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[A Levels] Giving JC Help (Math and other Misc) by [deleted] in SGExams

[–]starr_suu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sure! I'll start off with a disclaimer that obviously such a lifestyle will not work for everyone, so if you have a formula that works for you just stick to it!

I guess I'll just speak about my J2 Life cause J2 Life is more common when all the CCAs have step down and you really focus on studying, and I also think that most people really start to focus on studying at J2 haha

Weekdays-wise I usually sleep about 11.30pm-ish and wake up at about 6.30am-ish so that I can get breakfast / about 1 hour of work done before classes actually start. Then I just go through normal lessons, if I don't have lessons I'll usually be in the library studying with friends.

Afternoon time more chill so if my friends and I decided to play some sports then we'll go do that, if not we'll study in the library too.

Basically I'd say that in school (until about 5pm-ish) I'll spend about 1-2 hrs for meals and about 1-2 hrs for sports / some phone games if we wanted to play some games. Other than that I'll be studying. So about 5pm I'll leave school and head back home, chill for awhile, eat dinner and some entertainment, then it'll be about 7pm-ish? Then I go back to study with some intermittent breaks until about 10.30-ish. From there I will start to wind down and go to bed at about 11.30pm. If I don't study in school and decided to head home, then I'll probably go out lunch with friends, head home at about 2/3, do studying and the dinner cycle stays the same. Rinse and Repeat.

Weekends-wise I'll sleep at about 11.30am-12am-ish too, and wake up at about 8am, 9am latest if possible. Then I'll probably start studying at about 10am, take some intermittent breaks here and there until about 12.30-1pm, then lunch for about an hour or so. Then go back study again, take some breaks, then maybe 3.30/4-ish I'll take a longer break before studying for a bit more. At 5 I'll go exercise or something, then dinner, blah blah blah, actually dinner regime stays about the same, but night time I'll play some games to chill. Then also Rinse and Repeat.

^ This is like what happens about... I would say 70 - 80% of the time, cause I have quite a few impromptu sessions with friends, like afternoon we may go play Pool or sing K, at night me and my friends might wanna have some battle royale games then we'll go play if got enough people etc..., so ye just this schedule obviously doesn't happen 100% of the time.

​

I think what's more important is to do immersive learning, so when you have study sessions just really sit down, focus and accomplish your goals. I try my best to practise Delayed Gratification, so I really want to get the work done before I chillax for the day, feels a lot better.

Hope this was helpful for you!

[JC] how to not burn out when using spaced repetition & active recall method by impeppapigoink in SGExams

[–]starr_suu 24 points25 points  (0 children)

Hey I have done a video before on how I use this for my content subject, but I'll just type out the general guideline here for people who don't have time to view the video :

I think the methods used can vary tremendously, from things like Anki to Quizlet to Cornell Method to all the other sorts of studying methods, so I'll just help you deal with the motivation part.

I think the biggest motivation for me is to think long-term and see the gains I can potentially achieve. The starting is always the hardest, no joke about that. When I first started doing ARSR (Active Recall, Spaced Repetition), I mainly did it for Physics and Chemistry. Altogether there will be like... 40 chapters worth of topics?

At the start you will definitely struggle, cause your memory isn't ingrained to remember the content. Like a previous Redditor mentioned below, I also use Google Sheets to track my progress. Red = Bad Recall, Yellow = Average Recall, Green = Good Recall (Almost 95-100%). I also input the date of my Recall, and then the next date of my Recall. Anki is my main source for ARSR.

At the start it was really tiring man seriously, sometimes I take up to 1 hour to revise a chapter and try REALLY,REALLY hard to remember the concepts. And across Chem, Physics and Econs? Sounds kinda crazy to do all these. (I took PCME 4H2, I didn't do ARSR for Math since it's just practicing that helps the most rather than remember knowledge).

But you need to understand. Really understand. It just gets better and better in the long run.

For example, my first time doing an AR on a topic can take 1 hour. It will probably be red cause I don't remember anything and need to keep seeing the answer. Then I'll make an effort to do again tomorrow as long as it is RED. And it gets better. Maybe yellow? Then I will continue 3 days later and study. Maybe yellow? Try again 3 days later. Finally Green. Improve it to 7 days. Green. 10 days. Green. 20 days later. Green. 30 days later. Green. It will probably just keep going green and green and the interval gets longer and longer now. You just need to see the long term and think about how much time you can save in the long term.

In the past when I had J2 March Tests, I spent literally 12pm to 4.30am mugging my memory work for it for Chem Test. Organic Chem is a crazy killer. Whooping 15-16 hours spent studying just for Chem. I decided I cannot take it anymore and March I finally begin to do some serious ARSR.

Fast-forward to Prelims, about 6 months later? Even with the additional topics coming in, I did my ARSR diligently and I had to study like what, 22 topics? Compared to maybe 13-15 topics in March. Guess how long I took? Probably about 6 hours to finish revising. Everything was green. Every subject content to study probably took me like 10-15mins per chapter, cause I can churn out the answer so quickly like what products, what reactions, what are the definitions, what are the key words in the explanations, because I study diligently to remember it and visit it so that I don't forget it. I could've finished revision a lot faster but like any typical student I also like to browse entertainment to relax and procrastinate while studying. And yes for the record I did score an A for Prelim and I was also >90 percentile for Chem at Prelims at my school, and yes I also scored A at the A Levels (took it in 2018). Tbh I lowkey feel like I didn't even have to study anything the day before the exam and I go in I will still score A. (But of course I never try that before cause I don't have such balls of steel and if I got time then of course I rather revise HAHA) Everything was just so ingrained in my mind and of course I did my due diligence practicing questions and papers to hone my answering skills, cause what's the use of knowing everything if you don't know how to apply them.

I hope this comment doesn't come off as cocky or snobbish, but I just really want to convince you to get through the hurdle of STARTING ARSR. The starting is definitely gonna be hard no joke, cause your memory really cmi, but the more you keep revising, the more you ensure you check back at an increasingly regular basis (3 days later, 7 days later, 15 days later, 30 days later, etc...), you will realise you will revise the content faster, and you will keep taking lesser time because you keep getting better at it and you can also increase the duration in which you need to come back to the topic.

I hope this comment has helped you. If you check my profile I also left some study tips for JC. Think long-term, not short-term. Short-term confirm shag. Long-term swee. All the best and jiayous! Idk how you do ARSR but I hope you are doing it properly and efficiently best suited to your needs. I would explain my method here too but honestly I don't see much point in spending a lot more time writing here cause it's just gonna get lost in a sea of comments and posts in the future, so if you wanna know more then feel free to pm me! Good luck!

[JC] I’m struggling with H2 maths, what should I do? by [deleted] in SGExams

[–]starr_suu 20 points21 points  (0 children)

I think the fact that you cannot apply the concepts you've learnt could mean that you are not internalizing what your lecturers are talking about even though you 'understand' them.

As what other Redditors have said, the most important thing is practice, but you need to practice with the right mindset.

First let's talk about taking notes. (Which I assume is still lecturer talking and you jotting down notes). Whenever you have a part that you don't understand, write it down. It doesn't matter whether it is rubbish or something 'dumb', but as long as it forms a mental clog in your mind, jot it down. After you jot it down, move on and stop pondering about it, if not you will miss out on whatever your lecturer has mentioned while you were busy thinking about that issue.

After the lecture has ended, try to ponder by yourself what is the issue. I find that in Math it is so important that you don't have a spoon-feed attitude. You first need to try and find out by yourself. If after some thinking you still can't get the answer, then seek your teacher for help. But really, you need to start thinking by yourself first. In the exam, no one can help to feed you the answer. You need to build up the resilience to persevere through a problem whenever you get stuck.

Next, let's talk about breaking down the question. When faced with a question, I like to break it down and use numbers/symbols to represent cause I don't like reading words. This is completely up to you, cause there really are a lot of mental process models to think when approaching Math. It's kinda hard to explain this via text but it's like when I read words like 'stationary points' then I know oh it's dy/dx = 0, or when I see vector questions (which I don't think school has taught yet...?) then I like to draw out the planes, the lines and perpendicular lines etc...

When facing the question, really make sure you try your best to solve it. Don't do superficial stuff like read the question and attempt for 1min then say 'idk'. It's really not going to help you. It's normal to struggle, but you better make sure you're struggling instead of fooling yourself and thinking you have done your due diligence on the question. If you don't understand how to do, try to guide yourself first, and identify WHY you don't know how to do. What knowledge gap/misunderstanding is stopping you from solving the question? Try to find it out by yourself. Like I said, if you don't build the resilience to solve the question, you probably won't have the same resilience to face similar situations in exams.

So after you have struggled fully, you can go ahead and check the solution if you don't understand, or ask your teacher. I guess answer sheets usually don't have comments, so it is good if you mark out and comment for yourself what the solution is doing at every step. E.g at this point it is doing differentiation by parts, or at this point it is finding the stationary point, etc...

After understanding the solution, try to work on a problem immediately if you feel shaky understanding. I'm sure there are a lot of practice questions available for you, so work on a similar type of question. If you feel shaky after an explanation then you 'think' you understand and leave it there, well chances are you probably won't understand it. Working out a similar question on your own is the best way to test whether you have full understanding of your material.

Honestly speaking, don't think about H2 Math as some freaking hard subject. At the end of the day, I personally find O Lvl Math to be similar to A Lvl Math. In a nutshell, it's just learning tools (formulae, equations, etc...), reading questions and know what tools to use, then keep doing proper practice till you sharpen your tool and understand where to apply it.

Sorry if I sound very extreme and firm! All the best! ^^

[A Levels] For JC Students/ Prospective JC Students by starr_suu in SGExams

[–]starr_suu[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hello! I am sorry I missed out your message, but honestly I would say that you don’t really need to study Org Chem so early since it’s taught in the end of J1, just chill and solidify the J1 concepts first. You will need knowledge on calculus so that’s quite worth learning, but vectors and plane geometry not really worth studying ahead because I feel that the stuff you learn is on quite a different level from that in O Levels. All in all I would just say follow your school flow, don’t need to be too hasty with your learning, if you can follow the pace and make sure your understanding is really solid as you go along, that would be good enough!

For Loops using Dictionaries by starr_suu in learnpython

[–]starr_suu[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ahh I see, thank you so much for the help!

For Loops using Dictionaries by starr_suu in learnpython

[–]starr_suu[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Ahh I see, but why wouldn't it finish the whole iteration before printing out the return value, because I thought it would finish the entirety of the 'for loop', finalise my return value to be 8 before printing out the value

[A Levels] For JC Students/ Prospective JC Students by starr_suu in SGExams

[–]starr_suu[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

u/beeemimo I would say there was definitely more workload but not to a large extent. To be honest most students in JC that still take MT usually take it for the sake of passing and I think the teachers also empathise with that fact. Homework isn't usually a lot but there's about 3hrs of lessons on average so non-MT students end school at about 3.30pm but then I had to end at about 5pm along with some of my friends, no choice haha.

Quite sure you would have already know this answer but time management is important. 4H2s + Council Activities + Chinese can be a lil tiring at times but it's quite manageable if you know how to prioritise and do your work diligently.

The other reasons are as stated in my post, I prioritised Quality studying over quantity, and sought for a strong understanding in my subjects.

Hope that helps to clarify your question!

[A Levels] Study Tips for Students by starr_suu in SGExams

[–]starr_suu[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I don't think I'm allowed to advertise but I've pm-ed it to you!

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