Studying
- Why you should take notes by hand — not on a laptop
- 10 things not enough kids know before going to college
- Re-reading is inefficient. Here are 8 tips for studying smarter
- Cal Newport’s TED talk on deep work and why you should quit social media
- If you want to remember something, try drawing it or practicing visual note taking.
- My tips for preparing for essay exams (not to brag, but I’m really, really good at them)
Research and writing
- My writing advice.
- The Journalist’s Resource has a wonderful page–Know Your Research–with tips sheets and explainers about how to understand academic research.
Mental health
- How We Misunderstand Anxiety and Miss Out on Its Benefits
- Hidden Brain podcast where psychologist Alia Crum explains a new mindset about the nature of stress (hint: rather than being debilitating, stress is a sign that you’re doing something hard, something that you care about and is worthwhile and embracing that can make all the difference)
- David Brooks on Making Modern Toughness, he writes “We live in an age when it’s considered sophisticated to be disenchanted. But people who are enchanted are the real tough cookies.”
PODCASTS – I use Stitcher, but there are loads of free platforms for them. Here are my favorites:
IR focused podcasts
Fareed Zakaria GPS (on CNN every Sunday)
Amanpour (also on CNN)
The World Next Week (Council on Foreign Relations)
The President’s Inbox (CFR) explores a fororeign policy challenge facing the US
Politics, etc.
The Daily, New York Times (deep dive into an important news story)
FiveThirtyEight Politics (nerd out on polling and statistics)
New Books in Political Science (more needing out)
The Axe Files (long form interviews)
The Ezra Klein Show (deep conversations about politics and democracy)
Sway, Kara Swisher and power and tech
Hidden Brain (love, and so much is relevant to politics, IR, business and communication, not to mention your personal life)
US IR Publications
Foreign Affairs (as evidenced by the reading I assign, I read this obsessively)
Spanish IR publications
Also, don’t forget about Spain’s fabulous network of Casas, they have a wealth of resources for anyone studying IR–not to mention lots of interesting free events and expositions.
Useful apps
Evernote you can store notes, photos, audio and even draw–the uses are infinite–and you can save them in notebooks and also use tags.
Pocket for saving articles and webpages with tags so you can find them again.
Researcher is fantastic way to find current academic research about the topics you are interested in.
Stitcher for podcasts
Have a rec I should include? Email me at alana@alanamoceri.com