Motivating myself - my GYG blog :)

Finally decided to get involved with one of these! As of present, our good old friends procrastination and instant gratification keep getting in my way of motivating myself to study and building discipline, so I think starting one of these blogs might help me to stay accountable

I study psychology, history and English literature at Alevel currently and I'm predicted A*AB, but I really struggle with getting myself to revise and enjoy it (except for psychology, I always gravitate to psychology and neglect the other two... whoops). I'm hoping to study psychology at university next year!

Outside of school, I enjoy reading, listening to music, going for walks, doing yoga and baking.

In terms of keeping on top of this, I'm going to make sure I update this at least weekly so I can give you a bit of an overview of what my week has been like for motivation and where I'm at with revision so posting on here doesn't become a new procrastination outlet!!

Anyway, that's it from me for my first post, I hope you're all having a lovely day

Good evening!

I've decided Mondays might be a good day for me to update this blog (you know, start of a new week and everything) so here's my first official entry!

I'm currently on half term so I have a lot more time to get some work done this week. Here are my goals for the week:

- Get most of my sources analysis done for my history NEA
- Revise for my test on year 2 research methods next week
- Edit some of my English literature NEA (not imperative as it isn't due until December but still, I want to hit into it early as I have quite a lot of feedback to act on)
- Do 10 minutes of revision on one topic from my year 12 content in psychology each day
- Make some flashcards for chapter 13 of my international relations textbook
- Make some flashcards for one of my topics on Henry VIII
- Make some flashcards for my "love through the ages" texts for English literature

This might seem like quite a lot but I think I'll have the time to at least get cracking on some of this stuff as well as enjoying myself and chilling out a bit

I'm also hoping to set up a notion account over the half term as I see everyone else using it and I want to see if it would be beneficial for me too, but if I don't get around to this it's not the end of the world.

I hope you all have a great week and I'll report back to you next Monday on what I managed to get done!!

heya i also do psychology (AQA) and you have such good predicted grades! well done ! i have a gyg forum and if you want to keep in touch, you can just shoot me a pm - id love to know your revision methods for psych <3!

my gyg forum - https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=7404622

*and ive just watched the thread x

Heya! Thank you so much for your support and your blog looks great, I can't wait to see what you get up to! Your predicted grades are amazing too xx

I thought I'd reply about the revision methods for psychology on here as I thought it might be useful to put out there for everyone! I also do AQA <3

I tend to make flashcards on the content for each section of psychology (I think that's a pretty obvious revision method), but I only really got the hang of how I can actually put the flashcards I made into practice this year :O Essentially, what I do (which I kind of talked about in my second post on here) is I plan out for each day of the week that I will do 10 minutes of going over my flashcards for one particular topic (so for example, today I have planned to do attachment, yesterday I did psychopathology and so on) as that's quite a manageable amount of time to fit into my day and it will help you to keep that content fresh in your mind! As I get nearer to an exam (or possibly even the day before if it's like a mini test or something) I will look up the past papers on the AQA website and pick out some exam questions to do (and don't do what I used to do and just pick the easy ones to do - if you look at one and think omg I think I'd freak out if I got that question in an exam, PICK THAT ONE TO DO!! Trust me, I got burned with that once lmao, it was a 16 marker I avoided because I didn't like the look of it and of course it came up in my mock!!) Talking of 16 markers, I would recommend practicing writing out 16 markers across the year so you can get the hang of timings and structure and stuff, but then on the night before an exam or something I would just plan out a load of 16 markers and not write them up

That's kind of hard core revision, but if you're looking for something a bit softer to do I would recommend watching youtube videos, there are loads of channels out there which do really helpful little revision videos! Some I would recommend are psychboost (who are very good if you haven't really learned any research or evaluation for a particular topic as they always go through that), primrose kitten (I'm not 100% sure if that's her exact name but I remember using her for GCSE science and she was a godsend, I've seen that she does like 13 hour long walkthroughs of whole psychology papers which is a bit hardcore but I'm sure she probably has some shorter videos too) and one which my teacher recommended which is profpsych (he does lots of videos on research methods which are very helpful!!)

If there's anything you want to ask specifically about or anything feel free to ask away!!

thanks for the advice, especially about the flashcards! i will definitely try that out x! what options do you do?

I do relationships, aggression and stress what about you? x

I do relationships, aggression and stress what about you? x

great - lets help each other out then! or more like you helping me ! this is so coincidental!

What topics have you done so far across your course?

social influence, memory, attachment, psychopathology, approaches, biopsych, year 12 research methods, issues + debates. currently doing stress & aggression so relationships is left

Oh wow so you've done quite a lot then! I did social influence, memory, attachment, psychopathology, research methods 1, approaches and relationships last year and I've just finished research methods 2, I'm currently doing aggression and about to start biopsych so I have stress and issues and debates left!

HAPPY MONDAY ALL!! I hope everyone is having a lovely day

FLASHBACK TO LAST WEEK (flashback to when you met me, your buzz cut and my hair bleached... Taylor Swift iykyk):
I had a really productive week last week and I did also manage to get in a lot of well deserved chill out time! In terms of my goals which I set for myself, I managed to do pretty much everything on there (and anything I didn't finish I at least started) - okay maybe I shunned my history NEA sources analysis a bit but I CAN'T BE PERFECT I did hit into pretty much everything else though and I'm very proud of myself!! I also did get around to making a notion account and MY LORD I AM OBSESSED. WHY DID I NOT FIND IT SOONER???

ON TODAY'S EPISODE (I don't know why I'm pulling out all the cringe today, must be the back to school brain making me go crazy):
I'M BACK AT SCHOOL BABY, AND WELCOME TO POSSIBLY ONE OF THE MOST STRESSFUL BUT EXCITING WEEKS OF MY LIFE SO FAR - yes, you guessed it (you probably didn't) IT'S UCAS APPLICATION WEEK!! My school's official deadline isn't for another week, but as psychology is quite a competitive course, I want to get my application in asap so I have more chance Only thing I've got left to do is do a final edit of my personal statement and then I'm all ready to go - I'm hoping to send off my application tomorrow (eek). So yeah, very exciting, but VERY NERVE RACKING (I am currently defying the laws of reciprocal inhibition, once again, psych buddies iykyk).

Anyway, here's my goals/deadlines for this week:
- Research Methods 2 revision for my end of unit test tomorrow
- Finish up UCAS application and send it off
- History sources NEA (this actually needs to be done this week as it is due next Monday)
- Once again, 10 mins year 12 topic revision for psychology each day
- Start making flashcards by theme for quotes from "The Wipers Times" (dry text alert!! if anyone else is doing this text for alevel lit, feel free to leave me a reply telling me how you feel about it lmao)
- Edit some of my English lit NEA
- Make flashcards on this week's content on aggression
- Some form of history flashcard making

A hectic week all in all! I hope you all have a productive and wonderful week in case I don't speak to you before next Monday, but I will likely put out a post either tomorrow or Wednesday to talk about my RM2 test and how I'm feeling about UCAS

Oh and I forgot to mention, my official predicted grades came out today; my predicteds are A*BB- but my UCAS grades are A*AB. As this is a grow your grades blog, I think it's only right that I share what I'm wanting to grow my grades TO - I'm hoping to at least turn that B- in English lit into a solid B and I'd quite like that B in history to become an A, BUT I'M HAPPY EITHER WAY!

Anyway I'll sign of now, wishing all you lovelies the best for this week and I'll chat soon xx

yes i loveeeeee your energy!! what exactly have you set up in notion?

I've currently got a homepage for all my school stuff (so within that I have subpages for the content which is going to be on the mocks for each of my subjects and I've RAG rated everything (apart from history because my history department kinda sucks and won't tell us what to revise until like 1 hour before the exam lmao) and pages for each of the unis I'm applying to and what their course content is, what entry requirements they have etc etc), I've got a page for books I've got on TBR and a page for general cleaningish type stuff (because when I get stressed about something I organise/clean because it makes me feel productive and calms me down even though I should be doing other stuff lol) but yeah... I have great plans for my notion so watch this space honestly when I figure out how to use anything apart from drop down lists I'll be slaying haha. What about you since you said you love notion? xx