It is time to get on your academic grind because in this video I will be sharing with you all my best secrets and tips to becoming an academic weapon and succeeding in every class you take. Hello and welcome back to my channel. As someone who has a 4.6 GPA, a 1580 on the SAT, perfect scores on all the AP exams I took, and is a US National Chemistry Olympiad finalist.
I have discovered some amazing study methods and tips throughout the years and I'm about to share all of them with you. However, this video just can't possibly be enough for me to include everything, so if you want the ultimate guide to becoming an academic weapon, I created a study guide with over 55 pages of helpful information that took me hundreds of hours and several months to put together. In this guide, I will share with you 10 of the most helpful tips that I've learned over the years. So let's get started.
helpful study methods and tips that I used and tips to ace every single test, study secrets for every possible subject out there, productivity tips, mindset and motivation and just so much more. So if you would like this study guide it is available in the top link in the description box below in my Beacons AI page. I'll also put the link right here.
It will be at the very top and you can scroll through the images to see the table of contents and some sample pages. It is everything that you need to know and I mean truly everything. Everything that helped me succeed in school is there in the most detailed but also easy and simple to understand format as possible. If you are a student or anyone trying to learn something, trust me, it will be useful. But without further ado, let's get into this video.
Okay, first, what is stopping you from becoming an academic weapon? I am going to point out three of the most common problems that are hindering your studies. Number one is productivity.
You are not being productive enough and you are simply wasting your precious time away, which is why you are failing your classes. Okay so how are you wasting time? It could be scrolling through social media, hanging out with friends, and even studying. Yes you heard me right, studying. If you are studying the wrong way, you are simply wasting time.
Which is why I'll be going over the best study methods later on in this video. Or other people may be wasting your time. For example, if someone bothers you on tasks that aren't your responsibility or if they share their life stories with you for hours straight, yes you are wasting your time.
Okay so the first thing you must do is to stop wasting time. Value your time. A tip is to put a price tag on your time and I would recommend putting an extremely and kind of unreasonably high price tag on your time at first.
For example, you can do like a thousand dollars per hour or even ten thousand dollars per hour. This way it would even hurt you to waste even a minute. Instead of thinking of time as time, think of it as money.
If you are wasting an hour scrolling on TikTok, you are wasting $10,000. But even if you just choose to think of time as time, why are you wasting the thing that is most precious to you? Start studying smarter, not harder.
Stop scrolling through your phone mindlessly and remembering nothing after you finish. You are wasting your life away. The next problem that is preventing you from becoming an academic weapon is thinking that you don't have enough time. But in reality, you have enough time to do anything you want. It is only a matter of whether you prioritize it or not.
And let me tell you, you should very well prioritize your studies. Studying is so important to build good habits early on like discipline, an open mind, and so much more. And they can very well be the foundation for your future.
So stop saying that you don't have enough time to study and quit going on your phone, binging TV shows, or even just wake up half an hour earlier to study. You will find the time to do anything that you set your mind to. Okay, the next problem that can be standing in your way is laziness.
You simply just don't want to study. You tell yourself that you are tired after school and you lay around on your bed for the rest of the afternoon. If that is the case, I will have a section on mindset and motivation later on in this video that will likely help you.
But it is only up to you to get over this laziness. Good study habits are so important to build early on. They will carry on into your job, in the workforce, and in so many other aspects of life.
Learning to study well isn't only just going to help you in school, but also throughout life. And I'm sorry, but who are you to be lazy about learning? There are people in the world begging for the opportunity to go to school, to be doing homework, to learn new things. And you are giving up this opportunity because you're tired? Sure, that may be a valid excuse, but are you actually tired, or are you simply lazy and finding excuses for yourself?
This leads me to my third reason which is lying to yourself. You are lying to yourself and saying that you understand the content when in fact you do not. You think you learn what the teacher taught you but when the test comes around you don't know how to solve even a single problem.
That is the first and most common way of lying to yourself. Or another way is you pretend to work hard. You say that you're going out to go study for your friends but in reality you're spending more than half the time gossiping. You tell yourself that you're going to study everything in this unit the night before the exam because that is the most productive, but in reality you do not and you end up getting more stressed and failing the exam. You are your worst enemy, so stop lying to yourself.
Although it may be much harder to actually ask the questions and learn the content instead of just tricking yourself into believing that you already know it, trust me it will be worth it. So if you have overcome those three struggles, now it is time to study. But you will only be wasting time if you study the wrong way, which is studying hard instead of studying smart. So here are the best study methods you should be using to learn the right way.
Number one is active recall. This is an overall study mindset, but it has so many uses that have helped me in all of the classes that I have taken. There are some specific ways that I personally use active recall.
and I will share them with you but first what is active recall? It is basically when you test yourself the information and force yourself to draw the information from memory. This is different from reading through the textbook or reading through your notes hoping that they will stick.
Instead you try to remember your notes from memory or test yourself with practice problems. The most helpful way of using active recall for me was creating my own study guides so let me show you what I mean. Okay so here is my handwritten study guide that I made for AP Stats. It is five pages and as you can see every single page is handwritten with formulas, graphs, facts, and information that I need to remember. And this is not just for STEM classes, I also did this for AP Gov, AP US History, and so much more.
I like to make them pretty and color coordinated because that just makes me more motivated and I include vocabulary, transformation graphs like these, and so much more. This is so helpful when studying because you have to learn how to be concise and find the most important information that is certain to show up and that you must remember and then you write those down. Like for example what everyone knows about stats is SOCS.
Shape, outlier, center, and spread. Here I have shape, left, right skewed, symmetric, normal, uniform, and etc. And I just wrote them as simple words so that they're easy to look at and once I look at it I know that I will remember.
Okay so this is helpful in two ways because first you get to use active recall and test your knowledge when you are first creating this study guide. Then during tests and finals you have all the information you need in one place so you don't have to go back and dig through your textbook or your notes to try and find all the important information that you need to memorize. And if you want this study guide for AP Stats and many more for other subjects, like AP Physics, APUSH, AP Computer Science, etc. You can also find them on my Beacons AI page next to my study guide.
Okay, another very helpful way to use active recall is to use flashcards. I think this is the best only for memorization. For example, if you need to memorize the periodic table for chemistry or new vocabulary for a foreign language, flashcards are the best. And the trick in using flashcards is that you have to make them on your own.
I like to hand write my flashcards because they help you memorize while you write them, but Quizlet is also a very great and convenient tool. And finally is to teach the content to someone else. Teaching the content ensures that you have a complete understanding of the material and the concepts because in order to teach it and explain it you have to be able to know everything inside and out.
I don't like to waste and use up someone else's time so instead I like to pretend that I'm teaching myself and lecture myself the content. I would pretend that I'm giving a lesson to myself and review the content out loud. For history, I would even write out stories from memory as a way to study and review the content. Okay, the next study method is to ask questions.
It is not embarrassing to ask questions. You must ask questions if you want to learn. If there is something that you don't understand, ask. Ask the teacher, ask your classmates, ask the internet. You will hinder your learning so much if you never ask.
and just either assume that it won't show up on tests or never bother to figure it out. For most subjects, the knowledge actually builds on top of each other, so you have to figure out previous units if you want to succeed in the future. Also, you should ask questions because other students are likely to have similar questions too, so you are helping yourself and others when you choose to ask the question.
Okay, the next study method and one of my favorites is to do practice exams. This was the most helpful to me when I was doing APs, the SAT, the US National Chemistry Olympiad exam, and so much more. Practice exams is where you learn how to manage your time, also where you learn the test writer's way of thinking, and where you learn the question format.
If you never do practice exams, you are basically walking into the test blind. Get used to the test format so you know what you are expecting. Also practice exams is where you get a feel of how much time you have, so you won't be rushing in the early questions and having too much time or also rushing in the end and not having enough time. Do as many practice exams as you can. For the SAT, I know there are a lot on Khan Academy which is what I used.
For AP exams, they have past FRQ questions on College Board and you can also get practice books like Princeton Review or Barron and of course there are also lots of free materials online for you to use. So on the topic of exams, let's move on to test taking tricks. Not to brag, but I am a test-taking pro.
I scored in like the mid-1500s on all my SAT practice exams, and in my first try for the actual exam, I got a 1580. Without much studying, I somehow made it to the finals national round of the U.S. National Chemistry Olympiad exam in one try. Whether it was the SAT, AP exams, or school finals, I always performed better on the actual exam than in my practice and mock exams. So why?
Because I am a test taker and I know exactly what it takes to perform well on exams even when you are stressed or not fully prepared. So how do you do it? First, know what will show up on the exam and more importantly what won't.
Not everything will show up on the exam. You have to focus on what the teacher emphasizes and what they don't to know what will show up on exams. Also make sure you use the internet to help you figure out what will show up on standardized exams like APs and the SAT. The first step to doing well on exams is to know what you are facing and to focus your studying.
You don't want to study for things that won't show up on the exam, but you also don't want to miss studying for things that will end up showing up. Everything you need to know is available for you and you just have to know how to look for it. I have more specifics in figuring out exactly what will and won't be tested in my study guide in chapter 6 on how to ace every single test. Okay, the next test-taking strategy is how to guess effectively. Guessing takes some strategy.
So first, let's look at the last resort. If you really have no idea and don't know what to choose, then pick a letter of the day before the test and stick to it. Don't guess randomly and pick a new letter for every question that you don't know.
It is so much more likely to get the right answer if, for example, let's say you pick A as the letter of your day. Then for every question you don't know, you stick to A and consistently pick A. However, even if you have the slightest idea on the question, you should not guess blindly.
So first, use the process of elimination. What answer is definitely wrong? Eliminate that and then pick from the rest. Also if you have multiple choice and the answers are something like yes, yes, yes, no with explanations after, you can immediately eliminate the no because that is usually wrong.
And this is the same for math problems. If you have several answer choices and one of them is an outlier, then you can usually eliminate that one. Try to always avoid blindly guessing if you can, but if you must, be smart about it. Okay, so now it's the night before the big exam.
What should you do? First is to get a good night's rest. Do not underestimate the importance of sleep.
Sleep is so important and I do not mean just getting enough hours. I also mean sleeping early and waking up early. Your brain needs time to repair and the best time to do that is early in the night to midnight.
So go to sleep early even if that means waking up a little earlier to study some more. You need good rest to stay alert and awake during the exam. And you likely won't retain any more information that you don't already know the night before the exam, so put away the study material and sleep well.
Next is to review. But not just any review. Stop trying to do practice problems and remember nitty-gritty facts.
Instead, you should review the big picture. Get big ideas and memorize important facts. Right now is not the time to jumble your brain, so study important ideas, watch recap videos on YouTube, look through your study guide, and then get some rest. Now it's a few hours before your exam and you need to eat a breakfast or lunch. So what should you eat?
And this may not seem important to you but trust me it makes a difference. Don't eat too much sugar or carbs because that will make you feel sluggish and tired during the exam. I never like to eat too much before a test.
I like to eat something light and maybe some protein. Also make sure that you drink some water but not too much so you're not thirsty during the exam but you also don't want to use the restroom. Okay and finally let's finish off this video with what may be the most important which is mindset. Your thoughts and mentality determine your success so here are some important mindset shifts that you should make.
First is to believe that you can be an academic weapon. You can be anything that you want. If you keep thinking that you're dumb and you just can't learn it, guess what?
It's gonna be true. Stop using yourself as an excuse and start believing in yourself. You must believe that you are an academic weapon and that you can learn anything that you set your mind to.
Not only will this also make you more motivated to actually figure it out, but with time you will actually believe yourself and it will become true. When you create this new identity for yourself, you will also start to take actions that align with this identity, so you will feel more motivated to study and also study more productively. And this leads me to the importance of motivation.
You might need motivation to get started and keep going from time to time, so save this video and watch this part for when you don't feel like studying. Because now is the best time to learn. You are young and your brain is at the most powerful it will ever be in your life.
Later on, if you want to learn something new, it will likely be a lot harder than trying to learn it now. And your grades do matter. I once thought that they don't matter as well.
I thought that my grades don't define me and I don't care about them, but guess what? They do define a part of you. They can show your perseverance, your intelligence, your discipline, your open-mindedness, and so much more. But on the other hand, they can also reflect your laziness, your unwillingness to learn, or your bad time management skills.
But it's never too late to fix that. In the end, no one can motivate you but yourself. No one can change you but yourself.
So frankly, I have no way to inherently motivate you. And just by watching this video to the end, I know that you are motivated and you want change, and I am so proud of you for that. There are so many beautiful possibilities in life, and now is the time to go after them.
So start now. And that is the end of today's video. If you have watched all the way here, comment study guide in the comments down below so I know that you are still here and that you are well on your way to becoming an academic weapon. There are so many more amazing tips and tricks and details that I have but there's just too much for me to put all into this one video and they are all available in the Ultimate Academic Weapons Study Guide in the Beacons AI page linked in the description below.
It literally took me several hundred hours to think of, outline, and put together and I really hope that it will be helpful to you. My goal is to motivate more students to study and also show them that studying does not have to be painful or hard. Instead, it is a beautiful thing that opens so many doors for you and can be so easy and enjoyable. So if that sounds appealing to you, definitely check out my study guide.
And don't forget to subscribe for more videos like this weekly. And also follow me on TikTok and Instagram for more content daily. Thank you so much for watching. I love you so much and I'll see you in the next video.
Bye!