If you know me, you’d know that I am a highly visual person. I love learning from images and layouts, and my spatial intelligence is probably my strongest type of intelligence. Because of this, I often use mind maps to study, and so do a lot of other people. However, there are people who don’t really know how to make and utilize a mind map effectively. That’s what this post is for! Here’s how you can make your mind maps more effective and thus enable you to retain more information. (P.S. you might wanna zoom in)
By no means am I an expert in mind-mapping; these are just some habits I have when making a mind map that successfully does its job of helping me remember the topics I’m studying.
If you have any questions, feel free to drop an ask!
The interior of this house is decorated with words.
It is inhabited by a Syrian refugee. He spent three days writing down hundreds of Dutch phrases and hanging them on the walls, the closets, the refrigerator, his bedroom, and soon the entire interior was coloured with the words.
He gained attention when a police officer visited him and posted these two pictures on Twitter with the following caption:
“This man is working really hard to learn the Dutch language. Respect.“
A lot of people have asked me how I make my mindmaps, the only trouble is I have lots of different styles (especially as I take both English and Maths, which are polar opposite), and I couldn’t explain them all in one post because It’d probably end up looking like a murder scene knowing me, so I’ll start with how I make English (and other essay-based subjects) Mindmaps.
In English it’s important that you link quotes thematically for your exam. The main reasons for this is so that you can A) Recall and remember themes/quotes easily and B) So you actually write about things that are relevant to the paper. It works the same way for History, Geography, Psychology, Sociology etc, but obviously with things such as Events, Case Studies, Time Periods, Key dates, Key terms and so on, instead of just Themes and Quotes. Even in English it’s useful to produce historical mindmaps on literary periods, so hopefully in the future I can post something similar to help out History students a little more.
There are three components to my mindmaps;
The Centre - This is where you outline what the whole thing is going to be about. In my case ‘Prose and Themes’. Other examples may be titles focussing on one;
text
theme
technique
period
case study
quote/piece of evidence
concepts
person(s)
The Offshoots - Here, I have divided up the main themes for my course, i.e. ‘Unrequited Love’ or ‘The Geography of Love’. I like to plan these out before I start my mindmap, so that I know how evenly I am going to space them out, and thus know how much space each section needs be by mentally dividing my page.
I also nearly always start my mindmap in the spot where ‘The Geography of Love’ is placed, and work clockwise around, fitting my text/pictures into all space as I go. This is the best advice I would give in trying to fit in everything you want, as a lot of people will draw out all the arms before they start, and it ends up looking more sparse than you would like. Doing it in this way doesn’t just benefit you in not wasting space, but also makes you finish them, because they look so naff unfinished.
Other things you can put in instead of key themes could be any of the title focusses listed above, it all depends on what you put in your centre, and what you’re choosing to link it to (for example you could have a text in the middle and be linking it to themes, or a theme in the middle and be linking it to texts)
For each one of my offshoots, I like to do a little drawing to help me remember it in the exam and think ‘Ahh, when did I draw that? Oh it was for such and such!’
The Offshoots of the Offshoots - This is the most variable part of the mindmap, and the part that can get most messy, so it’s very helpful to colour code like I’ve done above with my quotes. It’s difficult to explain exactly what to put here, as it is so specific to what you are studying, but you could include some of these things;
quotes/evidence
diagrams
drawings and doodles
themes/concepts/ideas
case studies
key people
graphs/charts (if applicable)
As you can see, I underline within the offshoots, so that I can refine what I need to know down even further, in this case the most important part of the quote to remember in relation to the theme it is linked to.
Within the offshoots, it’s also useful to link between themes to make further connections. I haven’t done that here because I wanted to categorise very definitely and keep it simple, but if you struggle with making links, a simple line between two items can really help you.
I would usually illustrate my mindmap more, most of the time in this way, but because it was very tightly packed, (and it was just quotes) I stuck with a few little drawings.
I hope this helps you guys out! Best of luck with everything! A post on how I do my maths mindmaps with follow soon (she says with hope).
yeah so there’s a neo nazi/white supremacy rally going on in charlottesville where they are literally chanting “blood and soil!!” (an actual nazi saying) and the police are doing absolutely nothing about it. no tear gas, no national guard, no heavy police force,, these TERRORISTS are getting away with spreading hatred towards the marginalized and i am absolutely sickened
spread this like wildfire
Is that an actual picture of the event bc wtf that looks like half the campus
unfortunately yes, here are some more photos from the terrorist rally:
thankfully a lot of the students are against what’s happening on campus, but there’s something very wrong with this photo. the good guys are hiding their faces and the bad guys are not. this world is getting uglier to the point where human decency has to be hidden.
If you want school to start because you miss the structure and learning but dread the inevitable return of anxiety and stress and you’re hyper-aware of this inner conflict clap your hands
