September Sneak Peak

Hello to all of you who are still sticking around! Summer is drawing to a close, and I must say it has been a busy one. I'm back at school for my senior year (although I still can't believe it), and the business continues.

Autumn is my favorite season for many reasons, and I'm anxiously awaiting the days of colored leaves and sweater weather and hot drinks. And as an added bonus, I have several new posts planned that will start going up soon!

BOOKS

As we all know, summer is almost over. And that means it's almost time to start discussing and reviewing the Summer Book Club books! I'll be honest, even I haven't finished all of them since my library doesn't have them all. Regardless, I'll be sure to let you know what I thought of the books I did finish, and if you've read the others, you're perfectly welcome to discuss them in the Book Club forum tab!

LIFESTYLE

For many of us, fall means back to school. To me, that means waking up early, doing homework, and submitting college applications for next year. But thankfully, it also means shopping for new clothes, organization items, and stationary. You can expect to catch a glimpse of the things I've bought (or DIY'ed) to get my room and my backpack organized this year!

BEAUTY

Fall and winter fashion are definitely my favorites, and I'll practically live in a sweater and a pair of boots once the weather gets cold enough! I'm hoping to share with you a few of my favorite outfits that might hopefully help you through the transition into cooler weather. Also, I've been trying some new beauty and skincare products out over the summer, and I'm looking forward to giving you a review of those soon!

MUSIC

At least for me and my hometown, the return of autumn also means the return of marching band. While this certainly keeps me pretty busy with rehearsals, football games, and competitions, it also gives me some fun new things to write about and share with you!

I hope you're as excited about fall as much as I am! What are you looking forward to most? Let me know in comments!

New School Year Resolutions

Hey guys!

Thankfully, school let out for summer holiday a week ago, so I can hopefully have more time to write! I was planning on working on this post a few days ago, but I ended up on a mountain "retreat" with no WiFi or cell signal. Now, I'm not as addicted to my phone as a lot of people my age (as well as younger or older), but I didn't exactly appreciate my phone basically being reduced to an ultra-expensive brick with no warning.

That said, I've finally got a chance to work, and I wanted to share something that I've been thinking about-- rather than making New Year's Resolutions, those of us who are still students (or teachers for that matter) might be better off making New school year resolutions.

I talked a bit about New Year's Resolutions in a post earlier this year (if you haven't read it already or don't remember it, check it out here!) Basically, I was saying how we don't have to change everything to make a new year a good year. That being said, sometimes there are changes we need to make.

In a few months, I'll be heading into my last year of high school. Which is intimidating, for a lot of reasons. One huge reason is that there is really a lot of pressure to make senior year the best year. I wrote a lot about how to succeed in school earlier this year, but I don't think it showed the whole picture for me.While my grades would generally show that whatever I'm doing in school is working, I think that my overall stress level would say that it definitely wasn't working.

I ended up being terribly disorganized-- my desk and my backpack and my room are all a mess-- and procrastinated about everything. You'll know I haven't posted that often, and this is why. Honestly, I kind of procrastinated writing this post, about procrastination.

So with a lot of stress on my back coming out of this past year, and a lot of pressure to make the next year fantastic, I've decided it's time to set some goals.

It would be really easy to write down lofty ideas like "stop procrastinating," "be organized," "stop being late to things," or "get in shape." But one thing I did learn in my extra early Student Leadership class was that your goals have to be SMART.

What are SMART goals? Simply put, they're goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, rewarding, and timely. For example, "stop procrastinating" isn't very specific or measurable, whereas something like "start my homework as soon as I get home" would be a better goal.

If you're a student like me, I would suggest setting goals for this school year. It really makes more sense than setting goals for the calendar year, since for us things really start over in August, not January. And we get the added bonus of a whole summer to work on our goals before we get back to school. If you're not a student, don't feel left out. Goals are always a good way to get things done.

That said, my goals for this school year are:

1. Start my homework as soon as I get home, if at all possible.
2. Clean and organize my backpack and school materials about once a week.
3. Use a good planner and actually keep up with it. 
4. Leave home in time to be at school, meetings, or events a few minutes early, if at all possible.
5. Post once a week, if at all possible.

If you're setting any goals for this school year or just goals in general, let me know in comments! I'll try to keep you all updated on how it's going, if you're interested, so maybe we can help each other stick to it!

If you have any good tips for staying productive and organized, suggestions for planners or organizational materials, or books you'd like to reccommend, feel free to let me know as well!

Guest Post: Bullet Journal

Good morning Shannon, it’s Monday.

First off, thank you for giving me this opportunity to post on your blog. I don’t typically have much to say, but I have plenty to say on this particular topic.

For the rest of you, hi, I’m Jessica, one of Shannon’s really close friends and ideally a future neuroscientist. I usually have a lot on my plate when it comes to school, and like most other people I need to write things down in order to remember everything I have to do. Throughout my school career I’ve tried keeping track of using several different planners and random notebooks, but I’ve found that none of them really worked for me. I’d still find myself forgetting assignments, missing important meetings, and having to go searching through the four notebooks I always have on hand just to find one idea I wrote down earlier that day. Basically, I was a mess.

Then last summer, I discovered the Bullet Journal.

The Bullet Journal is, simply put, a journal full of lists. The original idea was developed by Ryder Carroll as an alternative to normal planners and journals, because it’s a system that the user creates themselves. Think of it as a DIY planner. All you need is a notebook!

Okay, you’re thinking, why is this any different than any other planner?

Well hypothetical questioner, it’s different because you can do literally whatever you want with it. You can go strictly by Ryder’s method (link here), or you can mix it around like many Bullet Journalists on the Internet do. It gives you the ability to use what you want and only what you want, unlike with store-bought planners.

For one thing, Bullet Journals typically have an index and a key at the beginning so you can keep track of what all the bullets and other markings mean as well as where all of your important pages are. It’s also an ever-changing thing; if you decide to tweak something, like add color or a tracker for developing habits, then you can do that at any time you like. There’s no pressure for you to use the same system for a year straight. You can even add extra stuff around your daily planning pages, like random grocery lists or sketches. 

Really, the Bullet Journal is more than just a DIY planner. It’s a companion for the whole year. You’ll carry it around all the time so that you can copy down assignments, cool sayings, book ideas, a new book for your to-read list – the possibilities are endless. And you’ll never have to worry about running out of space.

If you want to know more about the Bullet Journal system, check out Ryder Carrol’s website at http://bulletjournal.com/get-started/, and follow me on Tumblr at http://butterflywingsit.tumblr.com/. I highly recommend it if you’re tired of store-bought planners too. And Shannon, I’ll see you the next time you post.

March Updates

Hey guys!

Sorry I haven't been able to post much this week! I've just been super busy with SGA and prom and my AP classes! But I promise I do have some cool things coming up, so stay tuned!

BOOKS

I know I didn't get a book review written for March, but I'll be writing one really soon. I reviewed Cinder last month, but I enjoyed it so much I went ahead and got the rest of the series to read! I'm currently about halfway through the last book, and so a review on the full Lunar Chronicles will be going up soon! Make sure you've read my last review here!

Also on my to-be-read list is the book version of Disney's 2015 Cinderella film, which if you've been here for very long you will know I'm obsessed with! I got this book for my birthday, and it's adorable. It's written by Brittany Candau, illustrated (yes, illustrated!) by Cory Godbrey, and based on the screenplay by Chris Weitz. As soon as I finish reading it, I'll have a full review up on it as well!

I also got a copy of The Selection by Kiera Cass from by best friend, and I'm looking forward to reading and reviewing that for you guys too! If you've already read it, let me know what you thought of it in comments! (No spoilers please!)

Last but not least, I just picked up a beautiful copy of the Grimm Brother's complete fairy tales at Barnes and Noble the other day, and I can't wait to read that either! I may not review it, or at least not all in one post, but let me know if you're interested!

BEAUTY

I just went to prom this week, and it was a lot of fun! I did get my hair done professionally, but I did my makeup myself. I bought several new products recently, and I'm hoping to review some of those for you soon!

Also, if you're interested, I may go into more detail about my prom makeup look and the products I used specifically for that!

LIFESTYLE

I'm really excited about the guest post I have coming up soon for you! My best friend is hoping to be a future med student, and she's been inspiring to me with her organized journaling and studying methods. So, I've asked her to write a post about it, and honestly it's as much for me as it is for you!
I hope to have that post up soon, mostly because I'm excited to read it!

I've also been trying to convince her to start a blog of her own, but she's worried she doesn't have enough to stay. But really, if any of you have ever thought of starting a blog, don't sell yourself short! I never thought I would have this much to say either, so you really might as well just start writing and see where it goes.

This past month has had my biggest number of page views so far, at over double my previous record! So thank you to everyone who has been reading this blog and helping to grow!

Secrets of a Straight A Student

So part of the reason I didn't post much last week is because I had a bit of a breakdown when some of my teachers put in zeros for work that I had done or hadn't had time to make up yet, which dropped my grades down to a D and an F.

And when you've always been a straight-A student like me, seeing the letter D, or, heaven forbid, the letter F on your grades is downright terrifying. Dreams of perfect grades and a stellar GPA go flying out the window, you wonder how low your class rank will drop, you wonder what all those colleges who have been pestering you will think of you now.

Thankfully, I did all of the work and my teachers put the grades in, and I'm back to A's. But this just goes to show that it can be really stressful trying to maintain all A's in school, and it can be really scary when something you're used to and take pride in suddenly isn't there anymore.

I'm not calling this post a list of study tips, because it's not. If I'm telling the truth, I don't study as much as people might think I do, and I don't study as much as other people may have to. And that's okay.

I also don't slack off all the time. I don't skip class every day, or sleep through every lesson, or never turn in my homework. That said, I may slack off from time to time. I'll text in class sometimes, or read a book, and yes, I have fallen asleep once or twice. I may get my homework done at the very last minute, but hey, I get it done.

Honestly, I think the biggest secret to doing well in school is knowing what works for you.

I know when I need to be in class, I know when I need to pay attention, I know when I need to review the material at home. I know when I need to ask for help. Knowing how you learn best is much more important than following any sort of list of study rules you can find on the internet.

This kind of goes back to my last lifestyle post as well. Just like being healthy means doing what's best for you, so does being a successful student. And the two can really be linked as well. If you're studying so much that you never have time to have fun and you're completely stressed out about school, that's not good for your brain or your grades.

Unfortunately, keeping good grades really can just boil down to doing the work. Which, I know, is super boring. There's a lot of things I would rather do than my homework. Even just right now, I'm writing a blog post instead of doing my homework. But I know that eventually I will get it done. And yes, there's other things to think about like test scores and essays and projects and all of that, but really, just doing your assignments makes a big difference.

Going along with that, you actually have to be able to find your assignments when they're due. Now, I'm not perfectly organized by any means, but if your backpack looks more like a garbage dump than notes and homework, you might want to clean that up a bit. It won't help to do the assignment if you lose it in a black hole before you can turn it in.

The other big part of maintaining good grades is being motivated to make good grades. If you really just don't care if you barely pass, then you're probably going to barely pass. I know that personally, I'm motivated by my success. When I do well at something (e.g., keeping straight A's this far), then I'm a lot more motivated to keep doing well (e.g., keeping straight A's until I graduate).

That said, there's internal motivators like what I just described, and there's external motivators. These may include money for getting good grades, or getting into the college you want, or getting the job you want, etc, etc, etc. Different people may be motivated by different things, and that's okay too.

I wish I could give you some secret tip that would instantly make you a top student, if you're a student at all. I just wish there was a tip that existed that would do that.

So, in summary, here's a few tips for how I keep my grades up in school.

1. Know what works best for you. Know how much you need to study, and what ways you need to study. 
2. Don't stress yourself out. Prolonged stress hurts your performance in school.
3. Do the work. You can't expect to just pull an A out of a hat, you actually have to earn it by completing your assignments. 
4. Stay reasonably organized. You don't want to lose papers before you turn them in.
5. Find what motivates you, and stay motivated to succeed. 

If you're a student (or were), how do you study for school? Do you have any tips for maintaining good grades? Let me know in comments!