 Hello everybody, Andrea Majeski here with Dental L. It is almost Christmas. I can't believe that Christmas Eve is on Monday and then Christmas Day on Tuesday and then Boxing Day. I have been taking some time off. I always take time off over the Christmas holidays because I love Christmas and that's kind of my time to take time off but at the same time to really spend time with everybody. For those of you who do know me, I do a little bit of everything. I'm always busy, busy, busy but that's how I like it but I do take time off over the Christmas holidays but I wanted to hop on to show you guys my new kind of office space. How do you guys like it? I have a new piece of artwork there that I found from Homesense, love Homesense. And if you guys can see the little decoration, decorative piece that I have there. So hope you guys like it. I'm so OCD in the way that I change up my office, I change up the layout of my office. Sorry, my hair just kind of looks messy for a second. I change up kind of how things look. I change up artwork probably monthly, like it's crazy but I wanted to find something to actually keep so that's why I went with something neutral and gray and kind of gold a little bit. So hope you guys like it. It kind of ties into my holiday sweater too. So hope you guys like my holiday sweater. I have like five of these. I love holiday sweaters. I love soft holiday socks. Anyways, so I wanted to hop on though quickly to kind of talk to you guys about how to study over the holidays. I did do a video like this a week or two ago but I'm still getting a lot of emails on just basically people saying, okay, I take the board exam soon either for the dental assisting board exam, the dental hygiene and what to do. How much do I study? Where do I start studying? How do I know if I'm studying too much? How do I know if I'm not studying enough? So the best piece of advice that I can give you is if you are part of my dental L membership. So if you have signed up for either the board exam prep academy or the dental L student program, you have access to all of that, okay? So you have mock exams, you have case studies, you have a previous session recordings for the past three years. Our tutoring sessions are about an hour long. So there's tons there. You have modules on every single topic of the curriculum that you need to know for the board exam. So you do have everything but I do understand that it can be very overwhelming and you might not know where to start. You might be thinking that you have studied so much but you still don't wanna put the books away yet because you haven't taken the board exam yet. So what I highly suggest doing is to mix it up. So you will hear me say this often. So even if you're not part of either the board exam prep academy or the dental L student program, that's okay. But just mix it up. And what I mean by that is take mock exams, you know, one day do a bunch of mock exams. If you don't do well, say on your mock exam for oral pathology, then that means that you have to go back, read that chapter again. It might take you three hours but read it and truly understand it. If you are in my courses, then I always always say to mix it up. Meaning watch a tutoring session on the topic that you want. So let's say you want to learn about ethics and law. Look in our previous session recordings. Look for those ethics and law units. Watch that. It will be about an hour long per video. I think for ethics and law there might be two or three. And then do a mock exam after that, okay. The nice thing about listening and watching a video is you don't have to be sitting there per se and watching it. You can be wrapping Christmas presents. You can be doing the laundry. You can be cleaning the kitchen. You can be organizing your closet, whatever and listening to the videos at the same time. Now, if you're not able though to kind of listen and focus then you might just want to sit somewhere and listen to it instead of kind of multitasking. But I'm lucky and that I can multitask. I can listen to something and still do the dishes and understand what I've been listening to if that makes sense. So listen first and then take a mock exams that I do have for you on that topic. If you do well, perfect. Then that means you can move on to study something else. If you don't do well, then that means that you have missed the boat somewhere and either you have to listen to those ethics and law session recordings again or go back and read the modules that I have for you on ethics and law. So just try to mix it up. What I do not suggest is to sit there and read your textbook for five hours, okay. You will be exhausted, you won't learn anything. If you only have your textbook and that's all you have to study for, then read a couple of chapters every single day. It depends on the length of the chapter, but if that's all you do have to study from, then read a couple of chapters, take a break for a couple hours and then read a couple more chapters, take a break and then read again at nighttime because I do always say study six hours every single day at the most. At least one to two hours if you're either working full time, if you have something else to do, but study six hours maximum, not anymore because that's too much. You will not remember as much as if you take breaks and study in let's say two to three hour increments at a time. The best thing to do is study for a couple hours in the morning, take a break, study a couple hours in the afternoon, take a break and then study a couple hours at night. When I was a student, I would study at night because I was just more focused. So I did more throughout the day so that I didn't feel like, oh, I have to study, I have to study, I have to study because I knew by the time I got home, I could sit, relax, have a tea, whatever, read, listen, study and then that would make me tired and then I would have a great sleep after that. So it kind of depends on what works for you everybody's different, but try to mix it up, study in increments and last but not least, take a break you guys over the holidays, honestly. Even if you have your board exam, let's say in January, take a week off, okay? Take a week off, I'm serious, it will do your mind good if for some reason you just can't take that time off because you're thinking, I gotta study something then study two hours at night, okay? Take the date to wrap presents, spend time with the people you love, take a break, you need it and then kind of go from there. So I hope that helps you guys, please let me know if you have any questions, good luck. As I said, I am off for the holidays, I'm coming back in January, the second week of January. If you email me, I might not be able to respond right away, but please do email me and I will get back to you as quickly as possible. If you are a student of mine in either the dental L student program or the board exam prep academy, you can post your questions anytime in our private Facebook group, I do check that at least every couple of hours, okay? So if you need to reach me, then that's another way to do it too. So thank you guys for watching, happy holidays and I will see you very, very soon.