Grab your new backpack and sharpen your pencils. It’s back to school time, and here is my playlist of six talks about the essentials. Work your way through the classic school day, as told in TEDTalks. No finals required.

1^st period: Math
Marcus du Sautoy: Symmetry, reality’s riddle
Mathematician Marcus du Sautoy takes you inside the universe’s native language — symmetry. From beautiful upside-down columns to the mind-boggling number of symmetries in a Rubik’s Cube, he shares some of the brightest (and darkest) moments in the history of humanity’s fascination with symmetry.

2^nd period: History
Aaron Huey: Native prisoners of war
In this poignant look at life on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Aaron Huey rewrites U.S. history as you thought you knew it. Setting the grim historical facts against the backdrop of his unflinching photography, he uncovers buried American truths, past and present. (Check out Huey’s latest project, an interactive collaboration with the residents of Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.)

3^rd period: Lunch
Jamie Oliver: Teach every child about food
Jamie Oliver has a TED Wish: to build a new generation of informed, healthy eaters. The time is now, he says, to drive fast foods out of our homes, schools and offices and to create a shared culture of meals that we can be proud to pass on to our children.

4^th period: Science
Andrea Ghez: The search for a supermassive black hole
Using the world’s largest telescope, Andrea Ghez peers into the center of our galaxy. She shares her findings on some strange behavior, the challenges of seeing through the atmosphere, and what would happen if the Earth were shrunk to the size of a sugar cube.

5^th period: Gym
Steve Mesler: How two decisions led me to Olympic gold
Olympic gold medalist Steve Mesler takes a moment to reflect on the personal decisions that ultimately led him to victory. In an ode to the powers of believing in yourself and trying again, he whisks you along on his uplifting downhill journey. (Last month, Steve picked his favorite TEDTalks of all time for the TED Blog.)

6^th period: English
Billy Collins: Everyday moments, caught in time
And finally, former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins ventures out of the ordinary to present a few of his poetic gems … animated. Here, he personifies his sweater sleeve, pays his thanks to Bugs Bunny, and admits he’s on a lifelong mission to spring poetry on unsuspecting victims.

Why does the time we spend cramming for life’s most trying tests always escape us before our focus is shifted to battling a more complex problem? During the college years, an unforeseen dichotomy develops where rushing becomes a normal state, whether it be to register for classes or to get through your last semester. But, when it’s over we grieve, for learning how to learn is what we lamented all this time. In this playlist, a look at the best practices for how to improve this very human process.

Jonathan Drori on what we think we know You know the contemptuous look you flash to the smartypants in the corner of the classroom? You’ll be glad to know that they, in fact, do not have an answer for everything. In this talk, Jonathan Drori makes a great argument about why all of us don’t actually understand as much as we think we do.

What we learned from 5 million books
Erez Lieberman Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel set out to explore how language has been shaped and changed as societies evolve, but in the process found out that a picture isn’t worth a thousand words — but rather 500 billion words. You can search through 5 million books at once, with the Google Labs’ Ngram Viewer, to see if “UGH” was as popular a century ago as it is today.

Joshua Foer: Feats of memory anyone can do
This science writer set out to discover how people with average memories train themselves to develop an extraordinary skill set at the United States Memory Championship — and won. In this talk, he gives techniques on how to sharpen your mind’s eye.

Salman Khan: Let’s use video to reinvent education
Five years ago, former hedge fund analyst Salman Khan helped refresh his cousins’ academic memory by putting video lessons on YouTube. Now, with over one million viewers, the Khan Academy offers a global community the ability to learn effectively with self-paced online lessons through videos.

Sunni Brown: Doodlers, unite!
Contrary to popular belief doodling isn’t the act of doing nothing. In this talk, Sunni Brown tells us that it is the physical act of a person engaging several types of learning to flush out an idea. So, go on and add doodling to the brainstorm!

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Carvens Lissaint: Put the financial aid in the bag
For recent graduates, debating the legitimacy of investing further in your education is a daunting thought. Watch this powerful spoken word lesson on financial aid and the stress that comes with needing it.

Here, six TEDTalks that I’m taking inspiration from, to help me apply the laid-back philosophy I learned to love in Argentina to situations unique to college students.

Sherry Turkle: Connected, but alone?
In the fast-paced and increasingly wired atmosphere of college campuses, we seem to be developing a tech habit that we can’t kick. Face-to-face interactions are on the decline as people defer more socializing to texting and social media. Psychologist Sherry Turkle argues that we’re creating an illusion of togetherness as we replace each other with technology, we’re losing the capacity for solitude while becoming more and more alone.

Dan Gilbert: The surprising science of happiness
Whether you are a rising senior trying to solidify hazy post-graduate plans or a freshman trying to pick a major — or even what to do on a Friday night — college students have a lot of choices to make. This wealth of opportunities can be exciting or stressful, but according to Dan Gilbert, the outcomes of these decisions have less bearing on our happiness than we might initially think. Gilbert’s talk offers encouraging insights into the psychology of happiness, explaining that we tend to adapt to situations even when things don’t initially seem to work out the way we would have liked. Listen to this talk, and you might find yourself becoming a more confident decision-maker.

Chip Kidd: Designing books is no laughing matter. OK, it is.
This hilarious talk by book jacket designer Chip Kidd will give you a new appreciation for hardbacks — and may even inspire you to read a chapter of that bio textbook collecting dust under your bed. Kidd explains his design process from start to finish, detailing how he captured the essence of hundreds of pages of text in the iconic covers of Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park and Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84. He reminds us that we lose something special about print books in our Kindles and iPads.

Rives: The 4 a.m. mystery
College is full of late nights — cram sessions for final exams, parties that go until the wee hours of the morning, and deep conversations with close friends. The poet Rives pays homage to this mystical and enigmatic hour, 4 a.m.

Aaron Koblin: Artfully visualizing our humanity
We’re all smarter together than we are alone, says artist Aaron Koblin. You’ll see those dreaded group projects and interminable group study sessions in a new light after watching this beautiful and inspirational talk about the power of collaboration in the digital age, where we can all contribute something small to make a whole greater than ourselves.

Barry Schwartz: Our loss of wisdom
Barry Schwartz’s message of questioning the rules that shape our society will certainly resonate with college students. Highlighting the fault lines in American society, he argues that the rules and regulations that structure our world are in contradiction with the wisdom that would better our society. Wisdom is made, not born, he reminds us, and it is in our power to create a wiser community.