Liam Nguyen

Study groups can help explain confusing parts quickly, but solo studying lets you focus deeply without distractions. As someone always juggling shifts, I mix both: group for clarification, alone for mastery. It's practical and saves time.

Switched from paper piles to a tablet with a stylus last year. Organization got way easier because everything lives in one notebook per class with tags and search. I can paste lecture slides, scribble in the margins, and record quick voice notes when I miss a step. Turn off notifications and go full screen, and it actually feels like a notebook. Fun mishap: I left the pen on my car roof and spent an hour hunting it in the parking lot, so keep a spare cheap one. Pros for me were instant search, clean PDFs, backups, and a lighter bag. Cons were distraction, battery anxiety, glare in bright rooms, and a cracked screen that cost too much to fix. Ongoing costs are pen tips, a matte screen protector, and usually a paid notes app. My guardrails now are Do Not Disturb, offline notebooks, a charger in the bag, and a 15 minute weekly cleanup. If you rarely review, the tablet will not magically fix that, so tie it to a tiny habit like a five minute nightly skim.

Spaced repetition. Test yourself, don't reread. Tiny daily sessions beat heroic all-nighters. Think of it as brushing, not whitening strips.

idk, 15 minutes daily of podcasts and shadowing changed everything.