COMMUNITYSTUDY

Debunking the Triangle Myth

It’s very hard to find ways to keep up with all your college work and still keep a balanced life. Many people say that when you get into college, you need to choose from two vertices of the first triangle while sacrificing the third one. Well, I need to tell you that that’s completely not true!

If you plan and organize your life, you will be able to manage your sleep schedule, your studying sessions and your night-outs without sacrificing one of them.

The first thing you need to do is being realistic. Instead of sleeping 9 hours a day, perhaps you will need to cut back to seven hours a day, which will probably provide enough energy throughout the day without letting your feel the burnout. On the other hand, you need to ration the time you spend with your friends and family. The best way to do so is scheduling a fixed schedule to be with them and dedicate yourself 100% during that time. It’s not how much time you have available that matters. What matters is what you do with the time you have available. Cutting back on fundamental aspects of your life will really hurt your grades – and if it doesn’t hurt your grades right away, it will hurt your body and state of mind sooner than you think. Sleepless nights have a mark on your body. On the other hand, depriving yourself of time spent with your loved ones can hurt and destroy relationships and in the end of the day, you’ll find out that those grades aren’t as worth as much as that.

Another thing I recommend is finding some sort of physical activity that helps you manage energy levels. Even running 10 minutes a day will do wonders for your physical and mental health, letting you cope with high stress levels and the feeling of burnout. Try to unplug from your college activities, listen to some music and concentrate on your body rather than on your brain.

You also need to prioritize. Choosing tons of classes just to feel productive is a waste of time. Having a heavily crowded schedule just for the sake of it will result in lower grades and a lower ability to focus on those classes. Pick classes that you think you can personally enjoy but can also help you on your chosen career path. Try to keep both of those aspects in mind when you’re picking subjects for the next semester, or else risking signing up for classes that are just filling you with stress and won’t even matter when you get your diploma.

Find a way to get help. You are not alone in this path and many of your classmates are probably feeling the same way. Try to get together and find a way to share some tasks or somehow trade notes and materials to help each other. If you can attend a lecture for any reason, don’t hesitate to ask for the class notes and assignments. If one of your classmates skips a lecture because they are sick, don’t hold back and hand them those notes. Finding a reading group is great to divide huge books into manageable chunks and distribute them between the members, so you have less reading to do and are able to summarize your part in a better way and then share your summary with your colleagues.

Anonymous asked: Could you possibly make a list of how to avoid getting burnt out throughout the school year? Last year I was in the top eight percent for GPA as a freshman, but I was so burnt out it’s a miracle I made it through the year. Now I am a sophomore with a heavier classload, and a job plus extracurriculars. Any advice?

1. Set aside one day a week dedicated to relaxing

In college it’s rather difficult to have a day when you don’t have ANY homework, but choose a day each week that you dedicate to yourself. Only do homework that absolutely needs to get done that day, then treat yourself to some time for your hobbies. Watch Netflix for hours, draw, go see a movie. A day dedicated to relaxing and staying away from academic work will really refresh you and get you ready to get back to work!

2. Alternate between academic work and non academic work during study sessions

If you have a bunch of assignments to do, don’t just try to get them all done in a row without any kind of breaks. You’ll get tired and this will make your work worse and take longer. After finishing one assignment, do something that isn’t related to school. Clean your room a little, take out the trash, make a snack- just do something that isn’t schoolwork. This will break the monotony of studying for hours on end and you’ll look forward to the short breaks in between assignments. 

3. Remember your goals

If you’re having trouble getting an assignment done and you find yourself thinking “I don’t really need to do this” remember what your goals are. Maybe you want a 3.0 at the end of the semester or you really want an A in that class. It’s easy to lose track of your goals, but imagine how good it will feel to have an A at the end of the semester. 

4. Take it one day at a time

It’s incredibly easy to look ahead in your calendar and get stressed out about future essays and projects. That kind of stress can cause you to just want to clock out and sleep for the rest of the semester. I recommend taking the semester one day at a time. Just focus on what you’re doing now. Plan out the week, not the whole semester. Before you know it, it will be finals week and you’ll have made it!

5. Become a part of a group that cares about school

First, definitely go through her notes on your essay! I find I’m a really horrible judge of my own work – when I think it’s good, it’s a bit below the mark; when I think it’s dreadful, it’s apparently not. But I’ve found that, no matter how much it hurts (and believe me – I know the sting of looking at constructive criticism very very closely, wishing you could just look away), you’ll benefit immeasurably from being able to apply corrections. My director of studies has said that aside from any other skill or knowledge I have or present, what’s most encouraging is that if a deficiency in my work is pointed out to me, it will be fixed the next time. No exception whatsoever. It definitely requires diligence though.

The next thing you might consider looking into is whether your professor has office hours (or if not, emailing and seeing if you can meet them outside of, or after, class). I know it can be extremely nerve-wracking to turn up to these for the first time – maybe go with a written set of questions in hand about exactly how you can do better, or specific questions about the content of a course topic, or perhaps discussing in further depth one of your arguments/trains of thought in an essay.

Hey!

Organisation Masterpost

Time Management

How to Study More Efficiently

How to Get Things Done

Managing a Busy Schedule