Hi everyone! Sorry for not making a post in a while! I’ve been enjoying my summer and got a few new toys to play with, like a netbook! I’ve also been reading some books recommended to me by some friends, and I just can’t wait to share them with you! Though I want to only share my thoughts on a book after I’m completely finished reading it as to not make any misleading statements.
So onto the point, this post is for those of you entering into their 2A term. Pretty much everyone you’ve met told you how stressful the 2A term can be, how everything will hit you at once.
Being in Biotech/CA, I had an insane workload last term consisting of 6 courses and 2 labs, which gave me 8 exams to study for. Add activities, attending events, and everything else to that, and you don’t have much free time. Being through a stressful term already, I just want to share with everyone some tips on good time management, balance, and dealing with stress from both my own experience and the experience of others that I’ve gathered!
I’m going to write a 3 part post, covering study habits, school/life balance, and dealing with stress. This post is going to be about good study habits, time management, and how to get your stuff done before it becomes a crisis!
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Ok, here’s the reality, no one likes studying. Some people can tolerate it better than others and may prefer it over work, but it’s not going to be anyone’s favourite past time. So if your excuse is that you simply don’t like studying neither do I. So what’s the secret to developing good study habits?
1) You have to care. Your academic achievements has to be important to YOU. You have to raise your personal standards to where you want your marks to be! For example, some people are ok with a 70%, others feels bad if they drop below 90%! It’s a matter of personal standard and past experiences. If you want your mark to go up from a 80% to a 90%, you will need to honestly make your new standard 90%, and will not feel ok with an 80% anymore. You can do this my hanging around people that also gets 90%’s, and a 90% average will start to become a standard and not an exceptional job. We can’t be constantly “exceptional” in our own eyes, or else it’s not called exceptional anymore! This doesn’t mean copying off the 90% group or getting them to feed you answers, it means making genuine friendships with them and adopt their way of thinking and see how they deal with things.
One think you should know, we will ALWAYS find justifications for ourselves for our standards. Don’t trust any excuses you make for yourself. I remember a time when my marks were miserable and didn’t participate in any activities at all. But I thought that I was better in my own way because I was unique and free thinking, unlike the other “drones” that follows mainstream thinking. That might be true to a certain degree, but face it, I was just making excuses for myself.
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2) Start panicking (trigger your sense of urgency) earlier. We put off a report or studying for weeks and then do it on the last day, why? Because we start panicking then, and that’s when we get serious, stop procrastinating and actually get some work done! So the key is to start that urgent feeling earlier. This will eliminate a lot of last minute work, leaves you at least a day to check over your work and confirm your answers, eliminate a lot of stress, and always keep yourself one step ahead of the deadline!
Now how would you actually go about doing that? This takes time, practice, and determination. Next time you have an assignment, promise yourself that you’ll finish it 2 days before it’s due, and carry through with it. Make a big deal out of it if it’s not done 2 days before the deadline! Yes this does takes a lot of will power. The best time to start is at the beginning of a term when your energy and determination is at its peak. Obviously no one can stick to this rule all the time, procrastination is human nature! However, try to do this continuously for as long as you can when the term begins, and even after you break the rule, try to apply it to as many tasks as possible! You will slowly start to develop a habit out of it, and you’ll have a great start to your term at the very least! But remember this does take time, and is part of developing a habit, not an instant cure!
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One of the biggest problems with everyone is time management. I have never had luck with making definite schedules for myself, I feel like tell myself exactly when to do what makes me a robot, and that just doesn’t fit my nature. Some people are wonderful with schedules (in that case go for it!), but most people have problems actually doing something when the schedule dictates it. That’s normal, and there’s no magic cure for that, but here’s a few suggestions:
1) Make your schedule more flexible and reasonable! Don’t be too specific on your schedule, try to only limit it to only 5 different categories: Work, Play, Eat, Sleep, and Free time. Don’t be much more specific than that! The free time category is important, it gives you some time to do whatever you want (work, play, eat, sleep) without doubting yourself! It gives you a sense of freedom from your schedule that is desperately needed by people like me! =P Also make your schedule reasonable to your limits. You can’t stick with an unreasonable schedule, and you’ll soon abandon it. Test your schedule for a week first and see if you’re OK with it. Constantly modify it if you need to.
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2) Just do it! As much as I like to give you tips on how to make yourself more prepared, there’s times… actually A LOT of times where you just need to do the work. Starting the work is usually the hardest part. Procrastination is always going to be there, and here’s some tips for fighting procrastination and how to start grinding away at the work:
- Have a clear mind without other problems bugging you. I’ll talk more on this in the dealing with stress post.
- Keeping on top of your work already, when you’re already on top of things, you want to continue to be on top of things. Yes, inertia really IS everywhere! And panicking earlier will help you keep on top of things.
- Start the work! Sit down, open your binder, textbook, or open the file on your computer! Even when you don’t feel like studying or doing a report or assignment, getting it in front of you might just motivate you enough to start. I find it easier to control yourself physically, than mentally. It’s easier to put something in front of you than do actually do the work, but putting the work in front of you will usually make starting on the work easier. Use that to your advantage, make yourself physically ready to do work even when you don’t feel like doing something due to mental resistance.
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THE biggest problem for everyone is procrastination, which is perfectly normal. Just try your best, and if you do fail at controlling yourself at times, don’t beat yourself up over it. Know and take comfort in the fact that it’s everyone’s problem, but you can and should do something to fight against it when you need to. Fighting against procrastination takes a combination of triggering your sense of urgency earlier, just doing the work (will power), and making sure that you get the amount of rest and play that you require.
Sometimes you DO need that break. You can never win against procrastination if you don’t treat yourself right, because then it’s your body telling you that you need to rest (even if it’s just from thinking about stressful things). In order to work hard, you have to remember to play hard as well!
One last piece of advice, Everything I’ve wrote up to now if pretty ideal, I can’t do all these things 100% of the time, no one can. Work towards it, but never beat yourself up over it! It’s important that you have a positive attitude all the time, praise yourself when you do well, if you didn’t do as well as you would’ve liked, be glad that you at least tried and that experience alone made you a stronger person!
Of course productivity has a direct relationship on stress and your work/life balance. Which I will be talking about in later posts. I hope you learned something from this post, please comment! Stay tuned for the other 2 posts in the “How to survive a successful term” series!
