My First Semester Review

Hi, guys! My exam season has officially started, and I have already written my physics exam - it went well! This blog post is going to talk about what I thought of my first semester at Mac, and I promise to be as open as I can.

I learned a lot. This semester partially destroyed my confidence, improved my critical thinking skills, taught me that even though you are always surrounded by people, you are on your own, but at the same time, you're not. There is a lot of contradicting statements that I've gone through this semester, and overall - I loved it

1. You are better than you think
I came here very confident in my academic success, and then, after a few evaluations, I realized that I might potentially drop out of the university (a lot of people did!). That's completely not true. The reason why I felt way stupider than others, was that people around me were talking about their grades and achievements, which are better than mine. Although there are certainly very intelligent people out there, the actual majority of those who seem very successful are just social loafers who sit near A students, and receive LOTS of "help".
When they are on their own, though, it doesn't go that well.
Never be overconfident, either! Always strive for better, and even if you already have an A+, improve the actual percentage within that grade.

2. You have to do you homework
Unless you have assignments, no-one will check your daily homework, and if you're not doing it, you will suffer. Some courses have an overwhelming amount of resources available, and that's your job to discover what resource fits you best in the first few weeks of a semester. You must definitely be consistent with your homework, and make sure all of your questions are answered.

3. Understand the concepts!
There is no knowledge questions present on science exams, and you have to understand the actual concepts from top to bottom in order to do well. But that's also not enough, so you have to practice to be able to apply them. Be prepared that you will rarely see same questions with different numbers, so you really have to grasp the concept.

4. Typing notes actually works!!!
I was very skeptical that typing my notes will work better for me, but it did. Not only it is faster, but you can also copy and paste awesome diagrams without much effort. The app I use is Microsoft OneNote, and it gives you a lot of freedom as of the design of the page, your own drawings, the organization of your notes, etc. The only classes it is worth writing your notes is physics, and math, because it's much faster.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=typing+notes&espv=2&biw=1440&bih=826&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiIgN6Hq-jQAhVJ82MKHTNtAdkQ_AUIBigB#imgrc=kvOEe2xOAa96aM%3A