The New Year may be a good time to make resolutions, but the beginning of a new semester is a time when students frequently make them too. Like “this time I’m going to be so much more organised” or “I’m going to have read all the set texts even before the semester starts!” Sound familiar? Yet, the first week has flown by and you’ve forgotten to do the first three tasks on your resolution list already!
Here are the top 5 things you should do at the beginning of semester… but often don’t:
1. Buy all the required books/textbooks/equipment
You had every intention of not only purchasing all of the books you need for your spring modules, but also reading everything in advance. You were going to be that well-prepared, bushy-eyed student for a change. Yet somehow, in the hectic exam period, you ignored the emails from your tutor reminding you of the reading list on Moodle or equipment required for the module. Suddenly, the first seminar is in two days and you’re drastically unprepared. Hopefully forking out for next day delivery on Amazon will mean you’ll have everything on time…
2. Get a gym membership
Christmas is inevitably a time of gluttony and excess. According to the British Dietetic Association, the average weight gain over the festive period is 5lb. You may have felt no guilt about that extra slice of Christmas cake, as you knew you were going to work it all off with that new gym membership. However, it’s now two weeks into the semester and the closest you’ve come to doing any exercise is the walk for the 34 bus. Before you know it deadlines will be looming and that gym plan just won’t seem as important anymore.
3. Return all those books to the library
During the exam/deadline period, a mountainous pile of library books are probably a fairly common feature on all students’ desks. Despite how much of a headache it gave you, it is all too easy to forget about that massive hoard of textbooks during your post-exam celebrations. Now the flood of loan letters have started to pour into your university inbox and you’ve got a huge heap of fines to pay off. Not to mention the task of lugging them up Portland Hill – if you haven’t managed to initiate that gym plan, then at least returning your books will be a work out in itself!
4. Join a new society
The University of Nottingham has 200+ societies, from Bladesoc to RPGsoc, so there’s bound to be something you haven’t tried before. Why not use the beginning of the term as an opportunity to try something new?
Well, that’s what you thought when you signed up for the free taster sessions at the Refreshers’ Fair. But old habits die hard. NuSnow was fun, but spending £10 every week to train at a dry ski slope? You could buy a whole round of drinks with that!
5. Deep-clean your room/house
When the work starts stacking up, the cleanliness of student accommodation is often the first thing to suffer. Even the tidiest housemate doesn’t seem to mind that there’s a stack of unwashed dishes causing a weird smell in the kitchen. I mean, they will get done once everyone has finished, won’t they?
Perhaps not. Unfortunately, hangovers and a sense of liberation can just as easily crush your will to get scrubbing as much as that 3000 word essay you had to write. Soon, your first lecture arrives and you’ve lost all your stationary under a wave of Red Bull cans and empty pizza boxes that you forgot to throw out before. But it’s okay – whilst getting out that huge bin bag ready to spring clean, you will tell yourself that you definitely won’t let this happen again next semester and you’ll be far more organised… right?
Edited by Harriet Dunlea