study tube study gram study blur and now studytok communities have been around since at least circa
2015 and in the past sevenish years there are some trends that just have not seemed to fade
within the study community these include products like mildliners muji plans plant pet
pens white lines notebooks bullet journals and trends like taking pretty notes digital
note-taking etc so today i will try to answer two questions do these products and trends actually
improve grades and are these things worth the time and money or are they overrated?
let's start with grades and let me just cut to the chase if you're looking just from the
standpoint of if these things are needed for good grades or to increase them i personally would say
all of them are overrated all you truly need to get good grades is a pencil or pen
paper maybe a computer if you're in college and your brain values and skills like hard work
dedication motivation discipline are definitely the most important things for learning and success
our parents and all generations prior had none of these things and still managed to study and
become scientists doctors academics lawyers many of whom ended up changing the world the
best example i have is a person who has an amazing indoor gym inside their house or personal library
just because they have all this fancy equipment doesn't mean that they actually use it or know
how to use it properly or have actually read the books that they have if you have
the determination you can become an amazing athlete just by using your own body weight
and working out or running outside every day and you can be well read by visiting a library
and never owning a single book so if you don't really need these things or trends for
good grades then what's the point of them well just because they're not completely essential
or necessary doesn't necessarily mean that they're not useful or can help enhance your
life so now i'll be talking about whether they're worth the time and money investment
bullet journaling has taken social media by storm over the past half decade and is known for
its very colorful and creative spreads but it was actually founded by writer carol in 2013 as a way
to organize your life in one place the original method doesn't have any excessive flourishes it's
extremely straightforward minimalistic and really only requires a journal and one pen
so then why are people quitting bullet journaling in troves well lots of people cite that bullet
journaling is too much work and time there's too much pressure to make it look cool or perfect
and too many unnecessary spreads so i can't speak for everyone but in my personal opinion
i ultimately think that you should absolutely do what works for you but there's also no reason to
shame or make a blanket statement that aesthetic bullet journaling sucks so from my perspective
bullet journaling can be an alternative to an art hobby or craft hobby i think a great thing about
bullet journaling is the fact that it is up to you to choose which spreads you include and how far
you want to go with the designs so you can change it from month to month depending on what you
feel like at a current moment i also make tons of mistakes and don't really stress out about it but
if you do then maybe aesthetic bullet journaling is not for you which is totally fine so no i don't
think bullet journaling is overrated at all i think it's a great method that you can play around
with and choose what works best for you and if you don't want to spend all that time making spreads
pre-made planners are an excellent alternative so now let's talk about a popular study tube
alternative to bullet journaling notion which also happens to be sponsoring today's video
the notion app is disgusting omg this stresses me there are so many functions
in this app that i don't know where to start say this youtube user and random reddit ranter
so is notion overrated or is it worth it well first off notion is free so at least in my opinion
anything that's free is already not overrated because if you just don't like it then you
don't have to use it and you can get rid of it without losing anything which i think is great i
also like the fact that you can switch from using it on your laptop as a website which is where i
usually type in everything and also on your phone or on your tablet if you use one i think the fact
that you can switch around with them is super convenient however i did initially avoid notion
when i first heard about it it did seem a bit overwhelming but i did clearly eventually try
it out around two years ago and it was a lot easier to use than it seems at first glance
so yes it will probably take some time around a week to figure out the basics but i do think that
the platform is overall really user friendly and i personally overall recommend using templates
i used a bunch for my initial setup and for my current one honeysuckle cottage since they just
save a lot of time because somebody else already set everything up for you but yeah so overall i do
think it's really worth it since you can organize all class related things life related things
in just one place and you can also link things which is really convenient at least for me because
you can't do that in a traditional planner or bullet journal and also a lot of you have been
asking about the template for the honeysuckle cottage and everything inside of it so that
is also linked in my description box with the essay template that i was showing you guys too
so trend number three is a hot topic we're gonna be spilling the tea today
on pretty versus normal notes i think this comment actually summarized it perfectly
so some people say that pretty notes are a complete waste of time while others say
that aesthetic notes help them with memorization and learning
and the truth is both are right to a certain extent because it does 100 per depend
on the person can pretty note-taking be a waste of time absolutely especially if on top of that the
aesthetics stress you out to the point that you can't concentrate on actually learning what you're
writing down is it a waste of time for someone like me who's not really perfectionist about that
absolutely not because i treat it just as a form of hobby and something i do during study
breaks instead of going on my phone or social media rather than something that stresses me
out and that i have to make perfect so there are many studies that show that calligraphy
lettering doodling have calming effects and are great hobbies so making cute titles during
study breaks or drawing in diagrams is not a waste of time since you would anyways either
be you know watching youtube or be on tick tock and at least for me i think it makes studying
a lot more fun and visual i've had situations where i would even be doing an exam and clearly
remember something based on what i drew around it so i wouldn't recommend doing fancy titles during
actual study sessions so when you're supposed to be studying i highly recommend just doing it
during breaks also keep in mind that when you see someone who already has good handwriting and is
practiced at making nice titles they're probably a lot faster than you would be as a beginner
if you want to improve your handwriting or learn to make fancy titles i definitely recommend
starting with simple ones and doing it during your free time like in a diary to get used to it
not while studying also i don't personally make fancy notes if i'm physically sitting in class
or at a lecture i can't pause normally i would then just type in my laptop the lecture notes
since that's faster or write things down super fast in chicken scratch so power to both the
people who don't care about pretty notes and power to the people who do like pretty notes
ultimately as long as you get the grades you want and you're happy with it that's all that matters
so a similar trend is having lots of stationary slash acute workspace
cough calling myself out so my stance on this is essentially the same as the previous one so
i would compare stationery collections to people with book collections are they using literally
every single item when taking notes probably not is a person reading every book on their bookshelf
simultaneously also probably not both can be considered a waste or a collection and again i
think it's 100 up to the person to decide what works for them for me i spend most of my time
sitting on my desk either studying or editing so i love having a clean and organized space that's
decorated in my style because it makes the process of working and setting more enjoyable
marie kondo's book actually talks about the joy in having a space that feels clean and like your own
would i still be doing work if my room didn't look like this yes i would be and in the case
of stationery i started asking my family for only stationery for all my birthdays and christmases
in early high school so some of the items you see on my desk are literally over eight years
old old stationery that doesn't work anymore and i basically just never threw away any of my old
stationery because i'm giving them second lives as decorations on my desk but at least to me studying
and people who like stationery can somewhat overlap honestly even if i wasn't studying i
would still love stationery and even if i had zero stationery i would still love studying so they may
seem to overlap but they're quite separate i think it's totally fine to have it either
way you can have almost none and you can have a bunch as long as you choose what's best for you
a more recent study tube trend is using ipads or specifically ipad pros
for studying and digital note-taking ipads have become a popular note-taking device with apps like
good notes or notability due to their ability to have both handwritten notes and textbooks
or documents that you can annotate they're also much lighter and more convenient to fit into your
backpack than a bunch of notebooks and you can save lots of paper or stationery over the course
of many years if you just use your ipad some complaints though are they are very expensive
they tire your eyes out since you're looking at a screen all the time the experience isn't the same
as writing with a pen on paper you can't avoid paper handouts anyways so might as well have a
physical notebook and additional costs like accessories for the ipad so is digital ipad
note-taking overrated well one i would say it's overrated for anybody under 18 or who's not yet
in college an exception being for digital artists or designers or youtubers who need it for editing
i wouldn't have been able to use the ipad in any of my middle school or high school classes since
digital devices weren't allowed plus i always got tons of physical handouts so i was only really
able to use it starting college i do think the ipad pro specifically is overrated for students
since the ipad air or regular ipad versions that work with an apple pencil are basically
just as good the only reason i personally ended up choosing an ipad pro specifically
is because i knew i needed it for heavy editing of 4k videos up to three plus hours long
overall i would only get it if you have tons of classes tend to have virtual textbooks that you
can annotate directly on you're already a solid student and you just want to get more efficient
and you genuinely have the money to get it and it's not completely out of your or your parents
budgets like i said before the ipad won't make you get straight a's on its own and if
it's way out of your budget right now i would first spend any extra money on tutoring for
your week areas or other helpful resources that could actually impact your learning and grades
you guys asked about paper like so i personally really like it and i basically use i would say
around one pack so around two screen protectors per year and the main complaints i've heard about
it are the worst screen quality and the potential damage to the pencil tip i don't know if i just
got lucky but i've only switched my pencil tip once and i haven't really had any issues with
it completely going down to the nib i think it's because i probably don't write as much as maybe
somebody who has like seven classes a semester only writing on the ipad and i'm not an artist
and i don't think i press down that hard with the screen quality difference i personally haven't
really noticed it being too grainy and i do edit my videos and i would say they look identical to
what is on my computer versus what's in my ipad so so maybe overrated if you're an artist and
you really have a problem with this tip or with the screen not being a hundred percent
accurate as it would be if you didn't have a protector or you had a glass protector
but in my case i honestly i really like it and i don't really have those problems so i wouldn't
use good notes for typing since the experience isn't the best i personally prefer notion or the
free notes app when typing my notes on my laptop otherwise i don't think goodnotes is overrated for
the price since they do have a ton of options and now the goodness community however i think it's
overrated from the standpoint of the feeling like there's no other good note-taking apps out there
as an alternative there are great free alternatives like call and note that perform
really well in their own right so it's definitely not like the only app you could possibly use
do
what is your personal gut reaction the rational is a more methodical
approach to analyzing images such as taking into account the time period
okay