My Final Tips

So, after I looked back over the semester, I've realized that I overlooked a couple of awesome tips.

The first, and most important tip, is one of the most obvious.  Go to class.  Just go!  I know this sounds really simple and silly, but simply going to class is the best way to connect with the professor, which can become very important when things go wrong.  Do your work too- take extreme measures to keep caught up on all of your work so that, if you do have something happen, the professor will realize that you haven't been blowing off their class.  At Trinity professors will help you- but you can't expect help if you haven't been trying to begin with.

The next tip I've given a few times already.  Get your work done during the day.  Don't procrastinate and save it for later, especially on weekends.  I promise that you won't do your work if it gets to about eleven and everyone else's mind starts drifting towards parties.  Use the library- here at Trinity check out the first floor.  It's silent and people don't walk through often.

My final tip is about the social aspect of your life.  Basically, have a social life.  Be exciting, go out, have a good time, and then make sure that you have people to come back to.  Don't go through your first year of college depending on alcohol to make your friends for you- they won't pull through when you need them.  After that, just make to sure to stay open and keep smart and social.

xoxo

Going Greek and Staying Geek

During your years at Trinity, or any college for that matter, you're going to run into different organizations that will both enrich your life and take up a massive amount of your time.  These groups can range from sports teams to musical groups.  One almost universal option on college campus's is the Greek system.

Here at Trinity we pride ourselves on having almost entirely local sororities and fraternities that allow our Greek system to function a little bit differently than the Greek systems on other campus's.  However, the one thing that is constant with the reputation of national Greek organizations is the time commitment that comes with rushing and joining a sorority/fraternity.  So how is a student supposed to manage their studies, going Greek, and keeping a social life outside of the Greek system? (Remember to fill in the blank with your own time-consuming and well-loved activity, this definitely does not only apply to Greek life!)

From rushing to new member orientation to the normal activities of your specific sorority or fraternity, any Greek organization requires a high level of commitment which, in turn, requires a large amount of time.  So, keep a calender with all of your club activities current and with you at all times.  Make sure that this calender includes club meetings, dinners, mixers, and any other activities.  Also, make sure that it includes all major tests and projects you have due so you can make sure to manage your time wisely enough for you to get all of your work done and then go out.  In your club's busier seasons, like during new member orientation, especially pay attention to all of the work you have to get done so that you can manage to do everything you want to do and not watch your class averages drop.  Take advantage of daylight and library hours to get all of your work done and, in the moments that you feel like you absolutely can not get any more work done, take a quick study break and then get re-motivated by remembering all of the things you want to do later on that will be a lot more fun if you don't have a big assignment hanging over them.

Another especially important thing to remember during the weeks in which you know your sorority/fraternity will be keeping you busy is to avoid procrastination.  This might sound really obvious, but procrastination is one of the number-one pitfalls for students who have conflicting interests competing for their time.  Sometimes procrastination can mean students either missing fun activities with their organization or not getting homework done, which is never a good thing.  For people with big procrastination problems and lots of work to get done, consider making a hour-by-hour schedule and then stick to it!

Finally, remember the ultimate rule of college time management.  If you occasionally don't get your work done, you can probably lose a few hours of sleep to make serious headway on it.  This is definitely not an everyday rule but, honestly, if you have some amazing and really fun activity for your club, sometimes that experience makes its worth it to lose a few hours of sleep and just be tired.  Also, during your club's busiest times of the year, make sure to make up your sleep when you can- whether it be at night or taking long naps in the middle of the afternoon.

Getting Refocused After Vacation

So you finally got a week off school where you stayed up all night every night, went out with your friends, and let all of the worries of school fly away.  Maybe you even had a fun sleepover with your sister and your dogs. (Like I did, and I even have photographic evidence!) Then, after your vacation flew by, you're back in your dorm room, dreading having to get back to school after a week of fun.  How is it possible to focus on homework when your mind is stuck on that last night at home with your friends or that fantastic vacation you went on with your family?

Here's the bottom line- the first few days after any vacation are probably going to be awful.  You're going to be tired, unfocused, maybe behind on your schoolwork, and possibly left with a huge pile of dirty laundry to do.  There's also a really good possibility that you're going to be tempted to skip a few classes to catch up on your sleep.  Don't do it- I promise you that it's not worth the extra hour of snooze time and that it will only cause you to be more stressed out about the amount of work you have to do.

Then what should you do?  First off, try to get back to school with enough time to unpack your stuff.  This seems like a small thing, but it's really hard to get around to your homework if you have piles of stuff left-over from your vacation laying around.  

When you're finally re-organized and physically ready for school to start, it's time to get mentally ready.  There really is no sure plan for this, except to take a deep breath and dive back into the books.  To stop yourself from going completely insane, try to at least schedule something fun that you can look forward to for the upcoming weekend or, if its really that awful of a week, start your weekend on Thursday.  (See my last blog entry for fun ideas for early weekends.)  However, most of all, try to get all of your work done during daylight hours so that you can use your nights for sleeping and catching up with the friends that you missed during your vacation.

Managing your Weekends!

So you've finally made it through your week of classes and tests and are ready to relax!  But wait, you still have a paper due next week, maybe even a test or quiz too.   Now what are you supposed to do?

If you have a crazy week ahead and need to spend your entire weekend studying, think about getting your fun for the weekend in on Thursday night, especially if you don't have any important classes on Friday morning.  This might seem like a weird idea, but it allows you to have enough fun to get you through your boring weekend.  Another plus is that, usually, if you have something big coming up in a class the next week, there usually won't be anything due the Friday before.  So take advantage of the fact that a lot of clubs have "College Night" or "Ladies Night" on Thursdays and get off campus! (A good club close to campus that has a Thursday College night is Posh.  Make sure that you're up to dress code- the picture is an example of how girls go dressed and, guys, wear jeans and NO tennis shoes.)

For a weekend where you have a moderate amount of work to do, take advantage of daylight hours.  If you can manage to get up in the mornings, just go to the library and get your work done so you can enjoy your nights.  Besides, nothing really starts on a weekend before 11pm.  Try to get all of your work done before 6pm, though, so you can go to dinner with your friends and then get ready to go out.

Another good option for getting all of your work done is going out one night of the weekend and staying home the other.  To do this you have to plan your weekend to pick the best night to go out and the night that you're going to be the most focused to stay home.

However much work you have to get done on the weekends, make sure to make a plan and stick to it!  Also, if you have a week from hell coming up, start making amazing plans for the minute that you are free.

Something's Gotta Give

Imagine this: it's about 5pm, you're just heading to grab a quick dinner before your night class, than you have a club sport practice, than Bible study, then a late night meeting for a club, then a paper to write, than a test to do some last minute cramming for.  This might not be the average student's everyday schedule, but most people will have nights where they feel like they're never going to be able to sleep again a couple of days a semester.  Or, if you managed to, as many students do, sign up for every activity that you've ever been interested in during the Student Involvement fair the first week of school, you might have nights like this several days a week.  (While reading this remember, sleep=amazing thing that keeps everyone healthy and happy.)

In general, if you have several nights or days a week that you absolutely dread, there is a really good chance that you've overcommitted yourself.  Most experts (i.e. professors or students) suggest that students, especially first-years, should become involved with ONE extra-curricular activity during their first semester that they feel like they could potentially stick with for four years. (Like under-graduate schools, graduate schools do like to see that students have managed to stay committed to an extra-curricular for all four years, which is a common reason for students to overcommit themselves.)  

So what do you do if you've already over-committed yourself?  One great option is to take advantage of the Trinity library.  It's probably the absolute best place on campus to guarantee that you will get work done.  There are a bunch of quiet corners, a good coffee place (which takes meal plan!) and, lets face it, if you're going to walk all the way to the library, you don't want to leave there before you get your work done.  Going to the library can help you ensure that you get all of your work out of the way before you start your nightly slog through all of your extra-curricular activities.

However, even with the help of the library, it can be possible to be too over-committed to function.  In these times, as the saying goes, something's gotta give.  If you aren't getting enough sleep, are really stressed out about not being able to give enough time to your commitments, or are worried about your schoolwork you should probably cut out an activity and maybe try to pick it up again when you have the time.  Quitting something is always tough but people at Trinity are usually very understanding and will probably better appreciate you being honest about not having enough time than you just not showing up for things all the time.  

Welcome to the World of No Time

Before we came to college, most of us heard something like this: "In college there are three parts of life- academia, social, and sleep.  You can do two of the three successfully."  Most parents use some variation of this quote to try and convince their son/daughter about how academics are more important than having a social life.  

However, this idea seems to be missing a lot about college life.  What about athletics (varsity, intramural, or club), Greek life, the music scene, or any of the million of clubs and extra-curricular activities that each campus offers?  The simple fact is that all college campus' contain hundreds of things that can easily fill up a student's time and, usually, there are enough activities that most kids can double-book all of their time within a few weeks of walking on campus.  

Trinity University is no exception to this rule and shows great pride in how many of its student participate in extra-curricular activities.  Along with the rigorous schedules that Trinity also encourages, life can get overwhelming incredibly quickly and then a lot of students, including myself, find themselves being forced into making choices between doing classwork for classes that they have to take and going to meetings for activities that they really care about.  So what should they do?  This blog is going to give examples of how my friends and I manage to get through school while still staying active in the Trinity community.  

The picture above is a classic example of how my hall tries to stay social while still getting work done.  Unfortunately trying to study and play soccer at the same time rarely works, but it does give us an excellent excuse for a study break, which is the first way to stay social during harder times in school.

"Study break"- Opportunities to throw all of the books on the floor, leave your room or the library, and spend time de-frying your brain.  Good study breaks can involve playing games, getting off-campus for awhile, and almost always involve food and large groups of over-stressed students.  When taken at the correct intervals, study breaks are a great way to get refreshed to go back and keep studying, especially if they involve making plans for after whatever all of you are studying for (like a test) is over!