Fall 2023 was my first semester coming back after being out of school for 16 months (I tried taking CHINA 101 in Fall 2022 but dropped it after a week).

Because of that, I have forgotten how to study. Both midterms and finals went pretty horribly. It’s not even that I don’t care about grades anymore, and I definitely could have done better if I just did the practice exams thoughtfully.

Maybe it’s because I only had two courses which meant that it was hard to care about school, or that there are too many distractions now. Instagram and MonkeyType are definitely the worst offenders, maybe 抖音 and 小红书, too. It surely would’ve been worse if I added Tiktok to the mix.

I think it’s time to bring back first-year studying habits, which was having all my notes in a clipboard and having no distracting apps. Especially with my capstone project, it’s going to be a challenging semester and I gotta lock in.