blackpoint - the au community

[ Filtered to Tal Hale]

Did yo

[ Filtered to (bb!)Derek ]

Back in the country. No sign of Kate.

[ /Filter ]

I gave this lecture to my students earlier today, but given that we have plenty of students here on the network, I figured why not share?

It's nearing the end of the school year, and we're all sick of each other and want to go lay in the sun, but since exams are on the horizon, our suffering's going to continue. Sorry, life's not fair. However, here are some tips for studying that helped me when I was your age and hated smug bastards like myself. See, I'm not particularly smart. I do all right, but I leave the heavy thinking to my girlfriend. But you don't have to be smart to do fine in school if you have a few tricks up your sleeve, and no, I don't mean writing the answers on your wrist and then asking to go to the bathroom during a test; unless you have a goddamn doctor's note you're going to hold that, sir or ma'am.

But yeah, tricks. Tricks like:

• Sleep. Not like, taking a nap forever to put off actually reading the chapter, but get at least seven hours of sleep before a big test. Your brain remembers shit better after a good rest because biology; I don't know why because I'm not a science nerd, but I swear it works.
  
  
• Make up a rhyme to remember stuff. If you're really fucked, put it to music. Your brain is wired to remember words when they're attached to a beat, and to this day the only reason I remember how the hell the Spanish-American war got started is because I memorized "The Maine exploded and was damp / Cubans were sent to concentration camps / They were starving as they hung around there / but in the US, sympathy went spare / They had guns, they had men, they had knives that cut / and in hardly any time, we kicked Spanish butt". I mean, it's pretty terrible to rhyme shit around concentration camps, but I got a solid B on that essay, and I still remember it to this day, so whatever. You do you. Just don't sing it out loud because that's really terrible and offensive.
  
  
• Flashcards are a classic not because flashcards are actually magic, but because you had to write them. Writing makes an extra area of your brain work, so you're more likely to remember whatever you write than if you just stick to reading it. Typing doesn't work the same way, so sorry - gonna have to be a caveman and write.
  
  
• If you don't know an answer to an exam question, skip it for now. The teacher may have included information later on in the test that helps jog your memory. Remember, there's nothing wrong with partial credit, so just try to write something. Also, don't be like me and draw dinosaurs that look like your history teacher instead of answering questions. That shit got real.
  
  
• Study with a friend, and by "study" I don't mean "make out really hard on top of a textbook". Osmosis only works in chemistry class. Probably.

Taking a sick day. If anyone's feeling nice, bring soup.

Is it cheating for a werewolf to enter an eating contest if the only reason she entered in the first place is because some douchebags implied she couldn't because she was a woman?

Because the stubborn, bitchy part of me that crosses all genders sort of made that happen and now there are people out in the world who are convinced that they saw my actress devour half her weight in pork in one sitting.

Isaac Lahey eats his feelings. It's a fact.