It’s possible that we just did this theme … but with finals coming up, you need every pump-up playlist you can get. If you don’t like RuPaul, this is not the post for you.

Muse - Starlight
RuPaul - Supermodel (You Better Work)
Van Halen - Right Now
RuPaul - Covergirl

We’ll give you 50 gold for each song you can match up with the team member who chose it. (Our participants today are Kyle, Peter, and Emily.) Send an email to contributor@slader.com, or comment here.

Nervous about your upcoming finals? Ignoring your upcoming finals completely? Stay in the loop, and check out the Slader Study Series! Here’s How to Optimize Your Study Space.

Part 4: How to Get in the Zone

Testing is stressful. It’s even worse when a large percentage of your grade depends entirely on the final. And if you’re going to spend a long time studying the material, you definitely don’t want to fall apart actually taking the test.

Though the only thing that can really improve your testing mojo is practice (and who wants to take more tests?), we have some strategies that you can use to get in a good mental space for your most-dreaded final. Read on …

• Find out as much as you can about the test structure ahead of time. Will it be multiple choice? Will there be two essays and several short-answer questions? Is it one, two, or three hours long? The more you know, the less scary the test will be. If you know what types of questions will be on the test, you’ll also know the amount of time you can spend on each question. If you usually need more time to write your essays or work out the longer math problems, budget your time accordingly.
• Stick to your normal routine. Everyone will tell you to get lots of sleep before a test, and they’re right. More importantly, stick to your normal routine. If you eat a big breakfast, eat a big breakfast. Go through the motions that you perform every other day before school. That way, when you get to school, this isn’t OMG THE MOST IMPORTANT DAY OF YOUR LIFE — it’s just a normal school day. No stress.
• Avoid the weirdos cramming in the corner. You know the ones. They’re the students who not only know the years of Henry VII’s reign, but what Henry VII used to have for his afternoon tea. Unless one of your friends is reviewing a concept that you’d like to review too, stay away from frantic reviewers. They’ll put you in a frantic frame of mind.
• Don’t panic. If you get to a question that seems impossible, go on to the next one. When you come back to the impossible question, remember that it’s not impossible at all! Feel free to brainstorm on the page. Write down everything you remember about that type of problem, and then figure out what’s next. Once you panic, you’re going to feel like you don’t remember any of your study sessions, and that’s definitely not the case.

What are your strategies for test day (aka the apocalypse)? Let us know in the comments!

Happy Memorial Day! Take a moment to honor our nation’s fallen soldiers before you head out on your adventures — whether they’re to your friend’s house, your backyard, or the moon.

If you’ll be driving somewhere this year, you’re in luck! We’ve got some great road trip songs for you …

R.E.M. - Lotus
The Eagles - Life in the Fast Lane
Architecture in Helsinki - Heart It Races
Will Smith - Miami

We’ll give you 50 gold for each song you can match up with the team member who chose it. (Our participants today are Kyle, Peter, Scott, and Emily.) Send an email to contributor@slader.com, or comment here.

No party is complete without a danceoff. The undisputed winner: Layla!

Photo credit: Lauren Leto.

Nervous about your upcoming finals? Ignoring your upcoming finals completely? Stay in the loop, and check out the Slader Study Series! Here’s How to Study What Matters.

Part 3: How to Optimize Your Study Space

We know it’s easy to get distracted. Trigonometric functions aren’t that interesting anyway, and wait — is that a cat on the internet?

The only thing worse than not studying is wasting your time pretending to study. That’s why you need an awesome place to set up your study materials, and we’ve got some ideas for how you can reduce distraction and get the most out of your next study session. Read on …

• Get away from your electronics. It’s really easy to get caught up in your Twitter @ replies, start an entire texting conversation with a friend about nothing, or endlessly scroll through your newsfeed. Unless you really need your computer, turn it off - and same with your phone. If you need to write a paper on your computer but can’t resist opening up Facebook, you can try apps like SelfControl for Mac. (Warning: you really CAN’T turn this off.)


• Get away from your friends. Unless you’re in a study group, find a place where no one can come distract you. That includes your parents. (Did you know they won’t bother you as much if you’re doing something productive? It’s revolutionary.) Your study space can be anywhere: your room, the library, outside, anywhere you feel productive.


• Set the music yourself. What helps you get into the groove? Some people study best with music off, others with some background noise. My best study soundtrack is anything that makes me feel like a WIZARD. I mostly stick with the Harry Potter theme.


• Finally, reward yourself every so often. Work on your vocabulary terms for twenty minutes, and then get up to stretch. Eat a granola bar. Eat a box of granola bars. Eat a box of granola bars while doing a headstand. Just find a nice relaxing break activity that works for you. You can even check your phone to make sure that you’re not missing any really important gossip — but make sure to turn it back off when you go back to studying.

How do you make your study space awesome? Tell us in the comments!

SCHOOL’S OUT FOR SUMMER
SCHOOL’S OUT FOREVER … or we wish.

Regardless, we’ve picked some high-powered songs that will get you revved up for the end of the school year.

Wale ft. Lady GaGa - Chillin’
Jenny Wilson - Summertime
Shwayze - Corona and Lime
Long Beach Dub Allstars ft. will.i.am - Sunny Hours
Flight Facilities - Crave You

We’ll give you 50 gold for each song you can match up with the team member who chose it. (Our participants today are Kyle, Dylan, Peter, Scott, and Emily.) Send an email to contributor@slader.com, or comment here.

wheninnewyorkcity:

We love NYC’s public education, but we also love the When in New York City blog. Go check it out!

Before summer, you have to run the Finals Gauntlet: the test of endurance and willpower that proves you worthy of your freedom.

As we all know by now, the amount of time that you spend stressing about finals is comparable to the amount of time that you actually spend studying. It’s tough to know exactly what to study for a class, or if the material that you go over will actually be on the test. But you can drastically improve your grades with a few minor adjustments — and a hefty helping of SLADER. (It’s good for you!)

Check out Part 1: How to Study in Advance.

Part 2: How to Study What Matters

It’s happened to all of us. Your teacher tells your class that parallax problems won’t be on the final … and then the one question that’s worth 15% of your grade is a parallax problem.

Starting to study can be overwhelming, simply because you’ve covered an entire textbook in a year. But don’t let the amount of material stress you out! If you stick to the Slader guidelines, you’ll be able to study what matters for your next final.

1. Break it down. Separate all of your work into two categories: the stuff that’s hard for you, and the stuff that isn’t quite as hard. Then you can go chapter by chapter, spending more time on the Hard Stuff. If your teacher gives out study sheets, look at what’s emphasized on it.
2. Check your old homework and tests. Teachers like to prioritize certain concepts. So if you have your homework or tests from Chapter 8, look at what your teacher thought was most important from that section. What was the last big question on your test from Chapter 5? That’s a concept you definitely need to cover.
3. Do the hard problems from the book. Look at the ones you weren’t assigned, and read over the explanations on Slader. You don’t have to do every one, but it’s likely that you’ll get a similar problem on your final. Just skim the explanations to see how the problems are done. (Once, I got a problem straight from the book that I had practiced before the test. It was awesome.)
4. Ask your teacher. We all know that teachers lie. “No parallax,” they say. But, all joking aside, your teacher can help you understand what will be on the final without giving too much away. Just be earnest and butter them up a little.

Agree? Disagree? Tell us what you think!

Before summer, you have to run the Finals Gauntlet: the test of endurance and willpower that proves you worthy of your freedom.

As we all know by now, the amount of time that you spend stressing about finals is comparable to the amount of time that you actually spend studying. It’s tough to know exactly what to study for a class, or if the material that you go over will actually be on the test. But you can drastically improve your grades with a few minor adjustments — and a hefty helping of SLADER. (It’s good for you!)

Part 1: How to Study in Advance

We know the phrase “study in advance” can strike terror into your heart. If you’re a certified procrastinator, it’s impossible to even think about starting to study early. But you don’t have to make a big commitment! Here are three tricks:

1. Find a 15-minute block of time every day, and set an alarm on your phone. Do you have to wait for your mom/dad/older sister/teammate/chauffeur/sentient DeLorean to come pick you up every day? Do you usually have time right after track practice, or right when you get to school? Decide that you’re going to study for your finals for 15 minutes at 8 PM every day - then do it. Set an alarm on your phone, tell your Twitter friends that you’ll BRB, and actually study for 15 minutes.
   
   
2. Focus on one thing at a time. Look back at your homework assignments and find the problems that you got wrong. Are you really bad with thermodynamics? Do you need extra help with SOHCAHTOA? Go to your textbook, find problems that relate to those, and then work them out. Look at the solutions from your textbook to see how contributors did them. Spend all 15 minutes working on SOHCAHTOA. Or thermo. Or adding numbers together.
   
   
3. Stick to it. Just make one commitment for 15 minutes — that’s only half an episode of How I Met Your Mother — and then make sure you do it every day. You can SOHCAHTOA for fifteen minutes at 8 PM all week. It’s a sneaky way to study. You might not even realize you’re doing it.

What are your best tips and tricks? Leave them below!