It’s important to stay hydrated, and it’s (slightly less) important to avoid being misled by your own excuses. But that’s because almost everything on Earth is less important than water. And water can help us with both!
Water goes well with study: it’s clear, it helps, and it’s free from any distractions. It’s exactly what you need to keep doing what you’re doing, and if you try to get through a term without it you’ll suffer some serious problems. Water’s the best! Which is why we’ll compare it to other drinks, and how they’re not always as helpful.
Coffee! One of the greatest drinks of all time! Essential for many students, often the first thing we drink in the morning, an incredibly powerful boost for the brain – and often used far too much. A bit of a caffeine kick can get you going, it’s true, but being kicked too hard kicking just hurts. Caffeine acts on your nerves, not your knowledge, but many students make the caffeine-cargo-cult mistake of thinking that staying up late automatically means they’ve done more work. Pumping too much espresso into extra study time just turns people into zombies: they’re certainly still moving, but they can’t really think.
Soft drinks! A weird phrase, we know, but calling one out by name would be a great way to get angry letters from lawyers! Sugar and flavoring are our tongues’ favorite things (the companies have spent billions of dollars researching exactly that), but sugary fizzy drinks should be occasional treats, not our standard drink. Getting up from your desk to go get a [BRAND NAME] instead of a glass of water is an analogy: you’re searching for sweet distraction instead of just getting on with what you need cheaper and faster.
Energy drinks! Caffeine PLUS soft drinks PLUS even more advertising, and by now you need to know that the third is by far the worst for you. Energy drinks don’t just suggest they’ll make you smarter, many actively claim it as hard as government agencies will let them. But we haven’t liquidized information just yet. Pounding four cans of BEAST DIESEL or ULTRA THUNDER won’t make you smarter, they’ll just make you vibrate so hard you miss the toilet you’ve been using for the last twenty minutes instead of studying.
All of which is why we love water. Oh, and if you’re studying an electromagnetics course, water molecules act as dipoles. An easy way to remember that the oxygen end is negative is to think “Oh No, which end is which!” Oh No = Oxygen Negative. You’re welcome.
Water goes well with study: it’s clear, it helps, and it’s free from any distractions. It’s exactly what you need to keep doing what you’re doing, and if you try to get through a term without it you’ll suffer some serious problems. Water’s the best! Which is why we’ll compare it to other drinks, and how they’re not always as helpful.
Coffee! One of the greatest drinks of all time! Essential for many students, often the first thing we drink in the morning, an incredibly powerful boost for the brain – and often used far too much. A bit of a caffeine kick can get you going, it’s true, but being kicked too hard kicking just hurts. Caffeine acts on your nerves, not your knowledge, but many students make the caffeine-cargo-cult mistake of thinking that staying up late automatically means they’ve done more work. Pumping too much espresso into extra study time just turns people into zombies: they’re certainly still moving, but they can’t really think.
Soft drinks! A weird phrase, we know, but calling one out by name would be a great way to get angry letters from lawyers! Sugar and flavoring are our tongues’ favorite things (the companies have spent billions of dollars researching exactly that), but sugary fizzy drinks should be occasional treats, not our standard drink. Getting up from your desk to go get a [BRAND NAME] instead of a glass of water is an analogy: you’re searching for sweet distraction instead of just getting on with what you need cheaper and faster.
Energy drinks! Caffeine PLUS soft drinks PLUS even more advertising, and by now you need to know that the third is by far the worst for you. Energy drinks don’t just suggest they’ll make you smarter, many actively claim it as hard as government agencies will let them. But we haven’t liquidized information just yet. Pounding four cans of BEAST DIESEL or ULTRA THUNDER won’t make you smarter, they’ll just make you vibrate so hard you miss the toilet you’ve been using for the last twenty minutes instead of studying.
All of which is why we love water. Oh, and if you’re studying an electromagnetics course, water molecules act as dipoles. An easy way to remember that the oxygen end is negative is to think “Oh No, which end is which!” Oh No = Oxygen Negative. You’re welcome.
