Summary – Top 5 skills all students must have to survive the world

Thinking back when I was studying, nobody had actually told me what to expect and what exactly I’m supposed to do. The truth is, once you started studying at tertiary level, you were expected to be independent and figure this out yourself.

There are actually a lot of skills you must master during your studying. And you will notice how useful these skills are immediately after you finish studying 🙂

Allow me to list the top 5 skills you will need and how to nurture them..

1) Stress Management
The world is cruel out there. People screaming at you all the time, impossible deadline, back-stabbing etc. Believe me the time will come when you are so stressed that you get up and start walking very fast without realizing it. That is the early sign you are under stress.

• Learn to be ignorant. Learn to listen with one ear and let it pass by out of the second ear. Somehow we can do that perfectly in a lecture, why not try it somewhere else? 🙂 Of course this is specifically for stress related talks.

• Find your inner peace. I personally walk or run to calm myself. Find yours.

• Learn to file the stress away. Set another time to worry about it. For example, you heard the news of computers being hacked, just worry about it when you are in front of the computer. Why worry now when you can’t do anything about it.

• Start meditation. Meditation doesn’t have to be a complicated thing. You can actually just do the basic of meditation.

• Apply the Donkey’s Famous Lesson. Read the story here

2) Leadership
Everyone will be a leader in one way or another. Actually for you to be promoted, people will be looking for this quality in you.

• Be a good follower first. Join clubs if you can. There, observe the leader of the club and see how effective he is. Learn from him.

• Be charismatic. Would you like to be led by someone who look like an addict? Behave like a leader. That means well dressed, confident and charming.

• Decide confidently. Practise this, but remember.. the key to good decision is firm, fast and justifiable. Now decide on your choice of dinner for the night.

• Learn to identify strength and weakness. Pick 10 friends of yours at random. Secretly identify what are their strength and weaknesses. Maybe Ali is good with grammar but are to shy to give presentation.

3) Lifelong Learning
If you think all the learning stop with your graduation, think again? It’s a typical wrong assumption made by students. Learning never stop.

• Start with one. Choose one subject that you love the most. It must be something you really love. Go to the library or surf the internet and research everything there is to know about the subject.

• Learn to speed reading. You will learn and focus better with this technique. One method is to scan the articles for points like what I’m doing here.

4) People Skill
Communicating with people may be one of the hardest thing to do. Everyone is unpredictable and to make sure everything is going according to plan requires specific skill when it comes to people.

• Plain talk. When you are on a bus, try to talk to the stranger besides you. But please don’t just talk to only those of opposite gender to you. That would be unfair 🙂 Here’s some tips to avoid being clueless in a conversation

• Plain listen. Once a week, make time to listen to your friends talking. They may be sharing their problem. just listen. You don’t even need to give your suggestion.

• Public speaking. I’ve actually wrote an articles on some personal tips to be better public speaker.

• Haggle / Arguing Skill. For a start, always try to haggle when you buy something. You may not get that price you want, but at least you will get the experience. Not haggling is one of the 5 mistakes we did unknowingly while shopping

5) Self Motivation
The time will come when you are down from failure etc. Who will you call? You can’t expect your parents or lecturers to motivate you. Pick yourself up.

• List down your three motivation keys. Everyone has their own method to get motivated. Maybe a quote or a story. Establish these and remind yourself of them everytime you’re down. My personal key is the quote “Shake it off and take a step up”.

• Bookmark motivational websites. A shameless promotion would be bookmarking LessonInLife.com 🙂

• Achieve mini success everyday. Nothing more motivating that success. So set easy goal to achieve everyday. Once you succeeded, it will give a positive remark on you. Maybe aim to save $200 every month for 3 months. That should be easy.

• Get up from your mini failure. Remember those easy goals you set? If you fail to achieve them, I would call it mini failure. Get up from those failure. Start again if you must. But remember to write down in writing every details about your come back. When you need motivation, you can always refer back to that record.

– I wonder –
Anything else you might want to add?

——- Personal Note ——–
Speaking of finding my inner peace to calm my stress level, I first noticed that I need to walk it off when Filantera (my younger brother) had an accident back in 1990, if I’m not mistaken. I automatically walked around my house again and again while praying for his safety. Alhamdulillah, he’s safe 🙂

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Summary – 3 Size Decreasing Method

I have countlessly stress that learning is the best way to grow. You should be able to learn new thing your entire life. Take the computer for example, the minute you buy one, you will see newer and better product in the market the next hour 🙂

However I must admit, I too have had quite a rough time during my study. I experimented with a lot of methods to make studying as effective as possible.

I think it would be best for me to share a method I created and I can guarantee you that it is one of the most effective method to study. At least one student would agree with me – My previous self

I didn’t actually have a name for this method. But if I have to name it, I will call it 3 Size Decreasing Method.

Step 1: A4 Sized Notes
The same as every method of studying. It revolves around reading notes. First you will have to copy everything there is to know about the subject on your A4 papers. Let’s take blogging for examples

By now you should have 20 A4 papers of everything there is to know about blogging. Bear with me, It starts from planning, name, hosting, free or paid, registration, first post, theme, widget, about page, traffic, network, advertisement, money making, and many other details.

If you can memorize all that, that would be cool. And this method will no longer be needed to help. However, if you can’t remember every details. Try step 2.

Step 2: Half of A4 Sized Notes
Fold your paper into two and tear them into half. You should have 20 half sized A4 paper by now. Great! all you need to do now is to summarize the whole 20 pages into these 20 half page.

The only rule is your handwriting should remain the same size.

You can do however you want, you can categorize the notes, or put it into note form, or just by drawing pictures. It’s all up to you. But no cheating. The objective is to summarize one page of information into half page of information.

The next step is important. Now you must read the entire new notes and with every page you read, try to connect the summary to the original notes on your full sized A4 papers.

Step 3: Quarter of A4 sized Notes
You know the drill. This time summarize all the information from your half sized paper into these new quarter sized papers.

Remember, maintain normal handwriting font size. using the same example – blogging, I would by now have these as my points

• Concept Planning & Goal
• Technical Planning
• Writing Techniques
• Appearance
• Accesories
• Networking Strategies
• SEO
• Traffic Optimization
• Miscellaneous

I guess I just need 1 piece of quarter sized A4 paper.

Conclusion – The overall idea is to connect between summaries and the details. By collapsing the datas into summaries, we can expand them at will. And with some practice, all you will need is just to remember the summary and you can elaborate on the expanded ideas effortlessly

I’m not sure if this method is already being used or published by other people. But I can very well say that this is the best method I developed personally and used to study. You are welcomed to try

– I wonder –
You must have special methods to study. Care to share?

——— Personal Note ————
There are a lot of funny methods I see my friends practising. Once when I was in Form 5 (that’s about the age of 17), there was a friend of mine who actually studied at the grave. You see, my school is located very near to this royal grave. And that grave is very well lighted with fans and all.

When I asked, wasn’t he afraid? He said that he was terrified, too terrified that studying is the only way to distract him.

I know there’s a logic somewhere in there 🙂

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I went through my previous post on why students should save money during their study years, and I thought what better entry to complement it if not on how to save money. So this is a compilation of some ideas I have. Feel free to add yours 🙂

1) Know why you need to save money. One reason is described here

2) Understand that being frugal is not cheapskate. Don’t be ashamed to be frugal. You have to do what you need to do.

3) Never spend more than you have. That’s the only way to lose money

4) Be very careful on the day your loan banked in. It is a vicious cycle. You had finished off your loan and you’re living frugally, but when you received that money.. the chances are you will spend it innocently just for the sake of revenge 🙂

5) Befriend frugal minded friends. Friends are the closest we had during studying and usually we will do everything together. If your friends like to hang out at Starbuck, then I predict it will be a long way for you to save. 🙂

6) Avoid debt at all cost. We can never get everything in life, something are never meant for us.

7) Credit card is a no no. The golden rule is if you can’t afford it, you should save another couple of month to buy it.

8] Only buy used text book.

• Make friends with your seniors, maybe they can give it to you for free
• Always check with the seniors that had taken the course. Ask them, “Is the book really that important?”
• Make use of the library. If the text book is not that important, just borrow it from the library

9) Stop for a while when you are at the gadget shop. Seriously, when it comes to gadget, think, rethink and think again. Do you REALLY need it? Hm.. since we are at it, think again at every shop, will you?

10) Shop smart. Shop only when it’s on sale. But of course you must first eye the items to know the price before sale. Some sellers markup their price prior the sale. So it may look like 70% but it is actually only 20%

11) Stop smoking. Just imagine how much you can save if you quit. It’s a hard thing I know. Surf and check tips on how to quit. They may work for you. One friend of mine actually stopped after he had smoked until he puke 🙂

12) Exercise regularly. A healthy body is less expensive to maintain. And I’m not just talking about your studying years. It will be a lifetime reward.

13) Eat healthy & avoid junkfood. Everyone knows that junk food has no value, but we still ate it. It’s time to stop.. especially when we want to save that cents for our future.

14) Keep yourself busy. Play badminton or futsal, or join martial art. When you are busy, you will have less time to wander around the mall and suddenly come back with 12 bags of clothes

15) Live without motorcycle or car. Unless you live very far from the campus, try to avoid having one. It is convenient, true. But if you can walk or cycle to class, why not? You will be healthier definitely.

• Carpool is always an excellent idea

16) Be cheap with handphone usage.

• Downgrade postpaid to prepaid.
• Only call if you really need to.
• Two words – SMS and email

17) Cook / Share a meal. I’ve actually done the experiment. Cooking own meal is always cheaper than buying the meal. And I even cooked and bought the same food for accuracy 🙂

18) Always check for ways to have fun without spending excessively. Instead of going to cybercafe playing online game, maybe you can ask skilled friends to network some computers and play with your friends indoors.

19) Less going out. The more we go out, the more we spend. Period. So maybe instead of going out every weekend to buy several items, combine the whole errand and do one shot once a month

20) Start some business. Maybe you know how to repair computers so put up some advertisement, and just start offering the service. Remember, be very careful choosing the business. We want to make money not lose it 🙂

21) Do part time job on long holiday. Besides earning a bit extra, you will get a lot of working experience such as networking, business etc

Final Action
So after all that you finally have a few dollars saved, what do you do? It will be a terrible thing if you go out and spend it all. The final action you should do is deposit it in the bank. (22)

– I wonder –
Any other tips you think may be useful?

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Summary – Lifelong Learning

The interview was not on the 3rd but it is today 🙂 This is me just after the interview, and by the look of the smiley just now… I think I did great 🙂 (here’s another smiley)

When I was studying, from primary school, to secondary school and then to university, all I want to be is to grow up and finish studying. I am looking forward to work because I want to get over this studying as soon as possible.

This is where I make a fatal mistake.. I assume that I will no longer have to study when I started working.

Actually, when we started to work, the amount of things need to be studied will doubled. This is because we need to have certain knowledge for us to work efficiently. How can you expect a typist to do his work when he always forget the alphabets, right? He needs to remember, and not only that, he need to be able to offer more to compete with other typist, for example, grammar expertise.

And unlike those days, we now need to remember permanently what we study. There’s no more study for exam, and forget it after that. In my field of work, I need to make a lot of decision, and be responsible with it. if I make a wrong decision due to forgetting what has been learned, people might die or seriously hurt. That’s just how important it is.

Today’s post is dedicated to all student reading. And by student, I mean everyone since we all need to continually study our whole life to be better.

Never assume studying will be over once we got that degree or diploma or certificate. It actually just begins. And since we are going to be doing it all our life, why not we start loving to study. 🙂

– I wonder –
Do you have the same kind of thinking during your study years? That it will be over when graduated?

———— Personal Note ————-
It feels so good when you know you did well in something. Teh tarik on the house for everyone reading…. just go to any warung and order your teh tarik, then email me the receipt huhuh 🙂

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