With a demanding school schedule, work, school clubs, internships, friends and relationships all asking for your time, it’s easy to lose yourself and your creativity during the semester. Being overwhelmed by responsibilities and assignments happens often in college, but it’s important to know you have resources to help you.
A first step to conquer your schedule and take back your creativity is to make a plan. Academic advisers are always eager to help you with any decisions about your schedule and major. They can also help you create a plan for the current semester and those to come.
Here’s how you can schedule a USF advisor appointment:
- Log on to MyUSF
- Go to the “Learning & Teaching Tools” tab
- Select “Advisor Appointments”
- Select a campus and major to find an advisor
Following a meeting with your academic adviser, stopping by the library for tutoring can be a great help. Knowing the material, or just having someone to refresh your memory and give you study tips, can be a start to getting yourself back on track.
As a journalism major, I sometimes find it difficult to be motivated and inspired with my article topics. Writing multiple stories a week, along with papers for my other writing intensive courses, can feel overwhelming. Writing, which is something I love, can feel like a chore at times. It can feel like I’ve lost myself in the ocean of assignments and adult responsibilities.
One personal tip I can share is to write from experience and write about your passions. Choosing topics for my stories from things I see in the news that speak to me or things I’ve personally done on campus helps me stay focused and determined to keep writing stories.
Another way that I have personally taken back my creativity this semester is by using free tools and resources available to me for creating multimedia. Personally, I’ve never been great at art or digital design, so creating multimedia for stories always felt like a daunting task, but that changed this semester.
For starters, the library is an amazing resource for all your creative needs. USF students have access to the entire Adobe Creative Cloud on USF computers. If you need helping learning and navigating these programs, the USF Digital Media Commons provides free workshops in the library for students as well as a “badging” program that helps you spice up your résumé and CV.
The Digital Media Commons also allows students to check out audio and video equipment for any of your creative projects. Many of the items available have links to instructions for beginner users, so don’t be too intimidated to check out equipment for yourself.
For additional multimedia creation, I’ve found there are a ton of free websites to help me create exactly the content I want: Canva, for example, has become my best friend this semester. With hundreds of free templates, illustrations, pictures and fonts, I’ve been able to turn my ideas into professional-looking graphics. Below is a Canva tutorial by Kimberly Anna Jimenez.
Other Multimedia Tools:
If you’re in a rut, know that you are not alone. College is a stressful time for everyone, and we all go through periods where we don’t feel like ourselves. Being aware of the resources available to you can help you get a handle on things. It’s important to know that you own the semester and you can be creative and expressive, despite what seems like endless responsibilities.
Photos from Creative Commons