Planning Your Study Routine

Hi everyone! I'm Larissa. I've been an Operations Assistant intern at Meg & Meg since the beginning of the year, and I'm here to share a bit about my study plan for college. I'm studying Business Administration at Mackenzie, which is basically divided into theory and calculations, with a bit of marketing and strategic planning.

Planning My Studies

MY TIPS

• Identify the most productive and viable time to fit in study routines;

• Organize your study environment and keep only necessary items close by;

• Alternate between study methods (video lessons, summaries, and exercises) throughout the week. I think it's important to adapt the brain to different ways of absorbing content;

• Concentration level: I get easily distracted. Looking to improve this, I recently discovered the "Deep Sleep" playlist on Spotify. They are soft sounds that – despite the contradictory name – help me concentrate more.

MATERIALS I USE

• Lined index cards 5x8

• "Things" Magnetic Notepad

• Sticky Notes FOCUS

• Calculators (HP12C and conventional)

ORGANIZING CONTENT

1. Easy access to material: some professors provide slides and/or text documents on Google Drive. I download everything for access even when I'm offline. I create folders for each subject with respective content + exercises;

2. Topics: I use the "Things" Magnetic Notepad to list and track the content I need to study that day;

3. Priorities: I usually start by studying extensive content to get a sense of accomplishment.  

METHODS

• Summary in Google Docs: I extract the most important small paragraphs from the content I downloaded or research if I don't have the material;

• Summary on Lined Index Cards: after the typed summary, I write another one highlighting the most important words. I usually make several "summaries of summaries" to thoroughly fix the content;

• Titles and Subtitles: always larger than the normal text and highlighted in different colors;

• Using video lessons: I search for the content I need with specific words, open at least 5 different videos and listen to the first few seconds to decide which one my brain adapts best to in terms of voice, sound quality, and teaching method. It sounds strange, but it helps me a lot with absorption. For theoretical subjects, I look for mind maps with audio explanations as they connect the most important information. For calculations, I prefer those that perform step-by-step exercises as they are usually easier to understand.

• Practicing: I do exercises until I feel at least 70% confident in doing them, even in different formats. For theoretical subjects, I answer questions multiple times, highlighting questions and answers as objectively as possible.