Turn Your Smartphone Into Your Study Buddy With These 5 Apps
Do you find yourself staring at the apps on your smartphone more often than you stare into your study buddy’s eyes? Did you just chuckle because you don’t even have a study buddy?
Allow me to endeavor in a cyber psychic reading:
Paper due dates are fast approaching, your physical copy of the syllabus is already missing, and the current semester is starting to turn into last semester. As spring term settles in, you begin to accept that you’re not just back at school, but also back at your old habits of putting things off for the last minute. Does this routine sound familiar?
Fear not, fellow procrastinator, I have assembled a team of apps set to help students tackle the wandering ways of their minds. The following five apps will help you set and reach practical study goals.
1. Pomodoro Watch: Focus Timer & Time Manager for Work & Study
Creating a rhythm for studying can be difficult, especially when we end up web-browsing for an hour and binge-watching sitcoms for two hours on a night we intended to fill with three hours of studying. For those with minds that wander and pens that idle, there is a study technique that rewards all work with some play.
The life-saving Pomodoro Technique is simple: focus your attention on one task for 25 minutes, rest for five minutes, repeat. After four focus cycles, you reward yourself with a 15-minute rest. Premeditated windows of distraction give you something to look forward to and to work towards, making intense focus periods more bearable. Pomodoro Watch helps you keep track of customizable intervals, keeping you in control of setting your goals by featuring a way to program and track your progress. Using Pomodoro Watch is as easy as it sounds — just remember to focus, rest, repeat.
2. Spotify
Okay, so maybe this one sounds a little obvious, but there’s a chance you might not be using Spotify to its fullest potential when you use it to play Drake’s latest single on repeat. For those who may not be up to speed on music streaming, Spotify is an app that allows you to play music without storing it on your phone, with the only other requirement being a strong wifi or data connection.
Many wireless carriers even allow customers to stream Spotify without draining data. When you tire of listening to Rihanna’s ex-boyfriend’s lamentations, musical musing is just a search away. Scrolling down the “Browse” page, users find a selection of “Chill” playlists alongside a “Focus” collection. Ranging from “Study Vibes” to “A Soft Jazz Backdrop,” Spotify streams music to meet everyone’s concentration needs.
3. My Study Life
As it turns out, Mark Twain did not say ”the secret of getting ahead is getting started,” but that does not make getting started any less important. The reason most of us find ourselves falling behind on a proposed routine is never starting at all. My Study Life provides the organization we need through a user-friendly interface that feels familiar to anyone acquainted with Google Drive.
Through color-coded tabs, MSL helps you keep track of everything you need to remember. Sitting down with your collection of syllabi at the beginning of the semester to plug in the times during which you have class, the dates on which your assignments are due, and even your classroom location, all it takes to get the wheels turning on your own personal academic planner is filling in the blanks. Your smartphone becomes your personal assistant when you begin to use My Study Life.
4. Tiny PDF
When e-readers first came out, I opposed them as much as the next self-proclaimed bookworm, but since we can agree that Netflix is not killing cinema, I’m sure we can agree e-readers are not the end of books. E-books are, however, much cheaper than tangible textbooks and some required readings are even public domain.
Tiny PDF gives smartphones the notable advantage that books have over e-books: highlightability. Allowing users to not only highlight, but also draw, and annotate required reading files, the future of note taking is this app. With Tiny PDF, note taking becomes a second nature as Snapchatting.
5. Quizlet
“If there’s material you have to know, I’m the app you’ve gotta have; I’m Quizlet.” While that’s not exactly what Dora the Explorer’s anthropomorphic map sang, we can imagine it’s what he would’ve sung were he a study-buddy app. Everyone’s read those memes about praising heaven when they Google search a question and a Quizlet with the answers comes up but some of us are the students behind the Quizlet, and more of us should be!
With interactive arcade games, fill-in-the-blank quizzes, and flashcards, this app is the perfect aid for studying material you need to learn. Testing yourself, studying through games, and hearing your phone pronounce things out loud, Quizlet doubles as a study buddy and a tutor.
If you have any apps you’d like to share, my GPA and my readers would thank you so please feel free to comment some below!