The Study Game 👾

A lot of people have their own reasons. For me, I grew up going to school wearing glasses for majority of my childhood and found that the piece of metal and glass kept slipping off my face making me look silly. Although glasses are meant to help us see better, I noticed I reached an age where my vision has a difficult time showing signs of change and deciding to not exercise the muscles in my eyes and relying on a high prescription glasses just isn't worth my time. I will elaborate my main points below. 1. I was not born with glasses on. Embracing the person I was born as and my appearance without glasses has been instrumental for me gaining a greater sense of self confidence. When I look into the mirror, I see my eyes for how they truly look, yes even the dark circles and tiredness from long nights of studying. When I didn't wear my glasses, I learned to love my eyes more when I stare in a mirror which has brought me a sense of happiness. 2. I am not embracing the visi...

A lot of people say they never get jealous but the reality is that it happens to even the best of us. It can either push you to get better or become toxic making you feel insignificant through moments that may involve constantly comparing yourself to people who appear to be doing amazing. Here's a story of how I escaped that toxic feeling and hopefully you can too. It was a new school year as a college graduate student I found my brother in the room and one of our roommates was getting settled in too. As I was unpacking, I couldn't help but feel a sense of jealousy. My friend was a Youtuber and was even gaining a rising popularity on Instagram. I was jealous. Every time I would see a new video recorded or a new Instagram post coming out on my social media feeds I would immediately feel jealous and blame myself for not being good enough even to the point of overworking myself. At this point, I was in a toxic state of jealousy which was no longer benefiting me. I had tried medi...

Gratitude is regularly defined as feeling thankful. It can involve feeling thankful for the sunny weather today, the electricity powering your home/devices, and the people who are part of your life. Feeling gratitude is essential for living a happy life and leads to more optimism towards life in general. In contrast, studying can be viewed in both a positive and negative manner. Each person has a certain threshold when studying before they start to feel like they are burning out. Depending on the subject being studied, your level of will power to finish studying or completing that assignment can be put to the test. For those tasks that probably take more of your time than one pomodoro session (25 minute timed interval study sessions), it's important to find a good medium to regain energy when stress and negativity start piling up by your 8th study session. I recently started experimenting with this idea: What effect does gratitude have on our ability/capacity to study? I origin...

I was exercising at the gym one day lifting weights and from the mirror view I noticed people taking large drinks from their water bottles. It's a gym so this is all normal for sure. However, I found myself becoming slightly uncomfortable with this sight. A friend would even stop mid conversation while I'm speaking to take a drink. The result, I feel more thirsty and want to drink something too.  I realized similar to watching TV our body mimics actions it sees so when someone is seen drinking water in front of us. It can stimulate our mind as if it is receiving a similar behavior. The difference is that you are actually not drinking at the moment and just observing. It is simply a passed on behavior. My mind tends to overthink why I feel thirsty when I'm not drinking and just observing someone drinking a beverage which is specifically for this reason. The Solution: don't worry about that uncomfortable feeling and just remember to drink a sufficient amount of wat...

An early morning on vacation found me in bed with no set alarm. I had nothing to do and no place to be I felt present and peaceful. Until the thought suddenly grips me, I've been doing the same routine the moment I wake up all break. Sleeping in until finally getting up to check my phone then going back to bed. The rest of my day went on in also a sort of routine once again browsing social media and cleaning my house. I didn't feel like I was making any sort of impact and doing the same routine repeatedly felt mundane. My solution: try to change one small thing and see where that will take you. I know it sounds obvious and simple but making one small step each day to trying something new besides your circumstances can actually make the most boring tasks a bit more interesting as you begin adding on new and more novel activities. In the morning, I usually would scroll through Instagram but this morning I deleted the app and only browsed Facebook, which isn't as gripping ...

The fast paced society we live in today is growing immensely and with the new heights we climb to in our careers can cause us to lose track of the people who have played a sort of role along the way. I once read a quote one day while browsing through Facebook, "People enter your life for a reason." When I think back to all the people I have had some sort of interaction with in my life I realize just how important it is to work with others. As much as we want to all play Batman, working on that big project in solitude at the bat cave. Remember, Batman could never stop as much crime or villains compared to when he works alongside the Justice League! It was a rainy night. Finals week in college with students rushing to fill up the library as they studied for their final exams. It seemed as though I had won the lottery during this period trying to survive finals week with a nose that was completing the most difficult marathon. Despite these challenges, I continued forth to stud...

Besides acting as a good cardio workout and the obvious stress relief. Dance can actually be used as a way to improve focus and strengthen certain areas of the brain. As a self-taught dancer and graduate student, I find it difficult to just completely focus on my studies for a very long period of time. My mind would usually drift off which makes my work less productive. The idea of breaks comes to mind. A break can be anything from going for a walk to even dancing. For a "dance break," you just need to get up and imagine moves with/without music. It can be difficult at first but this will stimulate the right brain, which takes on motor and creative functions for our body, to become activated and reshape/add new neurons to the brain's morphology. I recently did some research online where studies showed that practicing one dance move multiple times not only creates a muscle memory to that ability but also reshapes the structure of the brain. Reshaping the brain is a p...

Have you ever reached a point in the year where the amount of work feels too big to handle and your motivation and free time feels like ideas that existed in a far off dream? I definitely have especially in graduate school. As someone who is very involved in school, I must admit that everything truly does come with some sort of cost and you can't always have the best of both worlds. I'll share with you some tips on how I learned to fight these weaknesses in my work and productivity systems. 1. Buy More Time: this actually makes a lot more sense than you think because if you set time out for work and reach a state of true discipline, you save your future self some time and worry which is honestly one of the best feelings there is. Just remember not to burn out as you grind through those focused pomodoro sessions. 2. Stop what you're doing and walk: as humans we weren't meant to sit too long. It's important to remember to stand up and walk for at least 5 minutes...