PirateDoctor.com

In this lovely modern age a lot of my studying is done online. I have to use Blackboard for several of my courses, watch missed lectures on a professor’s website and, of course, use Wikipedia to do “research” for papers. Recently I noticed that when I sit down at the computer to do those things [...]

If you’re keeping up, we spent time on Monday putting our base schedule together. This next step is something you should probably do weekly. For the rest of this week you’re going to plan 1-3 hours of studying per evening. On your “weekend” days you can schedule up to 6 hours of studying, but don’t [...]

The slump is burnout. It’s when your fun-self is having a fantastic tantrum due to your courseload/workload avalanche. Meanwhile, your responsible half is lecturing you for fantasizing about running away, increasing the tantrum. You spin your wheels on useless stuff, you’re not having fun and you’re crazy tired. Sound unproductive? Oh yeah. You need to [...]

I am suspicious that Google is the precursor for Skynet. Despite this,  I love Google Calendar like I love my real-life BFF. I’ve tried everything from the Hipster PDA, single sheet calendars and mini-planners. None is so simple and flexible as Google Calendar. It fits in my pocket, courtesy of Blackberry syncing. It lets me [...]

I made it through mid-terms only slightly brain-damaged and reveled in a week with no exams looming ahead of me. Then I survived the second lab practical with confidence, using the At Home Practical Mayhem technique (TM totally pending). Now it’s nearly midnight on Tuesday, and I have an OCHEM exam on Monday. I also [...]

Last Friday I slept through my morning alarm. This hasn’t happened in a very long time, but as a result I missed my early morning class. I wasn’t too concerned about it, because the professor happens to record his lectures on a tablet PC, so you see what everyone in lecture does and hear it [...]

It’s the first day back on campus, or for some of you your first day of college. Welcome to school everyone. Talk to strangers. Introduce yourself to whomever you meet and ask them questions. Try not to talk for more than 30 seconds at a time and ask new people about themselves. This is the [...]

Chegg’s slogan? “Don’t buy it.” As I mentioned yesterday, I have seven books to buy for fall semester – which would total $515 to purchase new from the bookstore, or $419 used. Instead, I only bought one book from the school, because it wasn’t available used anywhere. The other six were rented from Chegg.com, a [...]

Fall semester starts for me on the 24th, so that meant it was time to login to the ASU system and look at my book list. It was looking pretty brutal going over the list – I’m taking 2 difficult lecture courses (OCHEM and Developmental Anatomy), the lab for DA and a writing-intensive online course. [...]

There’s about one month left until the end of spring semester, which means on top of everything else it’s time to start thinking about what to do this summer. Applications for research positions at your university, internships at local businesses, and businesses looking for summer help are likely to give a handful of extra weight [...]