5 Things That Helped Me Ace My University Classes
Summary
TLDRIn this video, the creator shares his journey of academic struggles due to ADHD and dyslexia and how a break from university led to a refreshed approach. He emphasizes the importance of surrounding oneself with course content through podcasts and engaging with like-minded individuals to improve learning. The video also covers strategies like gamification, tying interests to work, time management, and maintaining a balance with hobbies. The creator credits these changes for his academic turnaround and encourages viewers to apply these strategies to enhance their own learning experiences.
Takeaways
- 🎓 The speaker initially struggled with grades in university and high school, which led to a break from school to reassess interests and approach.
- 🔄 After returning to university, the speaker implemented new strategies that significantly improved academic performance.
- 🎧 A key strategy was to immerse oneself in the course content through various means such as listening to related podcasts.
- 🤝 Engaging with others interested in the subject matter, like joining clubs or participating in forums, can enhance learning and understanding.
- 🏆 Gamifying tasks by creating to-do lists and setting personal goals can make studying more engaging and productive.
- 🤸♂️ Incorporating personal interests into academic work can increase motivation and enjoyment, leading to better results.
- ⏰ Effective time management is crucial, including planning for tests and assignments well in advance and setting aside dedicated study periods.
- 🏋️♀️ Having an activity outside of school that provides a break but doesn't consume all your time is beneficial for mental health and focus.
- 🔗 The speaker credits the online learning platform 'brilliant' for helping with daily learning and problem-solving.
- 🙌 The speaker appreciates the support from patrons and sponsors, which has helped in creating content and financially supporting the channel.
Q & A
What was the speaker's initial experience with grades in school?
-Initially, the speaker had great grades in both high school and university, but as they became disillusioned and less interested in their school topics, their grades started to decline.
Why did the speaker decide to take a break from school?
-The speaker decided to take a break from school because their grades were getting much worse, and they were questioning whether programming or the specific program they were in was right for them.
What impact did the break from school have on the speaker?
-The break allowed the speaker to reflect and rethink their approach to university, leading to a different view and new strategies for learning and improving grades.
What is the first change the speaker made to improve their academic performance?
-The first change the speaker made was to surround themselves with their course content, exposing themselves to the topics they were studying as much as possible.
How does the speaker suggest using podcasts to improve learning?
-The speaker suggests using podcasts related to the course content to get multiple exposures to the same ideas, which can enhance understanding and provide context clues when learning new terms or concepts.
What role do clubs and forums play in the speaker's strategy for learning?
-Clubs and forums play a role by providing a community of people interested in the same topics, allowing for discussions, idea exchanges, and answering questions, which can reinforce learning and expose the speaker to different perspectives.
Why does the speaker recommend trying to gamify the learning process?
-The speaker recommends gamifying the learning process to increase interest and motivation. This can be done by creating to-do lists, maintaining streaks, and being competitive, which can make starting and continuing projects easier.
How does tying interests to work help in the speaker's experience?
-Tying interests to work makes the learning process more enjoyable and engaging for the speaker, leading to spending more time on projects and often finishing them earlier because of the increased enjoyment and challenge.
What does the speaker emphasize about time management in university?
-The speaker emphasizes the importance of time management in university by mapping out the semester, marking important dates in a calendar, and using time blocks to ensure focused work on different projects and studies.
Why is having something outside of school important according to the speaker?
-Having something outside of school is important because it provides a break from academic focus, helps maintain a healthy balance, and prevents burnout. The speaker suggests finding a hobby that is engaging but not all-consuming.
What is the main takeaway from the speaker's experience that they recommend to others?
-The main takeaway and recommendation from the speaker's experience is to surround oneself with the topics they are learning about, as it was the most impactful change they made to improve their academic performance.
Outlines
🎓 Overcoming Academic Challenges
The speaker begins by discussing their academic journey, highlighting a transition from high school to university where they initially excelled but later faced a decline in grades due to a loss of interest. This led to a break from school, during which they reconsidered their approach to learning. Upon returning, they implemented new strategies that significantly improved their academic performance. The speaker also discloses having ADHD and dyslexia, suggesting that the strategies they'll share could be particularly beneficial for others with similar challenges.
📚 Surrounding Yourself with Learning
The speaker emphasizes the importance of immersing oneself in the subject matter, suggesting that multiple exposures to a topic can enhance understanding. They recommend using podcasts as a tool for passive learning, which can provide exposure to new terms and concepts. The speaker also suggests engaging with like-minded individuals through clubs or online forums, and using platforms like Discord or Reddit to discuss and learn from others. They highlight the value of answering questions as a method of solidifying one's own knowledge.
🏋️♂️ Balancing School with Personal Interests
The speaker discusses the significance of having activities outside of school that can provide a healthy break and prevent burnout. They share their personal experience of transitioning from video games to sports, which not only improved their health but also allowed them to maintain focus when returning to academic work. The speaker suggests finding hobbies that can be engaging without consuming all of one's time, thus fostering a balanced lifestyle that supports effective learning.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Surrounding oneself with course content
💡ADHD and dyslexia
💡Gamification
💡Time management
💡Programming
💡Podcast
💡Discord
💡Functional programming
💡Streak
💡Hobby
Highlights
The speaker discusses their journey from struggling with grades to acing courses after taking a break from university.
Mentions having ADHD and dyslexia, and how strategies were tailored to these conditions.
Emphasizes the importance of surrounding oneself with course content for better learning outcomes.
Suggests multiple exposures to ideas can significantly enhance learning.
Recommends listening to podcasts related to one's field of study for passive learning.
Advocates for joining clubs or forums to engage with others interested in the same topics.
Explains how answering questions on forums can reinforce one's own learning.
Introduces 'brilliant.org' as a tool for daily learning and problem-solving.
Talks about gamifying tasks by creating to-do lists and maintaining a streak of activity.
Encourages competitiveness as a motivator for completing projects and assignments.
Advises tying personal interests to academic work to make it more engaging.
Stresses the importance of time management in university with the use of calendars and time blocking.
Suggests having an outside hobby that provides a break from academic focus but doesn't consume all time.
Expresses gratitude to supporters and sponsors for their contributions to the channel.
Invites feedback from viewers and promises to read and respond to comments.
Transcripts
how is it going you guys we are back
here in my humble kitchen to talk to you
a bit about school so for those of you
guys that have been uh in touch with me
and talk to me on Discord some of you
might have noticed that not too long ago
I was a student in University I faced
quite a bit of interesting uh States
when it comes to my grades uh at the
start as well as in high school I had
pretty great grades but as I became
disillusioned and less interested in my
Topics in school I found that my grad
started to s
and in general I started to get much
much worse grades as things were going
on this got so bad that I decided to
kind of take a break from school I
thought maybe programming wasn't for me
or exactly the program that I was in but
eventually I ended up coming back to
University and that little break there
gave me an opportunity to reflect and
kind of rethink my approach to
University and I came back at it with a
much different View and a lot of
different strategies for going to
University learning and uh getting the
most out of my grades so in this video I
want to talk about the changes that I
made and what took me from those nearly
failing in some cases actually failing
grades to acing a lot of the courses I
was taking at University now before we
get too far into this video I should
preface that I have ADHD and dyslexia
and so a lot of these trategies were
kind of built around that I think pretty
much anyone can learn from these a lot
of the people that I've actually talked
to about this and had them give some of
this a try have gotten really far with
it so I really figure I should make this
video and I think I should make it
available for everybody else to kind of
learn from and also learn from some of
the things that I originally didn't do
and mistakes that I made earlier on that
uh I reflected on and helped me change
my grades in my approach to learning so
let's go ahead and get into the first
thing that I changed and this was
probably the most impactful of all of my
changes and that is surrounding myself
in my course content and so what do I
mean by surrounding myself in it well
what I mean is trying to give myself as
much exposure to the topic that I'm
working on in a course or maybe that
semester or even just in school in
general um if there isn't anything
particular in mind that I need to work
on and the big reason for this is
getting multiple exposures to the same
ideas there's been lots of studies that
have shown that while exposure the first
time to something can help you get a lot
more use out of the second exposure so
if you can expose yourself to say a new
term that you're going to learn in
University before you even learn it in
school you're going to have a much
better time actually learning it the
second time even if you never got it the
first time even if you have no idea what
they were talking about in the first
place you'll be able to get a lot more
context clues and understand it and
Define that word in your head a lot
better um and as far as those studies
I'll link one of those down in the
description those you guys interested
now how exactly would you go about doing
this well there's a few different ways
one of the ways that I did it was
getting into podcasts so for example in
my algorithms class I listen to a lot of
algorithms related podcasts for my C++
and advanced memory management
performance sort of course that I took I
got into a C++ podcast that I started
listening to there's a ton of different
podcasts there's a podcast on basically
everything these days and if you guys
are needing to work on learning
something you need to become familiar
with the terminology which I find
personally to be very difficult and even
getting like an intuition of things then
I highly recommend the podcast route
because you can just listen to a podcast
on your way to University or maybe when
you're commuting between classes and you
get a little bit of learning in without
really having to think about it too much
and I find that a lot of the time this
made a huge impact on just being able to
have an intuition for different things
in school and it's also really great for
just general learning you can pick up a
lot of stuff that you won't learn in
class just by listening to a lot of
these podcasts obviously it helps to go
for the more you know focused podcasts
Maybe a bit less of uh just like you
know random humor sort of stuff
obviously trying to go for something a
bit more focused on your class content
but at the same time do try to find a
podcast that you enjoy listening to
because the more you enjoy it the more
you'll actually listen to it so don't
feel like you need to be listening to I
don't know somebody reading from a
textbook for hours another way to
surround yourself with a topic is
getting involved with people that are
actually interested in it so if there's
a club related to it at your University
maybe try to sit in on those clubs
activities maybe try to get some know
some people that are interested in it so
that way you have them maybe bounce some
ideas off of just chat about the topic
to try and like you know kind of get
yourself more familiar with it um or
even going on forums so for example
going onto something like Discord or
maybe there's a subreddit specific to
the topic that you're learning about any
of those to be able to ask questions as
well as looking at things and trying to
answer questions um there's a lot of
power in also answering questions
obviously this is not um specific to
what I was saying before when it comes
to learning the terminology but
sometimes the best way to learn
something is to practice teaching it
because it kind of opens up these holes
in your knowledge where maybe you don't
know the whole answer and you can start
answering something and somebody could
reply to your own answer correcting
something and you could learn something
in the process in addition to that if
you guys are doing programming obviously
be sure to check out stack exchange
stack Overflow stuff um obviously that's
super helpful whatever it takes for you
to get involved in the topic there is a
ton that you can learn and a ton that
you can get away from these people as
well as that they can learn from you
even if you're not the most familiar
with the topic there's a lot of things
that this crossover is going to expose
you to that maybe they're not exposed to
and then it kind of helps everybody
learn in the process surrounding
yourself and what you're learning I find
to be extremely important and is one of
the most important points from today one
thing that really helps me do this is
our sponsor for today's video brilliant
brilliant is an online learning platform
that I find to be especially powerful
when it comes to applying this K concept
that we talked about before of
surrounding yourself in learning because
it allows you to pick up and play and
learn new Concepts day-to-day with a
daily habits and learning new skills
every single day I find it to be a very
efficient way to learn in fact I find it
to be one of the more efficient ways to
learn from what I've been using it for
which is daytoday using it on the bus
picking up and continuing from where I
left off kind of similar to how we
talked about using podcasts since
brilliant gives you the opportunity to
problem solve and apply your skills as
you learn I find it to be a bit more
engaging than podcasts and especially
helpful if you guys are say for example
taking the bus or maybe you've just got
a spare few minutes during the day if
you guys are new to University or just
programming in general I would highly
recommend having a look at the excellent
course programming in Python it can be
used as both a great refresher or a
really good introduction to the
programming language python and a really
good opportunity for you to do what we
were talking about before and kind of
work through some problems throughout
the day thanks again to brilliant for
sponsoring this video to try everything
brilliant has to offer for free for a
full 30 days be sure to check out
brilliant.org Gavin Freeborn or click on
the link in the description below you'll
also get 20% off brilliant's premium
annual subscription all right and next
up this is probably something thing that
I think a lot of you guys are familiar
with so I try not to spend too much time
with it but that is trying to gamify
things for yourself so for me I try to
do a lot of bullet point lists I don't
really do the more extreme versions of
gamification where people write like
side quests and stuff for I guess their
schooling and everything um or having my
own like point system I just kind of
keep a running to-do list and kind of
think about those kind of in a similar
way to points and trying to kind of
knock out to-do lists um a big thing
with this is I try to take advantage of
it by actually looking at a project and
breaking them down into to-do points um
this has a few different Pros to it the
pro obviously is the general
gamification it gets you a bit more
interest in it but also if you break it
down into points and bulleted lists it
gets you started on a project without
actually having to do any work yet um
and usually once you've started a
project it's a lot easier to actually
finish it and keep working on it it's
way easier continuing on a project than
it is to start from scratch in addition
I tried to have some sort of a streak or
running tally so usually if I was
working on a group project or a project
in general I would try to be active on
get Hub and kind of keep a constant
streak going where I was working on
things throughout the day and GitHub
gives you like a nice little interface
to be able to see each of those little
green blocks for each month that you've
been working and each day you've been
working and finally for gamification I
think a big thing that really helps is
trying to be competitive I myself am a
very competitive guy uh just due to
doing sports when I was younger and I'm
sure a lot of you guys can relate on
being competitive so what I try to do is
apply this in group projects if I maybe
am doing a group project that involves a
lot of coding then I'll try to have like
the most commits in that group project
obviously don't hold back your own group
project just for this uh but in addition
I also would try to maybe be competitive
with cl classmate um so for example I
would have like a hackathon a mini
hackathon with a friend uh to work on an
assignment together and we'll see how
much work we can get done in a certain
amount of time my next tip that I
recommend is trying to tie your
interests into your work for example if
you're taking a class where maybe you're
not interested in what you're writing
about a lot something that I found
really helped was I tried to get myself
interested in latte and it kind of made
the process of making these diagrams and
writing all this documentation and stuff
a bit more interesting for me personally
another one would be in my database
class we had a lot of assignments where
we had to implement databases or
database features and one of the things
that we did in that was using Python and
so to try and like practice some ideas
that I've been working on on my own I
tried to do things in a more functional
style because I was getting into
functional programming at the time um
and you guys can kind of apply this
yourselves you can try and like a tackle
a pro project in a different way than
how you normally would to try and
challenge yourself and make it a bit
more interesting I found that as a
result I end up spending more time on
the projects just because I was having
more fun with them and I would often end
up finishing early just because uh
trying to challenge yourself can often
make you think of things in a different
way that you would have expected or
maybe you would come up with a better
way to format everything in case of a
document there's a lot of different ways
that uh you can get an advantage out of
this obviously don't let your interest
Sidetrack you too much now the next one
I think we've all heard this one before
but I cannot stress it enough time
management is huge in University
especially for those of you guys working
a job maybe you have a side project
anything like that time management is a
massive portion of what you should be
focusing on so for me at the very start
of a semester I tried to map out as much
as I could when I get the course
curriculum I put all my tests um when
I'm going to study with them and how
early I need to be reminded of them uh
in my calendar ahead of time I used
Google Hender for a lot of it as well as
uh or mode uh org mode has like an
agenda feature I won't really go into
that but the main idea use some sort of
a calendar application to do a few
things Mark the days that you have tests
Mark the days that you have assignments
due and Mark when you're going to start
studying for that test so for me I try
to do like one week of studying for
every midterm or test or whatever I have
coming up one week gives you enough time
to refresh and if you need more time
obviously that's totally necessary
especially for finals uh you need to
give yourself extra time especially for
projects um a big thing for me is that I
would time block so I would put a little
Block in my calendar where I would focus
on like from this time to this time I'm
going to study or work on this project I
don't need to finish it I just need to
do something related to it for that
period of time and that's all I need and
I wouldn't try and make these time
blocks like massive because that way I
would you know break down spend time on
different projects throughout the
semester and not really you know get too
stuck into the weeds of one thing for
the entire day and then have some other
project or assignment or test that's
coming up there I would like Miss out uh
say thing with studying time block for
studying make sure that you make time
for studying it is massive and finally
this is something that is really near
and dear to me and it kind of changed my
life honestly um was having something
outside of school to do that isn't maybe
going to take up all your time like
something that I had a really bad habit
of was getting into a video game and
having that video game take up a lot of
my school time but for me I started
getting a lot more active I started uh
pursuing Sports a lot more and as a
result I became healthier obviously and
I can't really pursue sports like 24/7
like I'm not going to run for 2 days
straight but I could play video games
for two days straight if I really wanted
to so try to find a hobby where while
you can spend a lot of time on it it's
not going to be the thing that can soak
up all your time you can't run forever
you can't I don't know lift weights
forever um and so it gives you a little
chance to get away from school you know
separate things out but then when you go
back to school it's still your focus it
kind of breaks things up you never feel
like you're just only focusing on school
um obviously they're comes times where
you have to sacrifice your time on your
side project or your thing that could be
taking up some time um which does suck I
tried my best to you know schedule times
where I never have to deal with that but
sometimes it comes up and it is what it
is and yeah that is the big set of
changes that I made the first one the
idea of surrounding yourself in topics
honestly is probably the biggest one I
highly recommend it uh I recommend all
of you guys try and give this a go um
especially if you can find a podcast
that interests you that's related to
what you're Ling on it working on at
school um and gives you kind of an
interesting point of view you might find
yourself listening to it after the time
you finish your class I know uh recently
when I was all done my schooling and
University I ended up having like so
many different random podcasts that I
was listening to that I had to
eventually give it a Break um same thing
with getting involved on Discord I
sometimes I think Discord might be a bit
of a rabbit hole you could end up
putting yourself in a bad spot if you
you know end up looking in the wrong
places where you end up I don't know
soaking up a lot of time where you're
not really learning but the more
important discords where I actually
learned a lot I still am in and find
myself learning every single day and I
try to leave the ones where I didn't
learn anything from them but uh it's
kind of sometimes hard sometimes you
just get interested and shat with people
and you know feel a bit like a feel a
bit dorky doing it sometimes maybe you
don't I don't know I do sometimes but
and before I go I wanted to give a big
shout out to my supporters on patreon as
well as gith up sponsors I really
appreciate all you guys have done for
the channel it's made a huge impact on
me being able to make these videos and
financially support the time I'm putting
into it as well as keeping the content
coming and I think it's made a pretty
big impact not just on myself but the
people watching this because thanks to
you I've been able to keep going um and
keep making these videos and yeah that
concludes today's video thank you guys
so much for sticking through it if you
have any feedback for me be sure to let
me know down in the comments I would
love to hear from you guys and I'll be
down there reading and trying to respond
to every single one that I can all right
okay I'll see you next time
n
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