A New Year of Learning: Preparations

While summer holidays and traveling can be a very educational experience, the inspiration to write about it is more present during the period the real learning takes place and lessons are being taught. Now things are starting up again, Streamlined Mind gets a little check up (you know, checking her oil level, tire pressure) and now seems ready for a new year of productive learning!

Before we start off, a big thank you to Eric Böhnisch-Volkmann, the President of DEVONtechnologies for linking to my post Would a Paperless Life Make You Happy? on his blog The Balcony. I love their products, DEVONthink in particular! Read more

Will You Follow Your Dreams?

Do you ever sit back and wonder why you are doing what you are doing? Why you are studying what you are studying? If what you are doing right now will bring you where you want to be?

The way our life is organized can lead us in a certain direction without really consciously deciding to go there. Expectations and habits can influence the choices we make in life. Without being aware of the road that brought us here we might find ourself in an unwanted position. Maybe according to what others expect from us, but not according to what makes us feel happy or confident. Read more

A Remote Control For Your Teacher? - The Importance Of Asking Questions

Are you always sure about what your teacher really wants from you? Have you ever been in the situation that you present your work but it appeared you got the assignment wrong? There are a lot of situations in which you’ve been told to do something, but it might not be totally clear to you what the outcome has to be.

There can be various reasons for this unclearity. Maybe you’ve not been paying attention while the assignment was given. Maybe it was explained in a bad way, maybe the teacher assumed you had the knowledge to understand what he or she was talking about but you didn’t. When thinking about assignments and formulating them an educator will get fully into a subject. We might assume that, because he is teaching this subject he will know a lot about it. And the more you know about something the more difficult it is to understand why other people really don’t know what you’re talking about. That’s why it actually is very difficult to teach a seemingly very simple subject to a group of newcomers. Great teachers know this, of course, and know how to formulate their questions. But this is not always the case. Read more

A Simple Tip To Maintain Focus

For many students procrastination is a problem, and there are many reasons why we tend to procrastinate. While having to work on various assignments there will always be tasks you like to do and ones you don’t like so much.

Say you’re studying graphic design. Creating new work will be more fun than writing a review on the process of doing the project. So writing the review will be postponed and you will fully focus on the fun part (the creative process). But then, when the deadline is approaching, there is still this daunting task waiting for you at the end of the project. You will not have enough time to do some quality writing and you might have to do it the night before the presentation, leaving a bad feeling about a project that was so much fun at the beginning. Sounds familiar? Read more