Study, Strive, Skilled

     Hello and welcome back!

For this post I wanted to write about having... I fear I have to say this, but exams. Or midterms, tests, quizzes, whatever floats your boat!
It's the time of year again when you start taking tests again at school. So, I want to share with you some tips and tricks you can try before your big exam day. Though I want to remind you that these are some things that I think really help me during exam times. Some might not necessarily help others in studying and writing a test. If what I do doesn't help you, try getting inspiration from this post and create a method that works for you.

First of all, to actually study, you need the actual motivation to do so. You won't be wanting to study if you're hungry or tired. So, eat lots, sleep lots and exercise! Teenagers these days tend to sleep late which isn't that great for your health because your brain isn't as sharp as before. Same when you're starving yourself, and if you don't exercise enough. Motivation is THE key to studying and prepping for tests. When I study, I do it right after I get home. Usually I cut up some apples as a snack because it's juicy and crunchy, and it's sure to keep me awake and focused. I mostly study right when I get home because I eat at like, 5 pm so that I can fully digest my food enough to go to my martial art classes. And it's 9 pm when my martial class finishes so I can't study anymore after that. On days where I don't have anything, I'll take either an extra half hour or a full hour to study.

You want to get good, quick, and comprehensible notes from the teachers and/or your friends. Without those, you're either not really studying or you're studying the wrong material. When writing down notes, make sure it's tidy and they're kept in one specific place, like a notebook. It's a less of a burden to carry one notebook instead of something  like, 20 loose leaf papers that are all folded and smudged. When it's time to study for tests, it will be easier to fully understand the topic and material. Some people have different ways of writing down their notes. For example, lots of people highlight with a whole bunch of colors like pink, green, yellow, blue, purple. Personally, I find doing that too confusing for me. Instead, I use a black, red, and blue fine liner to write down notes. Red will mean that the information written in that colour is crucial and important. Anything I write in blue will be an example. And black will be any additional information and the body of the material I'm studying.

What you also might want to consider is your working area. Personally, I like to study in 2 places. One is my room on my cozy leather chair, and two is in my dining room. It depends on my mood. Honestly, sometimes I like it when I have company around me when I'm studying. It somehow keeps me focused in a way... But sometimes I just can't stand other people in a wide open area, and I can't concentrate so I resort to study in my room with my desk lamp and big comfy chair. That also helps me. But your working space might differ from mine and others. Maybe you like to get work done at libraries or your school. Whatever floats your boat. Choose one, get comfortable in it, and start setting a routine

The next thing to consider is how you study. Of course, it's better not to cram all subjects in one sitting. What one of my substitute teachers told my class and I was that you learn, memorize, and understand material better if you work on it for about 20 minutes, take a break, then come back to the work again. I take Kumon classes, and their method is kind of the same concept, and I can say that it actually works. Doing your work, leaving it for a period of time and going back to it to review helps. So what I suggest is that you start off with one subject and/or topic. You work on that for about, let's say, 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, take a break! Listening to music is what I do. It relieves my stress and it helps me relax. You could read a book, maybe watch TV or go on YouTube. You can do that for like, 5, maximum 10. After your break, go back to your lesson material. You can then repeat the process. It works a lot for me, but like I said, it might not work for you. If this doesn't work for you, get inspired by this method and create one that will suit you.

Also, you can't give up! If you tell yourself that you'll completely fail, there's a big chance that you will. I'm just saying this because it's true. Keep positive thoughts in your mind. That actually helps you! Telling yourself that you can do it and ace it will make a world of a difference! Confidence. Being confident about yourself is what I'm trying to say. Maybe you can even work with your friend or friends. They will certainly keep you positive! Unless they are also being negative, then don't even bother talking to them during your time to study. What you need is support and positivity to help you ace your tests!

The night before, try sleeping a bit earlier than usual. You'll get plenty of rest and you'll be full of energy the next day. Speaking of the next day, make a nutritional breakfast! It will give you even more energy and help you memorize what you've studied for! As I've already said, sleeping and eating healthily will give you that boost and motivation to be successful!

I hope these tips helped you with your preparations for your tests! These aren't all of the tips and tricks I have for you to get an A+ so I might just do another post like this later. If I write everything in this post, it'll go on forever. So stay tuned for more!!

Keep Smiling,
M-L

Freaky and Festive 2014

          Hi everybody,

Halloween is coming faster than we think! It's in like, 2 weeks!! Be ready for the freaks and screams... In today's post, I want to share with you a little bit of everything that has to do with Halloween.

The most popular thing to do on Halloween, other than going door-to-door for candy (duh), is dressing up! The more traditional costumes are witches, ghosts, vampires, cats, any mythical creatures and scarecrows. There are also the random costumes like any random objects, there are people who cosplay as their favourite character from a movie, TV show or book, there are also "couple matching" costumes too! Seriously, how do you decide what you want to be when there are so many options out there?! Here's what I suggest:
-If you don't really want to go all out for you costume, then I recommend dressing up as a character from a movie/TV show/book that you like. You won't be spending that much money on your costume.
-Another option is to dress up as an animal like a cheetah, a mouse, or a cat. All you would really need to get for your costume are the ears, possibly tail, and your face makeup.
-Also, cardboard boxes work well if you want to just decorate it and then just wear it on. For example, decorate your cardboard box as your favourite candy (Nerds, Mike and Ike, Aero, Smarties), or a "Creeper" if you're into Minecraft, or Domo if you know who that is (^-^).
-You want to try out the "couple matching" or group costumes, I really like the idea of being Mickey and Minnie Mouse! I think that you can easily dress up as that because it's basically just regular clothes and mouse ears. If you want a group costume, why not dress up as candy? It's Halloween! I've heard of people dressing up as Skittles by just wearing a coloured T-shirt and cutting up the letter S to stick it onto the shirt. Simple, but I think it's creative!

Now, for the good part... food! There are a lot of sweet treats that you can decorate to make it more festive!
-Don't have a lot of time to make something? Buy the pre-made Pillsbury sugar cookies that you can bake in the oven for like, one or two dozen minutes! You can choose your cookies to have a cat, a ghost or even a pumpkin on them! And they taste reeeeally good!
-Another easy but creative treat is to get some of those transparent, surgical gloves. Put a candy corn in each finger then fill up the glove with popcorn! I personally don't like popcorn (unless it's coated with caramel) but I find the idea really cool!
-You want something slightly healthier? Try white chocolate coated strawberries! It'll look like a cute and delicious ghost!

Decorations are super awesome for a haunted house or a house party with your buds!
-Cob webs are so "rad"! You can easily buy them at a craft's store! They are also easy to decorate around your house, or should I say haunted house? ;) You don't have to buy the cob webs, you can make them at home! Get a white shirt (preferably a shirt with thin fabric) that you don't need anymore and just start cutting and shredding it. It'll look like a web!
-Skulls appear everywhere. Why not at your party? Why not the whole skeleton ;) ? Set a fake skull around your house. In front of your house too!
-If you have a tree in front of your house, why not decorate that too? Attach spiders and ghosts onto a few of the branches so it looks like they're floating. You can choose to put a whole bunch or just a couple.
-There are also stuff you can do with coloured paper and scissors! For example, with simple white printer paper, cut it into the shape of a ghost! With black paper, cut it into the shape of a bat! With orange paper, cut it into the shape of a pumpkin!


Halloween, Halloween, Halloween! The time when monsters come out... Make sure you get your scream on!!

Keep Smiling,
M-L

Happy Thanksgiving and a Concert

          Hi all,

Yes, I know that Thanksgiving is actually on Monday but since I write on Sundays and it's only a day before, I figure I'd still write about Thanksgiving for this day's post.

Don't forget to be thankful for things that you may take for granted. For example, be thankful that you have working legs and arms, you can have water whenever you want from your own home, or that you have an education. But don't just list everything you're thankful for on Monday, try listing at least 3 little things you're grateful for everyday. I'm trying to do that everyday, and write down the things I was grateful for in a journal of mine that I keep and write in. Doing that is very beneficial because it will make you happy and have a positive outlook on your life.
Spend time with your family. Maybe you have a tradition that you do every year, like a game or something. Maybe the way you spend time with them is just doing your own thing in the same room as them, and you all gather for the turkey at dinner. Also, you might want to have a little time hanging with your friends, because aren't they also people you're thankful for? On Thanksgiving, try giving more than taking.

Now, as it says in the title, I will be speaking to you about a concert that I just recently went to. I went to go see an orchestra live this Friday with my sister. The concert we went to was Disney's Fantaisia: Live in Concert. Wow... what an experience. The feeling you get when you look at all the musicians playing their instruments in person. It's already nice to hear when you listen to a piece on the Internet, or on TV, but once you listen to it and see it in person, now that is a whole new thing and it is incomparable. If you have never seen an orchestra live, you have to. It will be such a memorable event and you will have a deep interest in music, like I did. You know, ever since... say when I was about in grade six, I've always wanted to learn to play the cello. And during the concert, I was always trying to watch the cellists play. They looked so "cool" playing it! In all, it was AWESOME.

This day's post is shortly written because I had a lot of work to do this week and I still do have a lot of work this weekend. But I hope you all have a happy Thanksgiving!

Keep Smiling,
M-L

Group Work at School

          Sigh, group work at school...
So, I'm getting this feeling that I've been writing a lot about a somewhat interesting event that happened to me during the week. It's like I'm writing in a journal!.. (without all of the "personal" and "emotional" stuff...). Though I am getting to like writing these kinds of posts. I can reflect on them and I can relive the experience by just reading what I wrote (exactly like a journal would do!). Plus, I can share with you what happened to me during the week, and the lessons I learned from it. I don't want to bore you with these stories if you don't like them. I try to make my stories as exciting as possible. But if you prefer that I write these posts less often, feel free to tell me! With this out, here is my experience on working with some of my new classmates! Have a good read!

My Humanities teacher (Social Studies and ELA combined) wanted us to do a poster about one of the elements of worldview. You might not understand what I mean, but basically we were supposed to create a poster about one of the seven; value, belief, economy, knowledge, geography, time or society. My Humanities teacher numbered us into seven groups based on the class list. In my group, we were five. Most of the groups had five people in them, because we are more than thirty students. And we had to create a poster about value.

Let's call my groupmates with nicknames. So there was Caillou, Minion Rush, Chatty Kathy and Slow Snail. Interesting choice of nicknames, huh? You'll see why...

I had worked with Slow Snail before because she was in my class last year too. In fact, she is one of my closest friends. Heheh, hopefully she won't be offended with the nickname I give her... But I had never worked with Caillou, Minion Rush or Chatty Kathy before. But with the behaviour they had during class time, I was kind of stressed about our assignment.

I was literally the only one writing down what we needed to do and basically, I felt like a boss because I had to tell them to work and do their job. We did get some work done on Day 1, but we still needed a lot of time to complete our poster... Although I did enjoy working with them. They were funny, a bit charismatic and friendly people.

On Day 2, we were prepared with our poster, our pencil crayons, rulers, everything. We asked our teacher to take one of the private rooms in our library to get more privacy. And essentially here is what happened:
                    - Caillou was playing the theme song in Caillou on repeat while doing part of his work
                    - Minion Rush was playing Minion Rush on Slow Snail's phone
                    - Slow Snail was taking her leisurely time with her part of the work
                    - Chatty Kathy was well, talking. And colouring because she is the artist of our group

As for me, I reminded them to do their work and also did my part of the work. And I started singing along with Caillou... And I also talked... a lot... It was fun! But we were finally done!.. or so we thought.

On Day 3, our teacher told us to start over because our work was too plain and the writing was too small. Oh yeah, did I mention that our humanities teacher is also the art teacher for the school? Yeah... So we had to START OVER. Hooray, right? And it was also a half day (we were only at school for half of the day) so the classes were shortened!

But thankfully Chatty Kathy offered to finish the rest of the work we started during the weekend because she wouldn't have anything to do! We wrote everything we needed, all she needed to do was glue them on the poster! So whoof, we were saved!


Honestly, it was such a rush being with this group of people. There were ups and downs. It was like a roller coaster ride. I do regret being stern with them, because once I was more "loose" and being able to have fun with them, it was already time to finish our assignment. Each group has diverse people in them. So your experience with every one of your groups will never be the same. Try to enjoy and cherish every moment while it lasts.

And that is my experience on group work with my new classmates, everybody! Could you relate somehow?

Keep Smiling,
M-L