Stephanie Perez

Solid picks. On construction sites a proper phone tether (the tool-rated kind that clips to your belt or vest) is the real game changer and because repeated ladder drops will beat any case eventually. Rinse the case and phone edges weekly so grit doesn’t eat the material from the inside, and stick with thick TPU bumpers over hard clear shells. Expect to swap the case every year under heavy use, and keep a tempered glass on hand as a cheap sacrificial layer.

Also check the offering pattern for sequenced courses (some start only in fall/spring) and map around that so you don’t lose a term. See if your department allows placement tests or credit-by-exam to skip lower-level prereqs and line up tutoring or SI from week one for the toughest classes. If you’re working 15–20 hours, keep the load around 12–13 credits until you stabilize, then use a summer term to make up ground.

Build a quick roadmap backward from the earliest term you can take the key gateway course and verify when each prereq is offered since some rotate fall/spring only. If allowed and knock out a prereq in summer or at an approved community college and transfer it in, and treat your job hours as a fixed constraint - see if you can trim them during exam weeks. To protect your GPA, pair the toughest prereq with lighter requirements and use tutoring and office hours from week one, not after the first exam.

Piggybacking on that try a skinny two-column layout: in the left margin label the structure (goal, assume, lemma, trick, conclude), and in the right column jot the compressed steps but then use a tiny set of meta-symbols to compress even more (def, wlog, ⇒, ⇐, ∴, by lin, by cont, etc.) and a star for deliberate blanks. Then do a 5-minute cleanup right after class to fill the blanks and add a section/page reference so you can reconstruct later.

Love this. One tweak that helps me: use a simple two-column page - right side for the minimal algebra left gutter for structure tags and scope notes - and keep a tiny box at the top listing current assumptions and the goal so you can update it when cases or quantifiers change. Then do a 3–5 minute pass right after class to backfill the tagged gaps while it’s still fresh; that quick review cements the steps and keeps the shorthand usable all semester.

Nice. One more tweak: use a two-column layout - left for the step right for the 2–3 word reason - so the logic stays visible even when you skip algebra. Preload a tiny legend of reused tags (by defn, linearity, IH, Cauchy, MVT, chain rule, wlog, iff) and stick to them all semester. For long computations, mark the landmarks (setup → key substitution → bound → conclude), leave a blank line between them to fill in later, and keep a running index of your common lemmas in the back so your tags point somewhere.

Two quick checks that change the calculus: where this course sits in your sequence and your school’s repeat/grade-replacement policy. A single W is usually better than a C-/D on the transcript and but if repeats fully replace grades at your institution, finishing and retaking later can be acceptable. If it’s a gateway that would cascade delays, line up a summer or approved transfer equivalent now to stay on track. Also run the grade math from the syllabus and ask if pass/no pass, attending another section’s office hours, or department study halls are options.

Dropping that class could be the best decision ever, you'll crush the rest of your courses!

Skim the chapter first to collect the headings and bold terms and then write three questions you must answer. Read one subsection with a pencil, then close the book and blurt the key ideas and definitions on paper from memory. Check the text for gaps and fix your notes in a different color so you can see what was recall versus copy. Do this stop and blurt loop for the whole chapter in small chunks. End each session by making a one page summary from memory, no peeking, then verify and trim. Next day, redo the summary in five minutes and add only what you truly forgot. Two days later, test with a blank sheet and answer your three questions again. If accuracy is under eighty percent, reread only the missed parts and retest. Use the same process on practice problems or end of chapter questions and write out answers cold. This is simple active recall plus spaced repetition, and it works.