As part of Corporate Social Responsibility (CRS), Horizon Schools have so far shared meat hampers with various members of the community during this year’s Eid sharing festival. Eid is the Islamic period of sharing especially with the neighbours and the needy.
The Festival dates back to the days of Ibrahim (Abraham) and his son, Ismail (Ishmael) when they made submissions to God.
During this year’s Eid sharing festival, over fifty (50) cows were slaughtered and shared among more than one thousand families within Lusaka.
Indeed, it is “blessed is the hand that giveth”!
5 Study Tips to Get You Through Finals
Build a Time Management Plan
Since the majority of final examinations will cover an entire semester or year’s worth of curriculum, it is no surprise that you are going to have to plan ahead to manage your time wisely and cover all your bases. Since research consistently indicates the negative effects of cramming, it is recommended that you begin scheduling study times at least two weeks before your final exam week starts. Break down the material into manageable sections and allot more time to spend on the classes that will likely have the most challenging tests. While it may seem counterintuitive, be sure to also remember to schedule in break times to rest, digest the material fully, and recover from study sessions.
Find a Study Partner/Group
While abstaining from attending a long list of parties and end-of-the-year events is highly beneficial, it is important to not cut yourself off from the rest of campus during final exam weeks. In fact, your friends and classmates can provide a valuable resource for keeping you motivated and allowing you to talk through topics you are struggling with. Since studying with other people is obviously much more fun too, you should seek out a study partner, members of your sorority or fraternity, or group of colleagues from your classes to prepare for finals together.
Take Good Care of Your Health
Despite popular belief, huddling over a book at all hours of the day and night will not guarantee that you achieve straight As during finals week. In order to maximize your studying potential, you need to make sure that your body is receiving the nutrients it needs to perform well. Feed your brain with well-balanced meals to avoid feeling sluggish. Rather than pulling all-nighters, also get plenty of sleep throughout final exams week to aid in memorizing the information you studied earlier. Furthermore, schedule in plenty of time to exercise because working out will release endorphins through your body that can boost self-confidence and combat anxiety.
Sign Out of Social Media
Although social media websites can be an excellent source for networking and staying in touch with friends, they can also be a huge distraction that wastes valuable time in your day. If you are busy checking your Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, or Instagram account, you will not be giving your undivided attention to the study materials before you and will not retain the information. Therefore, make sure that you lock your phone away in a safe place where you will not be tempted and refrain from checking it until you have finished your study sessions.
Remember to Breathe!
Overall, final exams week is undoubtedly one of the most stressful weeks of the school year with tremendous amounts of pressure to succeed. However, it is essential that you do not let the stress overwhelm you. Before taking your examinations, make sure you take a few deep calming breaths to release all of the built-up tension and put your body at ease. With top survival tips for final exams in your arsenal, be confident in your intelligence, stay relaxed, and try your best.
SOURCE: bestvalueschools.com
How to push yourself and why it’s important
Most people seek to improve themselves, learn new things, become better people. The way to do this is to change your behavior. Changing your behavior stems from ‘pushing yourself.’ Pushing yourself is a mentality. You can push yourself mentally or physically, but they both stem from your thinking.
I did not write this to persuade you that you ‘should be doing more.’ In fact, there’s a decent chance that you ‘should be doing less.’ Realistically, you will need to do both at the same time – do fewer unimportant things in order to do important things more frequently. Both ‘doing more’ and ‘doing less’ are challenging. ‘Pushing yourself’ refers to accepting this challenge and undertaking it, despite its difficulty. Not pushing yourself is easy, comfortable, and reactionary – you just keep doing what you’ve been doing and go with the flow. Pushing yourself is pro-active, and it forces you to exist in the uncharted headspace of new experiences.
You will have to push yourself in order to say no to things, because saying no is often diffi-cult! We believe that we are obligated to do many things which we are truly and deeply NOT obligated to do, but we choose to do them because we do not want to face the discomfort and possible confrontation of saying no to someone or to something. We are too scared of seeming selfish, even though we actually know that it is in our best interest and well-being to say no. You will need to push yourself to say no…simply because saying yes is an easy way out. Au-tomatically saying yes to a request or an offer does not require us to push ourselves.
Pushing yourself requires that you do not merely perform what is handed to you, or what is as-signed to you. It will require you to think about all that you are required to do, what you have assigned yourself to do, and all that you desire to do. Pushing yourself is simply a mindset of proactivity, of thought, of care, of planning.
Pushing yourself requires that you are aware of what you are learning, or of what you could learn. We are all learn everyday, by default. The way to accelerate learning is to be aware of it, and to drive it in the directions you desire.
START SMALL
Begin the habit of pushing yourself in small ways. Here’s a few I’ve used, but create your own:
Mix up your everyday habits – Eat your meal in different chairs, drive on different streets on a familiar route, buy 5 new groceries products you’ve never noticed before, brush your teeth with the opposite hand.
Focus ALL of your attention on actually paying attention while you drive your car. Sure you can listen to music, text at red lights, and think of 2 things while you drive, but focus all of your attention on driving. Driving is actually pretty fun when you’re aware of all the details – those car commercials that push the joy of driving have got it right.
Experiment with a new rising time. Don’t just try waking 20 minutes earlier, go for some-thing more drastic. Wake up 2-3 hours earlier than usual – the shock of tiredness your body feels can be used to your advantage to jump out of bed and start the day.
Purposefully avoid the use of cliches in conversation. It’s easy to get through the day say-ing things like “Hey what’s up?” “Just chilling, you?” “So busy!” “Ah, it’s good to be busy.” Cliches communicate little. Make an effort to actually say something. Be crea-tive…think. You don’t have to say anything of substance, just something that is genuine that stems from real thinking. The interaction will be far more interesting, you have a bet-ter chance of connecting with someone, and you will probably feel better because of it.
Do math in your head whenever the opportunity presents itself. Your shopping bill was $53.16 after a 10% discount? So then what was the full tab before the discount?
It may seem that changing such trivial and mundane habits has no significance. But the logic behind it is that if you change an unimportant action in your day-to-day life, you will become more aware. Things that have slipped by unnoticed for days, months, or years will now be on your radar of awareness. Once your awareness has been roused, your creativity is set into mo-tion – how can you put a spin on this ‘same old thing’ to make it new? You’ll need to create a new way… It’s a game… games are fun…and fun boosts your mood (and the moods of oth-ers). Applying your creativity to small stakes situations will slowly change the way you per-ceive your environment, enhances your interactions, speeds up your thinking, makes you more decisive, builds your confidence, improves your problem-solving chops, and it will increase the number of options you are able to perceive in any situation. It will allow you to perceive choic-es of action that you never knew existed, that you were simply unable to see. Ultimately, it in-creases the number of ways you are able to think and builds a habit of pursuing new things.
Pushing yourself happens thought by thought, action by action, day by day. The small actions will add up over time and create major change in your life. Change will come about if you stay the course. Pushing yourself mentally, physically, and emotionally requires resilience, persis-tence, grit, and constant reminders of your future vision. The process is the journey, and the results are worth every difficult moment…
SOURCE: lovesciencemusic.com
Study Hacks to Improve Your Memory
We have scoured our brains and the internet for the best study hacks to help your brain remember information. Memory is a muscle. Get it in shape. This well help you to remember quicker and more easily. This will help you in your exams and in your life.
1. Walk Before An Exam
It’s been proven that exercise can boost your memory and brain power. Research conducted by Dr. Chuck Hillman of the University of Illinois provides evidence that about 20 minutes exercise before an exam can improve performance.
2. Speak Out Loud Instead of Simply Reading
Although this may make you look a little crazy, give it a go! You will be surprised how much more you can remember when you’ve said it out loud. Warning: Don’t try this in a crowded library!
3. Reward Yourself With A Treat
There are many ways to integrate a reward system into your habits so you learn how to study for exams more efficiently.
4. Teach What You Have Learned
The best way to test if you really understand something is to try to teach it to someone else. If you can’t get anyone to listen to you explain the Pythagorean Theorem, why not teach a class of stuffed animals!
5. Create Mental Associations
The ability to make connections is not only an easier way to remember information, but it’s the fuel of creativity and intelligence. Steve Jobs famously said “Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something”.
6. Draw Diagrams
Drawing diagrams will help you to visualise information which would be hard to describe. This creates a visual memory in your mind which can be recalled in an exam. You may even be asked to draw or label diagrams such as the human heart in your exam so get practicing!
7. Times New Roman is the Fastest Font to Read
Simply put – there’s a reason why Times New Roman is the default font on most applications!
8. Use Apps to Block Distracting Sites
The SelfControl app helps you to avoid distractions by blocking websites for a certain amount of time. Discover more student apps to make student life easier in our blog post “12 Student Apps You Don’t Want to Miss!”.
9. Watch a Documentary on the Topic
Documentaries are an entertaining way of compacting an entire story into a short timeframe. This will help you remember key details from a story plus you may even get extra credit for mentioning that you took the initiative and watched a film about the topic!
10. Search Google Like a Pro
Save time when researching sources online by mastering the biggest search engine in the world; Google.
11. Create Flashcards for Quick Memory Buzz
Quickly test your knowledge of key concepts, definitions, quotes and formulas with flashcards. Sign up to GoConqr now to create your first Flashcard deck like the one below now!
12. Take Regular Study Breaks
When your brain is working, you need to take regular study breaks to help your brain absorb more information but also to keep you motivated and focused when you are working. Take a short break after 45-50 minutes study as your focus and concentration will become impaired after this period, anything new after 1 hour 30 minutes does not get assimilated.
13. Listen to the Correct Type of Music
In our blog post “Music for Studying: 10 Tips to Pick the Best Study Music” we looked into the area of how the correct types of music can lead to more productive studying by elevating your mood. Have you made your Mozart Spotify playlist yet?
14. Make Your Study Space Portable
We may be creatures of habit with favourite seats in the library but information retention actually improves when you vary the places where you study.
15. Practice, Practice, Practice…
Practicing sample answers to past exam questions can help train your brain to retrieve information. The same applies to Reading Tests. Create realistic, exam-like condition and test your understanding by using our new Quiz tool.
SOURCE: goconqr.com
