6 Tech Hacks to Help Ease College Stress

There’s no doubt about it, university can really take a toll on us sometimes with the multiple assignments, struggling to type out notes as fast as possible, and meeting every deadline given. Well, whether you’re having online classes or in person classes, procrastination and lack of time will creep up on even the best of us.

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Not to worry! There are ways around even the most tedious of tasks, so here are some tech hacks to help you get the best out of your university work and to make your life a little easier. And trust me, I guarantee you haven’t heard of all of these.

1. Switch typing out lecture notes for voice typing

We’ve all been there, the lecturer is speeding through their presentation and bringing up so many new things that you’re struggling to keep it all together and write them down. Well, now there’s an easier solution; voice typing.

Google docs has a voice recognition tool that will turn voice into text. All you have to do is, click on “tool” in the taskbar then click on “voice typing” A microphone box will appear on your screen, just click that and you’ll activate the feature and all your lecturer’s speaking will be automatically written down!

Now this isn’t a way to get out of writing notes since note-taking is a very good study technique to help you retain more information but it is a way to get a first draft of your notes to condense and revise later!

2. YouTube transcripts will be your savior

Some classes have students use Kahoot to make it more interactive but more often than not those Kahoot session start off with a long YouTube video that isn’t the easiest thing to sit through and understand everything at once.

With YouTube transcripts, you get to see the full script of the video that you’re watching word for word! In order to activate it, just click on the three dots next to “save” on the video and then click “open transcript”. It’s that simple, plus it will also give you timestamps so you can skip to important bits of the video. But don’t forget to watch parts before those key points so you get the full context of them.

3. Make a podcast out of your assignments and articles

Sometimes, so much reading can become quite boring and if you’re the type of person that loves listening to podcasts than why not try out Podcastle AI? This is a Chrome extension that allows you to change any text into a podcast with natural human speech.

To get it, just add the Podcastle AI extension to your Chrome browser and once it’s done, click on the logo in your extension tab and sign up using your Facebook or Google account. Once you’re all set up, go to the article you want to convert and click on the extension. This will save the article into its folder and when you play it, it will read the article to you.

The best part is this extension is free, unlimited, and you can choose your character’s voice as either male or female!

4. Google Scholar is your best friend

Research assignments can be a pain when it comes to finding the right literature. Next time, try using Google Scholar instead of a normal Google search.

Google Scholar will give out specifically academic resources and scholarly literature which will help you find more accurate and reliable articles from a variety of subjects and publishing formats. Do note that you’ll need to be more specific and definite about what you’re looking for to get the best results.

If you need more articles, each search result has a “cited” part under it which will help you find more information.

5. Let AI proofread your essay

More often than not, having to proofread your essay is more annoying than writing it and sometimes we can’t even spot the mistakes we’ve made.

How about letting an AI read it to you? This will allow you to listen to your work and help you spot errors, run-on sentences, and inconsistencies better. To get this done, upload or copy and paste your essay into a text-to-speech reader and let it read your essay to you!

6. Use apps to help you improve your math skills

Lots of us struggle at math and sometimes even hate doing it. The good news, however, is that nowadays there are so many math apps that you can use to improve your skills.

These apps will not only improve but will help you solve your math problems and they cover every math topic you can think of! Some of the more famous apps are Mathway, which gives you step-by-step solutions and Khan Academy which will give you more advanced problems according to your pace. To make it even more fun and interesting, the lessons come in the form of a game.

Well, there you have it, some of the best tech hacks that have been tried and tested and will definitely help you succeed in your studies!

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