Hello! Welcome back to Sigma Nu Zeta Omicron. I hope you all are well

I’m sorry for my delay, but I had a Chemistry exam this Monday so I spent almost all my free time studying. Maybe that’s one of the biggest differences from high school to college for me. When I was in school I used to study only one day before the exam, but I’m very concerned here. What I understood is that, for lecture exams, our grades will be given according to the class average grade. So it does matter the grades that others have. Since I really need a good grade I’m doing all I can to get one of the best grades.

One problem that I have on all exams, in fact in life, is attention. I hardly get an answer wrong because I don’t know how to do it. I often make mistakes because I miss small details like signs or the order of things. I really need to learn to pay attention to everything. I wish they had a class like: “principles of attention: 101”. But for now all I can do is pray that I don’t miss anything.

I’m not stressed about exams only, I’m just concerned about me. Like, I want to show everything I know on the exam, that’s why I get really pissed off when I make an attention mistake. Because I could have proven that I know it. So I’m really trying everything to make sure my body and mind will do well in the exam. For example, I spend my weekend just eating things that I knew wouldn’t give me any problems, I do a lot of exercise and listening to music because if I can get the right answer with an distraction I will certainly get the right answer while being fully concentrated. I also go to bed earlier. Because I am used to sleep 5 to 6 hours a night. But my exam was at 8:30-10:00 p.m, so I needed to be rested for it, otherwise I would fell sleepy in the exam.

One thing that my work helped me with was on the part of memorizing. You see, some things I read and don’t need to read it again so the information stays with me. Is like someone coming to you and saying that the Independence Day is on the Fourth of July, you don’t need to review the information again and again to memorize it. But, when it comes to formulas and things like that, I really need to keep repeating it in my head. For example, I have to memorize Polyatomic atoms formulas, their charges and their names. So I just wrote a card with all of them and put it on the back of my phone, since my cover is transparent. Whenever I had the chance I looked at them until I could say all of them without having to look at the card.

Now, changing subjects completely, one of the things I miss in my daily routine, is to go out on Sunday’s just to hang out. Back in Brazil I used to go out with my girlfriend every Saturday to the movies or shopping. Now it’s harder to do it because everything here is near if you have a car, but it is kind of distant if you have to walk. So I really depend on buses or rides from one of my friends to go out to places like those. I think I can solve this if I explore more of the Iowa city downtown. Still, this doesn’t mean we never go out, we usually do. Next week we intend to go ice skating in Coralville.

Well, I think that’s all I had to say. See you next week!