The stress of first semester is the hardest to overcome. From the stress of school, joining every club on campus and making sure you shower and keep up with chores around your dorm everything feels overwhelming. It feels like the work piles up load after load, but with a few helpful college hacks this stress can be alleviated in minutes. These five tips below are the reason that I am still a college student today.
1. Color Code
From here on out, color coding is your life and go to. This may seem like a typical thing that the classic “white girl” would do, but still, 10 out of 10 would and will always use this for the rest of my life. Your colors are your own options based on the classes you’re taking, the amount of clubs or other activities you’re in and even what random stuff you want to write in your planner (e.g. birthdays, meetings). I would put a guide for each color in your planner because it is most likely you won’t remember all 20,000 colors you may use at first.
Not only would I suggest using this tip in your planner you carry around, but also on a dry erase calendar or even an already printed out calendar to hang in your room somewhere. Try to use the same colors if it’s a dry erase marker or at least similar colors, if you decide to use a printed out calendar, then use the same pens or markers for each subject or event type. By color coding your life, your brain is able to split the different subjects and activities up better. This way you don’t just think “Oh, I have a class at 9, 11:15, and 3.” Instead you can know, “Alright, so at 9 I have Chemistry, 11:15 I have German, and 3 I have Pre-Calculus” just by looking at the colors. This also helps when writing down all homework in order for you to not have to say, “in Chem I have…, German I have…, and PreCal I have…,” instead you can just say the actual assignments.
2. Study Groups
This is a tip that most people give a lot of the time to students– go to study groups. Not only does it help to have people that understand the subject well that will be able to explain it to you, but it also allows for you to try and explain the things you know well to them. It’s cohesive and you get to work together by explaining the subject topic to another person. It forces you to understand it very well yourself and also refreshes the topic in your brain for extra practice (and practice does make for perfect). This can be just a random group of people that you see in your class or you’re sitting around or it can be people you notice are doing very well, or poorly, in the class. By forming study groups you relieve the stress of not understanding things or being able to explain certain topics to yourself or reading it out of the textbook and/or notes from class.
3. Plan Ahead
Many people may say to do this, but never really stick to it or know what’s the best way to do it. Every Sunday morning I wake up, enjoy my coffee and plan my week on my bigger agenda with my color coding techniques. I write down what classes I have for each day, their times, study group sessions, tests or quizzes, projects or big papers due, events for my sorority and other details that may come up within the week. For each individual day, I go into greater detail when writing in my personal agenda. I reference from my bigger agenda to get the main events of the day and then write in my homework including the due dates and chores. I also write in a times for each day to be awake as a little weekly goal. By planning my week ahead, I am able to think about my life and feel in control over my week to come making me not as stressed out each day or each morning.
4. Outside Activity
Many people will HIGHLY disagree with this statement and say that taking on another task will just add to one’s stress level. I think differently. Although, it is good to stay on top of school work and have this as a focus to college having an outside activity serves as a way for you to meet people and destress from your day to day life. Plus, the people in your group/organization will probably be feeling the same amount of stress as you (hello free vent sessnions). Joining this outside activity will make you think about things other than school, which isn’t bad! Focusing solely on school work will drive a person insane. And these activities can literally be anything. Rushing in a sorority, volunteering, joining a club/ intramural sport, getting a job or a combination of these things.
5. Find Your “Places” on Campus
Once you’ve gotten into the groove of school and gotten a solid schedule, you may notice yourself going to a particular place to study (library, garden, coffee shop or even your dorm room). This place is for you to go to escape from all distractions and think solely about your work. For the first few weeks, try a few different places out till you feel yourself wanting to go back to one place or stay there for a longer time to study. Once you’ve found this place, now find another place, but this one isn’t for studying. This place is where you’ll go to in order to get your mind off of school and think about happier things, you know like puppies and your Pinterest boards! This could be your outside activity’s meeting location, your dorm room (if you found you couldn’t study effectively there), a certain restaurant or any other location that you feel stress free from school. Make sure that you actually use this location! Force yourself to go there at least twice times a week but go when it’s good for you (meaning don’t force yourself to go to the park at 2 am when you should be sleeping). You may even have two or three places that you go to and you end up going to each one once a week.
College can be very stressful, especially during your first semester, but you can really alleviate by finding your place to study or being organized or even branching out and joining a club. They’re tried and true methods and they will most definitely help during this semester! Good luck, collegiettes! HCXO