Prepare for your finals – A new perspective

Want to really study for finals but struggling to part ways with your computer? Want to make your parents proud but finding it impossible to stop daydreaming about your special one? Well, here are a few pointers that’ll get you started ~

• Forget it, don’t study ( just kidding ) 😛
  
• Make peace with the fact that you’ll really have to study and there is no way around. Mediate on it. Something like this takes serious contemplation for comprehension.
• Reflect on how amazing the words “contemplation” and “comprehension” are when used in succession.
• Gather all materials you’ll need to study. This includes but is not limited to: textbooks, workbooks, novels, dictionaries, perhaps a Bible, all past notes, quizzes, tests, projects, essays, reports, handouts, reading guides, cross references – basically everything in your locker, everything in your backpack, and everything except for that one piece of paper with the single piece of information that will inevitably compose 75% of your exam but you just don’t know it yet.
• Situate yourself in a quiet place that’s free of distractions.
• Open your textbook.
• Turn off the TV and all the distractions that inexplicably appeared in the room you’ve chosen.
• Flip to the first chapter you covered in the semester.
• Turn the TV back on – it’s Dancing with the Stars night and you never miss this.
• Read the first page of indicated chapter.
• Reread that page because let’s face it. You weren’t paying attention to a single word.
• Busy yourself by highlighting the entire page. This is definitely the important part.
• Take a well-deserved break and raid your pantry, cupboard, and refrigerator. Come back in half an hour.
• Tell yourself that you really have to study now.
• Turn off the TV once a commercial comes on so you aren’t tempted.
• Read over your first page of notes. Underline the words that look important. Open your textbook again.
• Stare at the page for a little bit. This will transfer the information waves from the surface of the book directly to your brain, obviously. 😛
• Experiment with various positions on the couch. Decide on the one that is definitely the least comfortable.
• Wiggle around in that position until you’ve been studying for thirty minutes and learned absolutely nothing. Open your notebook again.
• Discover what an incredible talent you suddenly have for art, and express your creativity all over that page.
• Erase, erase, erase before someone glances at your notes and realizes you’ve been screwing around.
• Now open and read the second chapter.
• Stop after reading a page. Acknowledge that you understood nothing, again. Face the fact that while you were busy not studying, the test has come upon you’re a lot faster than you realized. In fact, it’s tomorrow.
• Reread the first chapter for the four hundredth time, because that’s as far as you get every night and some things just don’t change.
• Scan your notes for anything that looks easy to remember.
• Text six people and post three Facebook statuses about how much studying stresses you out.
• Read the next chapter all while thinking, “how much of this could he possibly put on the test?”
• Absorb the font, degree of boldness and Italicism, and quality of photographs.
• Highlight the words with the most letters.
• Eat dinner. Eat dessert. Shower. Wash your hair. Rinse and repeat and repeat and repeat. Brush your teeth really well. Make your bed and unmake it. Clean your room for the first time in six months. Discover new items and tinker with them.
• Take a twenty minute power nap until your mom enters your pitch black room and suspects the worst. Become defensive when a parent asks why you’re not studying. Remind them that you’ve been going at this for four hours. Assure them that yes, you really have been learning and you’ve gotten everything under control.
• Close the door behind said parent as he/she leaves.
• Proceed to panic. Stare the living mess out of that second chapter.
• Relieve your headache by turning on the TV and breaking open a bag of chips. Your textbook is still open, so it’s okay.
• Become fed up with the system, everything on TV and everything you’re supposed to be studying.
• Decide that you need a change of scenery. Surround yourself with books on your bedroom floor.
• Snatch up your cat/dog/bunny/fish and develop a new found fascination with your pet. Establish a relationship. Come up with new nicknames. Search for fleas.
• Abandon said pet once it’s three AM and all hope is officially lost.
• Take a step back. Admit defeat. Accept that your fate is failure.
• Cry yourself to sleep.

Tell me what you think about it. Share your views in the comments section.
A lot more is in store. Follow my blog for more featured content.
Liked it? Extend a hand by sharing it over social media. The buttons are below!

A ‘novel’ Idea!

How hard do you think it is to write a novel?

Pretty hard, I’d say.

Frankly, I’ve been conceiving this idea of writing a novel for quite some time now but every one of the attempts had dissapoined. Now before you make that I-know-it-all face and think its because of probable lack of  imagination or experience, let me say that I’ve been writing since I was 4. Now don’t look at me like that, it’s true!

So let’s tell you what happened. I am settled comfortably on my couch, my laptop sitting authoritatively on my lap with a MS-Word document open, the plot racing vividly at the back of my mind and the brain knowing exactly what to do. I’m excited and I reach out to type the first letter when

KABOOM!

I’m completely blank.

It has always been a major concern, right from the school days. I’ve always worried about the beginnings, I don’t know why. I have the whole plot up and running in my head but I fumble with the keys wasting hours, only to construct a mediocre beginning. Or maybe it’s my obsession with fantastic beginnings that make ’em feel worthless. I hardly manage two pages and I lose interest. And that is definitely not how I’d like my novel to be written.

I once asked a teacher of mine, a very authoritative man on creative writing, about the problem. He smiled and answered, ” Begin when you have something to say, and finish when you have nothing more. ” Though it sounded pretty mundane at that time and I had a bad time finding sense in those words, a few while in history, everything became crystal.

It’s simple, you see. You don’t have to try and craft out a wonderful piece when you know you’re struggling with it. Just keep it aside and write what flows through the nib. Just because you want the start to be impressive doesn’t mean you have to write it in the beginning itself. You can always come back later.

Sometimes we writers kinda have these bad days when things don’t quite go our way, but what the heck? It’s your book, you can always amend!