College Tips from a Girl who Coasted through High School

If you're like me, high school, for the most part, came very easily. It got a little hairy there for a while during junior year, but in retrospect, even that was get-through-able. College, on the other hand, is a whole 'nother ball field. It's not necessarily that the classes are all that much harder. I mean I guess they are, but since I get older and a little smarter every year, the classes seem to stay the same level of difficulty. So it's not the subject matter that creates a particular challenge. It's just the contrast of going from a learning environment where due dates were farther away, expectations were detailed more explicitly, and help was offered freely to a learning environment where due dates are springing up outta nowhere like Flappy Bird obstacles, assignments can be detailed pretty vaguely, and you're basically on your own for everything else. 

So while I'm doing well in college, it's not because I just continued my old ways. It's because I learned to adapt and I learned to crack down on myself in the areas of self discipline and time management and organization. So while I am by no means a genius or a professional advice giver, I do have some tips that you may benefit from in order to help you be a better student in the college environment while still maintaining some sanity. They are as follows: 

Make your dorm a homework free zone!

     Maybe this is a little hippie-ish, but hear me out: If you never (or rarely) do homework in your dorm room, you will associate this space as a place of relaxation to come back to at the end of a long day, rather than a place where you have to be on edge because of all the homework you have to do. When I was in high school, I designated my bed and the desk in my room as no homework zones, and tried to do as much homework as possible in other rooms of the house, so that when I was done, my bedroom could be a nice place to come to relax. Last year, I didn't really establish this habit in my dorm room, but I remember that I would always try to do homework in my dorm even though it was really hard to be productive in my room. This year, however, I've been trying to do all of my homework either in the library or in the lounge down the hall, and it just makes my dorm room feel so much happier! 

Use a calendar app!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Use a planner!!! Set alarms!!! 

     I can tell you right now, I would not be surviving if I didn't have my life scheduled out to within an inch of my life. Gone are the days of making spontaneous plans, or doing my homework when I just feel like it. I HAVE to have all of my tasks regimented in very specific time slots or else I would no doubt forget something! If you notice that you're struggling to keep all of your activities and classes straight, or you have no idea when you should do your homework, I would strongly suggest using a calendar app, which allows you to see your whole day and week planned out so you know exactly when your free times will be, and you'll get reminders telling you when to go to important things. If your school email is run through Outlook (like mine), the Outlook app comes equipped with a calendar feature inside, and it's really easy to use. If you're not as busy or scatterbrained as I can be about stuff like this, maybe you can survive with just a planner, so try that out too! 

Flag important emails, and schedule time to reply to them when you do your homework.

     The amount of emails I have to deal with on a daily basis makes me feel like a secretary. And everyone knows a good email takes some prep time to think out exactly what you want to say, so I'm no good at responding to things on the fly. Because of this, I usually open my email but wait to respond until a better time. That being said, when I do this, sometimes emails can get lost in the shuffle and I forget to respond entirely. Not good. So I've gotten into the habit of "flagging" emails that I know need my attention. Then when I have a chunk of time, I can refine my email search to "flagged emails only", see all the most important messages, and go from there, without having to worry about rifling through my whole inbox. 

Make a detailed list of exactly all the homework you need to do, when you need to do it, and the order in which you must get it done

     Checking my planner is great, but I have more than just homework in there, so sometimes even that is not as focused as I wish it were! So what I have to do is when I check my planner, I extract JUST the homework assignments I've written down amongst the events and classes I have to go to, and make a separate master list of all the homework I have to do. As I'm doing THAT I make sure to write the list in the order of which assignments are due the soonest or are the most pressing down to the assignments that can wait a little bit if need be. Then, while I'm doing my homework, I get to scratch out the assignments as I finish them, and that, my friends, is one of the greatest (albeit small) senses of accomplishment there is. 

Wake up the same time every day

     Set an alarm and stick to it. Otherwise you'll just confuse your body. Believe me. I didn't set an alarm over the summer and I regret it because I never got up when I actually wanted and I fell prey to the seductress of sleep. In college, you can't do that, or stuff doesn't get done. 

Remind yourself to maintain friendships!

     As sad as it may be, in college, where everything needs to be scheduled, it can sometimes be difficult to make time for all of your friends. In high school I had one group of friends and I saw them all every day multiple times. It was easy to just plan things for the weekend and stick to it. But now I have so little available time, and the friends I have do not belong to one cohesive group but rather live all over campus, have different classes than me, and have other friends besides me. I have never been the greatest at being the one to reach out and make plans or ask how my friends are doing. I'm just kind of a natural loner, and I'm not the best at thinking about peoples' feelings, so it's not my natural inclination to coordinate plans for hanging out or initiating heart to heart text conversations or offering my support. BUT I understand the great value of relationships, because the friendships I do have are incredibly meaningful to me. It's just that back before college friendships were easy to maintain. Now they just aren't. Now friendships take work. But it's work that is worth putting in. Write notes reminding yourself to text all your friends. Put lunch dates that you've planned into your calendar app to make sure you remember them! Say yes to doing things with friends even if it cuts into your free time. It's these relationships that are more important than schoolwork anyway. 

Don't try to multitask if you know you suck at it

     It makes me infinitely sad that I cannot listen to music while I do my homework. Lots of people can (or claim they can, although I'm not convinced) but I just can't no matter how hard I try. I get too distracted by the good music that I can't concentrate on what I'm reading or writing. Not even classical music works, because being in Orchestra for all these years has even ruined that for me! I recognize tons of pieces and they're just as distracting to me because I want to hum along or imagine out the bowings and whatnot. So I can't even let myself TRY to put on music when I study because I know it's going to be a failure even from the start. This is just one example: I can't really multitask at all, and I've heard that there's scientific evidence to support the idea that no one can ACTUALLY multitask, it's just a human idea we made up to make ourselves feel more productive. So don'y try and do your lab report while watching Netflix. Don't try to text your friends while watching that history video for class. You'll just end up getting nothing out of both things. 

Make yourself a detailed schedule every single day 

     For me, not even my carefully filled out planner and meticulously up-to-date calendar app are quite enough to keep things straight in my brain. In addition to these two essentials, I also sit down every evening and make up a schedule on paper of everything I have to do the day, broken down into time increments, which I cross off throughout the day. This helps me to have an idea of what exactly I can be expecting for the day, and when my free slots for homework will land so I can think about how to utilize them ahead of time and have the appropriate books and utensils packed in my backpack. 

Don't do homework with friends. Does this actually work for anyone??? 

     This kinda goes back to the thing about multitasking. In all my years of schooling, I have never been able to get any actual work done when I'm hanging with friends. It's just impossible because the friends obviously command your attention more than the schoolwork! I try to keep my school work and my social life as separate as humanly possible. 

Be grateful for the Sabbath and use it!!!!!

     Who, in their right faculties, wouldn't want a built in day where you've committed yourself to not doing any type of work? Especially we overworked, overtired college students? But still somehow Sunday becomes the default homework-cram day when it could be the day where you get to completely relax! I mean that's what God made the Sabbath for, so you could relax! Why wouldn't you take that awesome gift? At the beginning of last year, I did homework on Sundays like a typical college kid. But after a while it just felt like that wasn't actually helping me. I didn't feel refreshed when Monday rolled around. So I decided to sacrifice my Saturdays for use as my official homework days, and stay away from homework completely on Sundays. This of course meant that there were things I missed on Saturdays because nobody else is staying cooped up in the library or the study lounge for hours on end on a beautiful Saturday, and of course I had twinges of sadness at not being able to do as many fun things on Saturday anymore because of the rule I'd basically implemented for myself. But on the flip-side, Sunday would roll around, all my peers would be cramming to get homework done on Sunday, even skipping church because it just took up time they knew needed to be dedicated to homework, and I'd be doing whatever my heart desired because I told myself homework was out of the question. It was amazing, and totally made me feel refreshed, and honestly closer to God in some ways. I'd never really taken the Sabbath that seriously other than going to church and taking naps and stuff like that. But now that I use it as my No Homework Self Refreshment day, I just feel so much happier, and I appreciate the gift of the Sabbath in a way I never have before. 

Even if you're not religious, you could still make yourself a designated No Homework day, and I assure you it will make you feel so much calmer in the long run, and help start off your week on a nice, serene tone. 

VaughnDL