My Learning Journey

Guest post by Nikki :)

Introduction

Heyyy, I'm Nikhita :) but you can call me Nikki.

I've just finished my 10th grade, and oh my god it has been a ride. There were so many ups and downs along the way, and I've learned a lot; both about myself and otherwise. I've tried out some various mechanisms to assess my learning and productivity and accumulated some materials to help me study and be organized. You may want to note that I've studied from the ICSE (Indian Certifcate of Secondary Education) but this vaguely would apply to any 10th grade/sophomore year curriculum as well.

The idea here wasn't to focus on marks or exams, really, but to focus on learning.

1. The Daily Log

Every day, I'd jot down what I worked on, and how long I worked on it. It helped me be accountable for my work and more importantly to see my progress. What started out as a study log, eventually became a sort of self-reflection or journal in some sense. There were productive days and days where I couldn't being myself to do much. But this was reality, and in a way, this document is a major part of myself: subconsciously, my personality came onto these pages.

• I tracked deadlines for big projects, as I'm pretty bad with them, and having them on the very top of this document helped remind me of it.
• I also added a school tracker, to see what I really understood that day and what I needed to review at home.

Looking back at my logs, I can see how much I've grown and I'm pretty proud of it. :)

2. Preparedness Templates: Spotting Weaknesses, Building Strengths

I used a checklist of action items I needed to complete before my exam so I knew exactly what to do on a given day.

• I also tracked my progress with color-coded labels on various stages of learning both at school and at my own study at home to have an idea of where I was.

This helped understand where exactly I stood and what I needed to do further.

3. Paper Review

As anyone who's ever prepared for a board exam would know, model papers and past papers are a HUGE part of the preparation. This document helped me understand my gaps and how exatcly to fix them.

• For every question I missed or got wrong, I wrote down the problem, the reason I got it wrong, and what I could do next time.
• Some of my mistakes were pertty basic and kind of obvious and some were deeper, but it gave me a good idea of where my weaknesses lied overall.

4. Flash Cards and Notes

Whenever I watched a video or read something I'd take a screenshot and put it into this doc.

These methods helped to get mental models of the concepts, so no need for heavy memorization.

I also used google docs bookmarks to be able to refer to specific parts of the document from anywhere else.

I also made use of Quizlet to memorize formulas and dates. I also digitized some of my notes that I wrote by hand (I've found that writing notes by hand works wonders for me, but digitizing them helped to reference it faster!)

5. Programming

My dad, a programmer himself, never let me write code without a mental view. The first thing we started to was what 'public static void main(string[] args)' was (the main function of a java program) and after that, every thing else then stemmed from there. We had a practical way of going about things. My dad would give me a problem that vaugely simulated a real concept and I'd have to code it.

Example of a Java OOP project using family relationships, social constructs, and a HashMap to manage nicknames and logic for a 'BogeyMan' class. [the so called Bogeyman class was to simulate Garbage Collection in java :)]

My dad also gave me a quick crash course in HTML and CSS. Slides are attached below- they gave me a model of how it worked.

Diagram illustrating the CSS Box Model, showing margin, border, and padding for web layout understanding.

Conclusion

If you're reading this, I hope you'll try out some of these templates and make them your own. Reading them also kind of gives you a look into my own life as a high schooler and the kind of person I am. :) I hope you found some of this useful :)

You can reach out to me here: nikithiruvuru@gmail.com

Summary of Google Docs