My Fall Semester 2025
I've finally done my action item of starting my first blog and blogging my thoughts, thanks to my lovely girlfriend who is my other brain cell that completes my thought process :). I'm editing this blog post in my hotel room in Austria on my ski trip. Stay tuned on my thoughts and experiences on that in my next blog post.
12/24/2025 Iām actually going to read the class syllabuses and try to optimize what I spend my energy the most on. For example, if group projects have more weight towards my grade, Iām going to prioritize those the most and not as much on the tests lets say.
Secondly, this past semester was VERY theory/concept focused, but oddly enough what helped me really understand the material was practice problems instead of stressing whether I really know the entirety of the theory or reasoning behind it. Prioritizing practice problems actually helped me truly understand the concepts a lot more because I was able to understand the theories once solving the problems.
Asking ChatGPT and turning on the āLearningā feature to first explain the professorsā poorly written slide decks would enable the AI to double check whether I understood what was going on. As I uploaded each slide individually it would test me and ask a short follow up question after explaining the said theory. If that feature got annoying I would just ignore it by simply loading the next slide. Once I went through all the theories from the deck, I would start uploading practice problems. In finance more specifically, I would take the practice problems that the professor gave us, and upload them into GPT and see how it goes through them. Admittedly, I was just writing down how it solved the problem instead of first trying to solve it on my own first. This still helped me actually get more reps by walking through the problems. I should next time just try solving it first on my own, and then have ChatGPT solve. This was crunch time before finals though so I had to do it improper way.
I do plan on actually doing practice problems when the chapters are assigned to us instead of cramming practice problems before Midterms/Finals.
I've noticed watching Youtube videos for certain types of practice problems helps when I canāt solve on my own or even when ChatGPT is being really confusing. This is also the case when a lot of the problem solving is visual. This really helped for my Product Operations Management class as most problems required a certain visual structure to solve that ChatGPT wasn't able to produce.
Iām debating whether I should actually buy the textbooks this semester just for the sake of the practice problems provided there, yet again thereās ChatGPT and I could always just ask it to give me hypothetical problems based on what the syllabus says we will be learning. I could even ask it what theories we will learn before the professor uploads the presentations, as often times I'm waiting for them to upload right before class.
Thoughts about my note taking system so far: I was trying to use the Cornell note taking system, however I sort of gave up. I feel like I take up way too much space, or sometimes not enough at all (for example I end up not writing any important notes). I also think my note taking adapts to the type of professor and their teaching style. I found it helpful for teachers that yap more broad theoretical concepts, or when a teacher emphasizes something we should know (which I still find hard to write down because I focus too much on the specific words they use, not the general thing they are trying to say).
My Side Notes: Now is winter break, and Iāve been just super lazy and doom scrolling on youtube. I really want to be productive but Iām just tired of the super busy semester that I've completed. I donāt even want to do the things that I was waiting to do by the time of finishing the semester. These were my music production videos I planned on watching and the online externship that is still active in which Iām falling behind.
I really need to pace myself and put God first in my heart and trust things will unfold themselves in front of me.
Ah yes. Iāve also actually been working out fairly consistently despite getting super sick for a week. I have found a super passionate college student from one of my classes who wants to be a personal trainer and I had him create a workout program. I also had one in-person one-to-one lesson so far.
Itās really great to have someone do that for you, because while you do have to pay for it, it does help you stay accountable and make sure you stay in the gym consistently. It truly does help to motivate you to push yourself at the gym when you have someone watching you too.