I usually missed one question, but there were usually at least a few questions that I could not find in the book and did not remember from the tutorial. Once or twice I took notes on everything and did not seem to need them, but that might have been because I remembered everything better because I took notes.

When I first started college I had a terrible time taking notes. When the professor said something that I thought that I should write down, I could not remember the idea long enough to write it, and then I missed the next few things that he or she said, so for most of my time in college, I just tried to pay attention and hoped to remember. That is what I did in Physics and I earned a B. Had I taken notes, I would have had an A.

The textbook is "condensed" and there was a consensus among the students that it was irrelevant to the class. It just did not explain what I did not understand.

Shortly before I graduated the first time I bought my original laptop and was able to type up notes. I had one professor tell me to put away my computer. I think that it was a different professor that stood behind me for an entire class while I typed every useless thing that she said.

That was the only class that I failed. It was never offered again.

Of course, I could not type up notes in Physics. I really try to avoid using paper, so I only brought my notepad when I specifically thought that I would need it. I did not realize until the end that I needed it every Physics class and that while it irritated me that my professor wrote on an overhead, I realized at the end that if he wrote it, so could I.

In Anatomy we needed to correctly answer about 143 (actual number!) on-line questions for each chapter that we covered. I would go over her notes, read the chapter, and guess on almost everything. Since I did not know it, I would write down the question and answer, instead of looking for the answer in the textbook.

That would have saved me hours on every single chapter.

I earned a 3.09 for the semester, but need a 3.7 to apply for the Master's program. Unfortunately, my cumulative GPA still shows the 2.97 from my first Bachelors (now a 2.98!). If I earn straight As until graduation, I will have a 3.76 for these classes, but a cumulative 3.23.

I had looked forward to finally playing World of Warcraft over break, but I had really felt that I needed to read my new textbooks. I read a chapter before going to bed at 8pm.

Most.
Exciting.
Friday.
Night.
Ever.

[Piwoslaw]

Originally Posted by Xist

Well, grades are in: B in Physics, B in Anatomy, and a B- in Introduction to Human Communication Disorders.

Congrats on passing everything
With your knowledge on the last mentioned subject we could make you a moderator here

[Xist]

I actually earned a B+ in what I call "Miscommunication."

Interesting idea. It reminds me of the joke about a kid studying psychology, so his dad asked if he could analyze the family members.

"I am taking Psychology, not Abnormal Psychology."

[euromodder]

Originally Posted by Xist

Interesting idea. It reminds me of the joke about a kid studying psychology, so his dad asked if he could analyze the family members.

"I am taking Psychology, not Abnormal Psychology."

Nothing is known about the psyche of normal people.
Psychiatrists only know something about rats, apes, and students

[Xist]

Normal people must be an invention of very boring people.

[a8ksh4]

I never got really good at taking notes in college, either. My handwriting has always been bad, except for numbers and equations, and I started taking notes on my computer in 2000 when I was in high school. That was good, as I can type fast and never had to miss anything, but I never went back and read any of them again, either. :P

Here are a couple ideas I have for you:

In your math and science classes, what you might try doing is to create programs that handle all of the equations and concepts that you have to use in the class. This is how I originally learned programming and it's how I was able to engage my brain to make sure I understood everything that we did in class. Since the TI calculators are usually allowed everywhere, they're a good platform to use for this.

In other classes where you have trouble taking notes and getting everything that's said, see if you can get copies of notes from a classmate. Tell your instructor(s) that you're having a prob following along and taking notes, and they should be able to help coordinate this.

+1 for going to the library to do homework. Get rid of the distractions!

[Xist]

Sadly, it is difficult to find a quiet spot in the library. When I was earning my first Bachelors, I had such a difficult time focusing in the computing commons, I kept hearing flip-flops hitting tiles, kids talking on cell phones, etc, that I would not be able to make much progress until everyone left, so I started taking a nap after work and then going back to school at 11pm, doing schoolwork through the night, and then leaving for work at five.

We will see how my classes go from here on. A friend taught me some programming in 1989 and I tried taking C++ twice in college--first at my university, then at the community college. I guess that the first time was my fault, I did not take the lab seriously, but I never understood the lecture. However, at the community college it seemed so easy that I wished that I could write my programs during class. However, there came a point when my programs would not run, my instructor refused to help me, my friends couldn't, and I did not have any idea where to find help.

If your program did not run you automatically lost 50% and I had that problem with all of my programs, including the final. I again asked the teacher for help, reminding her that she would not help me before, she said that she couldn't, so I just walked out.

When I was in Afghanistan I got back into the ancient game of Tradewars 2002. I had difficulty explaining why I played a text game, but I think that much of my interest was in writing scripts. Unfortunately, the language was specific to the game. You could use Java, but everyone said that it was way more difficult, and that a TWX script would always be much faster.

I enjoyed figuring out how to make scripts do what I wanted, but if I tried editing an old script, sometimes it was too complex to understand--even though I had written it!

I did use comments. Oh well.

[Xist]

A few weeks ago, I went to the VA, but I need to make many more trips, and I never feel that I have time. I need to get tested for ADD (again) (and for everything else), do a sleep study, and who knows what else.

It seems like just a month or two ago that I would read all of my notifications, go through all of the recent posts, and then wonder what to do with my life, but now I feel buried. I guess that Y! and HoTMailL are considered "disposable" accounts, so I finally had a use for my old gmail account. Then, when I felt that I was spending too much time in the forums, I simply closed the tab, and did not open it again for a while.

The problem is that when I try to catch up, it takes me to the last message, so I need to figure out what I last read. Then I usually have more notification for the same thread. After Spring Break, I had over a hundred, and I finally caught up last night, but I just have too much schoolwork to try to keep up, so I will be closing my Gmail tab again.

I will miss you guys, you are weird, but are good people!