How  survive in prepa ?

Caroline's Survival Kit :

 

This is a survival kit to stay alive in prepa :

-Chocolate

-Aspirin

-A book "The depression for dummies"

- Again and again a lot of aspirin

- A 7 liter coffee thermos or a lot of 50 centimes coins for the coffee machine

-A blouse that does not burn -A Matlab book for Dummies (or any other book for Dummies).

 

 

 

 

More seriously,here are a few advices I think helped me succeed, and could help anyone succeed in there :

 

       - Time in prepa would be a pain if we didn't have spare time. This is not only about sleeping well : sports, music, cinema, painting, yoga, cooking, and a balanced diet are also important. Just make sure you have time for yourself. In my opinion, this is the most valuable piece of advice.

 

      - No matter what your personal schedule is, follow it, don't deviate.

 

     - A lot of people think what you learn in prepa is just to succeed in your exams and that you can forget it after. For me, it’s for life, since it helps me understand the world and for my culture. I am not saying that I remember all of it. Nonetheless, you have to have a thirst for knowledge.

 

     - It is important for you to know the areas in which you are better than the others and the areas in which you're lagging behind. Different ways to help you : make real friends in your class, who can help you to work and talk to your teachers because everything they tell you is valuable.

 

     - You won't become a math genius, and neither will you learn, understand and remember 300 pages of a complex physic course. Do things step by step. Just make sure that you're always progressing.

 

    - When you’re at home, rework the exercises you did in class and they will become automatic for you. In an exam situation, you want to be able to do everything that's considered basic rapidly and can be able to focus on what requires reflexion.

 

 

All of that is personal, and worked for me, but I recommend you to adapt it to your own personal situation.

There's no magical recipe to succeed in prepa, you have to find your own way of working.

 

Perez Caroline.


TALKING ABOUT MY NEW LIFE IN BORDEAUX

 

Today, I’m going to talk about my new life in Bordeaux as a student in a high graduate school. My new life style is very different from last year when I was in my high school in Dax.

Every morning, I can run and work out before going at school. It’s the time when I release stress and all my worries. I can also exceed my limits what is helping myself in my studies: I trust myself and this practice gives me a great motivation.

Furthermore, I become more autonomous because I need to take care of my room cleaning it. I can also cook several meals as pastas, salads, fishes and meats with new tastes.

However, what is very constraining in my new life is to go to the laundry in order to clean my clothes. It’s the reason why my parents come to Bordeaux twice a month to help me to wash my wear and to store my flat.

Nevertheless, my new student’s life is also festive. In fact, with my friends we have parties before all the holidays. There’s a great cohesion between the learners even though we come from all different spaces. Our diversity is our strenght.

 

Even if, my life is based on an intensive work, what I study is very interesting and I think I know what I want to do after these two years of preparation. Indeed, I would like to integrate a chemistry school in order to work on the different reactions which occure in the rockets engines or on the food industry.

Romain BEARD