By “Subject Aids” I do not mean just online tutors or tutors that your school provides you with, but also - and that’s what I’m going to focus on here! - online open courses provides by high schools, colleges and universities all around the world.

One pretty notorious example is MIT (Massachussets Institute of Technology)’s OpenCourseware located at ocw.mit.edu.

These open courses provide students with useful tools to improve their understanding of a certain subject, where - for instance, their class professor lacks in skill and/or time. In fact it’s not rare to find out that our teacher and/or our book do not provide the best understanding of a topic or subject, and these free courses can easily fill in the gaps in our learning. Past years exams, assignments, readings and online lectures (even video lectures!) are all given out for free to help students in their careers, so taking advantage of these services is the best gift with can do to ourselves.

Video lectures are downloadable dictly from the OCWs or from iTunes U. I suggest the Stanford and MIT lectures, as they’ve been recorded directly from classes.

Here I am with my first homework tips! Today I’ll teach you how to optimize your studying time; I tried all of these tips first, so you can be sure they work nicely. ^^

1- Setup your daily schedule. When you get up, prepare a to-do-list of the priorities for the day, and include your studying time; it’ll get easier to find time for everything you love, not just school work.

2- Avoid distractions. When you study, avoid placing distracting stuff on your desk; if it’s sketch paper and colors, put them in your drawer; if it’s videogames, put them temporarily on another shelf that’s not viewable by you from the desk. One hour of full-focused studying is worth 3 hours of interrupted/distracted studying!! Think of how much benefit you get You’ll have your school work done so soon and you’ll have more time for your personal enjoyment!

3- Make your time at school the 80% of your daily studying. What does that mean? Simple! When you are at school, focus on the lecture, take notes, ask questions to your teacher, and follow every reasoning/exercise/example your teacher does on the blackboard. The benefit? You’ll go home knowing the subject already! So you don’t have to spend the whole afternoon studying; you’ll only need a quick revision!

4- Read a chapted and summarize it on paper. It’s a memory-aid, and it helps remembering things more quickly.

That’s all for today. I hope you found this entry useful, and if you did, please leave some feedback! I’d love to hear your opinion and suggestions. Thanks!