How to Fold a Fitted Sheet

1. Find a bed, table or sofa on which to work. Fold the sheet in half with the top meeting the bottom (foot) of the sheet.
2. Tuck the top corner into the bottom corresponding corner (left top corner to left bottom corner and right top corner to bottom right corner.) Top corners will be turned inside out.
3. Fold the sheet in half again so all corners meet. Again tuck the corners into each other. This will again force one set of corners to be turned inside out.
4. This last step leaves you with a bunched up corner area. To smooth it down, fold in the longest side so the corner can lie flat (it will be at a slight angle.). The short side can also be folded in .
5. Fold the sheet again in half the long way. This should then cover the folded area from step 4.
6. Note that you should now have a long "strip" that can be folded in 1/4's or 1/3's depending on how small you want the folded product to end up.

How to Survive High School Without a Best Friend

1. Get some perspective. High school is not the be-all, end-all. Just because you were unpopular in high-school doesn't mean you'll be unpopular your whole entire life. Some of the most famous and wealthy people were high school rejects. Things change and high school doesn't last forever. The most important thing is to get through high school so you can enter the next phase in your life.
2. Identify the things you feel you miss or lack by not having a best friend and brainstorm how you can fill those "holes" in other, positive ways. For example, if you hate being alone on Saturday nights, find a regular activity to do at that time.
3. Don't put yourself down by negatively comparing yourself to other people. No one is perfect. Everyone has problems, some people are just better at hiding them. Ms. Popularity might have things ten times worse than you.
4. Be thankful for what you do have. You still have your health, your personality, your family, your talents, your interests, etc.
5. Challenge yourself by trying something new that you've always wanted to do -- maybe it's joining the drama club or learning how to ride a horse or taking Japanese lessons at the community college. It may sound corny, but being a "best friend" to yourself is important. Sometimes, people with a lot of "best friends" actually aren't very happy or comfortable with themselves.
6. Be your own best friend. Focus on the positive things about yourself. Stand up for yourself. Don't be hard on yourself for not having a "best friend." Think of the things that people like about you. Write them down and remind yourself, as needed.
7. Don't judge people based on the surface. Don't dismiss other types of people who may seem more popular than you as not being able to "get" you. They might be able to understand more than you think.
8. Join a club. You may meet new friends; you may not. The important thing is to have something else to focus on to make school tolerable.
9. Develop interests outside of school. Take music or dance lessons. Volunteer. Go to the library or movies. Act or create sets for a local theater production. Get a weekend or after school job.
10. Don't lose hope. Acknowledge that not having a best friend in high school may make you feel sad or lonely at times. That's okay, because having friends causes heartaches a lot of the time, too.
11. Develop a stronger relationship with your parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, etc. They're older and have more experience, therefore, they have a lot of advice to give.
12. Use your teachers as mentors.
13. Be a good example to the people who are your classmates, friends or acquaintances or someone who could use support, such as a transfer student. Having many positives connections can really add up.
14. Talk to someone about your problems. Venting is therapeutic. Find someone you can trust like an older sibling, a parent, family member, a clergy member or a professional therapist.
15. Hang out with people who aren't in your grade or who go to another school. Go on Facebook and randomly "poke" people near you or get a MySpace and make new friends there.
16. Focus on your schoolwork, getting into college and getting a job.
17. Be open and patient. Don't "commit" yourself to not having a close friend in high school. Quality friendships can take time.
18. Having a best friend doesn't mean everything. Sure, people who do sometimes have more people to depend on, but maybe one day you'll have a really good best friend who actually understands you.

How to Survive High School Without a Best Friend

1. Get some perspective. High school is not the be-all, end-all. Just because you were unpopular in high-school doesn't mean you'll be unpopular your whole entire life. Some of the most famous and wealthy people were high school rejects. Things change and high school doesn't last forever. The most important thing is to get through high school so you can enter the next phase in your life.
2. Identify the things you feel you miss or lack by not having a best friend and brainstorm how you can fill those "holes" in other, positive ways. For example, if you hate being alone on Saturday nights, find a regular activity to do at that time.
3. Don't put yourself down by negatively comparing yourself to other people. No one is perfect. Everyone has problems, some people are just better at hiding them. Ms. Popularity might have things ten times worse than you.
4. Be thankful for what you do have. You still have your health, your personality, your family, your talents, your interests, etc.
5. Challenge yourself by trying something new that you've always wanted to do -- maybe it's joining the drama club or learning how to ride a horse or taking Japanese lessons at the community college. It may sound corny, but being a "best friend" to yourself is important. Sometimes, people with a lot of "best friends" actually aren't very happy or comfortable with themselves.
6. Be your own best friend. Focus on the positive things about yourself. Stand up for yourself. Don't be hard on yourself for not having a "best friend." Think of the things that people like about you. Write them down and remind yourself, as needed.
7. Don't judge people based on the surface. Don't dismiss other types of people who may seem more popular than you as not being able to "get" you. They might be able to understand more than you think.
8. Join a club. You may meet new friends; you may not. The important thing is to have something else to focus on to make school tolerable.
9. Develop interests outside of school. Take music or dance lessons. Volunteer. Go to the library or movies. Act or create sets for a local theater production. Get a weekend or after school job.
10. Don't lose hope. Acknowledge that not having a best friend in high school may make you feel sad or lonely at times. That's okay, because having friends causes heartaches a lot of the time, too.
11. Develop a stronger relationship with your parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, etc. They're older and have more experience, therefore, they have a lot of advice to give.
12. Use your teachers as mentors.
13. Be a good example to the people who are your classmates, friends or acquaintances or someone who could use support, such as a transfer student. Having many positives connections can really add up.
14. Talk to someone about your problems. Venting is therapeutic. Find someone you can trust like an older sibling, a parent, family member, a clergy member or a professional therapist.
15. Hang out with people who aren't in your grade or who go to another school. Go on Facebook and randomly "poke" people near you or get a MySpace and make new friends there.
16. Focus on your schoolwork, getting into college and getting a job.
17. Be open and patient. Don't "commit" yourself to not having a close friend in high school. Quality friendships can take time.
18. Having a best friend doesn't mean everything. Sure, people who do sometimes have more people to depend on, but maybe one day you'll have a really good best friend who actually understands you.

How to Build a Memory Palace

At the World Memory Championships, top competitors memorize the order of 20 shuffled decks of cards in an hour and more than 500 random digits in 15 minutes, among other events. Think you have what it takes? Believe it or not, almost everybody has the capability to perform such amazing feats. Competitive memorizers don’t necessarily have “better memories" than the rest of us; instead, they learn and perfect a variety of mnemonics (memory aids) to improve their ability to quickly learn and recall just about anything. One of the most useful and widely used mnemonics is the memory palace, a place or series of places in your mind where you can store information that you need to remember. With time and practice, anyone can build a memory palace, and they are useful for far more than just memory competitions and trivia. Here’s how to build your own:

1. Decide on a blueprint for your palace. While a memory palace can be a purely imagined place, it is easier to base it upon a place that exists in the real world and that you are familiar with. A basic palace could be your bedroom, for example. Larger memory palaces can be based on your house, a cathedral, a walk to the corner store, or your whole town. The larger or more detailed the real place, the more information you can store in the corresponding mental space.
2. Define a route. If you will need to remember things in a certain order, it is essential that you follow a specific route through your palace, both in the real world and in your mind. Thus, once you’ve decided what your memory palace is, decide how you will travel through it. If you don’t really need to remember things in order, this step is unnecessary, but still useful, as it makes memorizing your palace easier.
3. Identify specific storage locations in your palace or along your route. When you use your memory palace you will put individual things to be remembered (a number, a name, or a part of a speech that you will be giving, for example), in specific locations. Thus, you need to identify as many locations as you think you will need. Walk through your structure or along your route and really observe it. If your palace is actually a route, such as your drive to work, the storage locations can be landmarks along the way: your neighbor’s house, a crossroads, a statue, or a skyscraper, for example. If the palace is a structure, you can put things in the different rooms. Within rooms, you can identify smaller locations, such as paintings, pieces of furniture, and so on. The key is to make sure the locations you choose are distinct from each other so that no location can be mistaken for another.
4. Memorize your memory palace. For your memory palace to be effective, you need to commit it to memory perfectly. The best way to do this is to actually draw out a blueprint (or a map, if the palace is a route) which shows the landmarks or storage locations you have chosen. Try visualizing the palace when you are not there, and then check your mental image against the map to make sure you have remembered every location and put them in the correct order. Picture the landmarks in as much detail as possible: make sure your mental image includes their colors, sizes, smells, and any other defining characteristics.
5. Place things to be remembered in your palace. Once you have constructed your palace and have it firmly implanted in your mind, you are ready to use it. Put a manageable amount of information in each place. For example, if your palace is your house, and you are trying to remember a speech, you might place the first few sentences on your doormat and the next few in the keyhole of your door. Don’t put too much information in any one place, and if certain things must be kept separate from others, put them in different places. Make sure that you place things along your route in the order in which you need to remember them, if applicable.
6. Use symbols. You don’t necessarily need to put a whole string of words or numbers in a given location in order to be able to remember it, and trying to do so can be unwieldy and counterproductive. Generally, all you need to store in each location is something that will jog your memory, something that will lead you to the actual idea you’re trying to remember. Thus, if you are trying to remember a ship, picture an anchor on your couch. If the ship is the U.S.S. Wisconsin, picture the anchor made out of cheese. Symbols are shorthand and make memories more manageable, but they also can be more effective than picturing the actual thing you are trying to remember.
7. Be creative. The images you put in your palace should, obviously, be as memorable as possible. Generally, images will be more memorable if they are absurd (out of the ordinary)[see warnings] , or if they are attached to some strong emotion or personal experience. The number 124 is not particularly memorable, but an image of a spear shaped like the number 1, going through a swan (which looks like the number 2), and splitting the swan into 4 pieces is. Yes, it’s disturbing, but that’s part of what makes it stick in your mind.
8. Stock your palace with other mnemonics. There are many simpler mnemonics that you can use in combination with the memory palace. As an example, suppose you need to remember a great deal about music composition. As you enter your kitchen, you could see a little boy eating a piece of chocolate fudge, which would evoke the first-letter mnemonic “Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge," which would in turn allow you to recall the order of notes on the lines in treble clef (EGBDF).
9. Explore your palace. Once you have stocked your palace with evocative images, you need to go through it and look at them. The more you explore your palace, the more easily you will recall its contents on demand. In your mind you want to see James Joyce, for example, sitting on your toilet as if he belonged there and was really an integral part of your bathroom decor.
10. Use your palace. Once you have memorized the contents of your palace you can recall them simply by mentally walking through it or looking around it. If you need to give a speech, just follow your route in order as you do so. If you need to remember that your girlfriend’s birthday is March 16, simply go into your bedroom and see the soldiers “marching" on the bed to the tune of the 80s cult classic “Sixteen Candles." With practice you will be able to start anywhere in your palace or along your route to recall a specific piece of information.
11. Build new palaces. A memory palace can be reused over and over again if you need only commit things to memory for a short time. Just replace the existing contents with new ones, and you’ll soon remember only the new ones. If you need to remember the contents of your palace for a long time, you can keep that palace as it is and create new ones in which to store other information as needed. If your house contains the phone numbers of everyone you know, you can walk to your workplace if you need to remember the order of a deck of cards.

How to Be a Better Test Taker

Oh, no. A test is coming up, and you're sure you won't pass! Numbers, days, and order is jumbled in your head. There's stress on you and there is no way you can focus. So instead of just sitting around praying for a miracle to happen, after you follow these steps you are sure not to worry when a test is coming up. Let's ace this test and become a better test taker!

1. Take out your notebook and textbook. These two have all your information that you will need to know. So don't think that you don't know anything. You have it all written down in your notebook and textbook.
2. 

   

   Quickly read through your notebook
   Read through all the questions the teacher gave you. The questions that the teacher assigned you could possibly be on your test. First read the question, think about the answer in your head, then check your answer. This will give you the idea of what it is like to think about the question. If you got your answer correct, well done. If not,good try. To help you remember try to find a way to relate the question to the answer.
3. Read all extra notes that you have written down. Make sure you get them right and that you can clearly understand everyone of them. That shouldn't take too long, and should be easy.
4. 

   

   Study hard
   When you have finished all the directions, you are pretty much done. Don't worry, if you're still scared, remember that you have studied and all the information will sink into your brain. Good luck on your test.

How to Remember Lists of Words With the Roman Room Trick

Do you ever need to remember a list of items, but don't have a pen and paper on hand? Using the Roman Room trick, you can remember a great many things. Basically, you make a room in your mind. Mentally, you go to your room and look at it every day to make sure you remember everything. Whenever you want to remember a new item, you change something in your room, and when you revisit that room in your mind, you'll remember that item. Here's how to make this work for you.

1. Create and memorize a room in your head. Make it as big and beautiful as you wish. Smaller rooms are easier to remember, but big rooms work too.
2. Spend time each day going through your room. Don't change anything; just memorize every detail about your room.
3. Test yourself by making a list of 10 words to remember tomorrow. For example, consider the following list:
   • a shoe
   • a dog
   • a desk
   • the date 12/09/1990
   • a cow
   • your grandpa Billy Bob
   • a turkey
   • $20 you owe your landlady
   • a computer
   • eggs
4. If you want to remember all these things, just change things in your room in ways that will remind you. You can add an ugly shoe pattern to the walls, have a barking dog on your couch or table, put an elaborate desk against the wall, write the date in neon pink on the frame of a famous painting on the wall, put a fat cow in the doorway, have Grandpa Billy Bob eating sloppy joes on your new white carpet, have a Thanksgiving turkey on the dining room table, have your landlady standing there yelling with a bill in her hand for $20, a broken computer on the floor, and eggs smashed into the door. These are all just ideas - you can use anything you want to memorize.
5. Try to remember your whole list the next day. If you didn't remember some of it, it could be because you didn't make the change noticeable or memorable enough. If you just wrote the date on the wall, you won't remember it, but if you wrote it in big neon pink letters on the bottom of the Mona Lisa, you'll have a better chance of remembering it.
6. Review your Roman room regularly, until you know it like the back of your hand. That way, when you make a change, it'll stand out, just like if somebody made a drastic change to your bedroom, you'd notice immediately.

• If you want to store a vast amount of information I'd advise you to use the memory palace method for storing and recalling information.
• The Roman Room is better for short lists, but can be used for long lists as well.
• If you want to be able to remember longer lists, try the Memory trick (see related wikiHows below).
• Try not to memorize it all at once. Take baby steps, gradually moving up.
• Try to find someone else willing to learn this technique with you.
• This exercise may have originated as a Buddhist meditation. You can find this entire exercise in the book "Path Notes of an American Ninja Master" by Glenn Morris.

How to Create Good Study Habits for Exams

Taking exams can be a time for stress and anxiety if you have not studied during the year; you will find yourself cramming for each test and studying late into the night. With a little time management during the school year, you not only minimize stress at exam time, but maximize productivity and results!

1. Buy an extra notebook for each subject at the beginning of the year so that as you finish a chapter in class, you immediately write notes and summaries in that book. The classwork will still be fresh in your mind so at exam time you merely have to take the notebook home from school. Write down the key points you learned from each lesson onto a cue card. This helps your mind to retain the day's important facts. On the weekends look over the cue cards. Get your parents or friends to quiz you on them.
2. Learn how to make mind maps, cluster maps and other memory aids. Mind maps are graphical illustrations of a subject and a great memory tool to use, especially during exams.
3. As soon as you finish a topic take out a book from the library and read more information about the subject. Take notes to refer back to them before and at test time.
4. Don't do rough drafts for essays. Just do the good copy straight away, but thoroughly as well. In an exam situation you won't have time to write out a whole draft copy, so practice writing out good copies straight away.
5. Make a timetable for exam days by marking the dates on a calendar, so you can be prepared by the time the test comes around.
6. Make a list of your classes and the topics covered in class. As you study a topic, mark it in a way that is meaningful to you, to remind you which topics have already been studied.
7. Set aside a study time each day when you are not too tired, or too hungry. If you are going to study for a long time, remember to take a break in between.
8. Set up a study group. Study groups share notes, thoughts and ideas or how to solve or understand a particular problem. Be sure to honor the class rules on what work may or may not be done in groups.
9. Plan out 'trial' exams for yourself. All you have to do is redo one of your past tests or quizzes within a time limit. Get into the exam mode by clearing your work desk of everything except your paper and pen.
10. Get enough sleep at night. It's harder to concentrate when you got less than six hours of sleep the night before.
11. When choosing individual subjects to study, start with the least enjoyable or the most difficult subject. Master it, and you'll end up loving it. At the very least, you won't have to worry about putting it off until it's too late because you don't like it

• Don't panic on test day. On the night before the exam, and in the morning of read through your notes a few times, then put them away.
• Don't panic if you have not studied well. Just think over the question and you might remember something the teacher taught you. After all, you are studying things that men have discovered before without previous knowledge.
• Eat a healthy breakfast that day, so you feel energized, but don't eat so much that you feel full. Something to consider is a study that says males do better on tests if they are slightly hungry, and females do better on tests if they are slightly full. Again, don't overdo it.
• You gain less by studying for exams at the last minute. One way to think about it is to start studying for the next exam as soon as you get the material, don't wait until a week before the test to start.
• Try and have all your study notes complete at least 2 weeks before the exam. This allows you plenty of time to work through past papers for revision and go over and re-read anything you're a bit hazy on.
• In the lead up to exams, try and get your hands on some exam papers for previous years. Doing these before the real exam will give you an idea as to what you'll be up against and will highlight anything you still need to revise.
• If you suffer from exam stress then take a calming antidote, perhaps an herbal tea. Just don't overdose because it'll make you drowsy.
• Don't stress out, it makes your mind work slower.
• Have a balance in life, exams are simply a quick and lazy way to assess people. Don't panic, just study.
• Develop a positive attitude towards exams. If you are well prepared you'll walk into the exam room thinking "WOW! I can't wait to prove myself to these examiners, I'm gonna Ace this test, just to show them." Negative attitude: " Oooh, I'm so nervous. I hate exams; what's the point? I really don't feel up to this".
• Ever heard this? "Good luck with your exam!" This is false hope, you shouldn't need a pint of luck to help you succeed,and if you DO need good luck, then you obviously haven't prepared enough.
• While some can be, most exams aren't really this big. Exams are really just large quizzes with a time limit. No big deal.