I know some people lament when there’s nothing planned for a whole month of their lives (and younger me definitely would have), but I am so exhausted after this semester that I am going to soak up every ounce of the time I have at home not studying. That’s not to say this semester wasn’t valuable; clearly it was, otherwise I would not be writing this blog post.
If I had to boil it down to three points that I understood this semester, it’d have to be these:
Today’s you should prepare for tomorrow’s you
Last semester, I got stuck in a terrible state of fight or flight after week 8 and I was determined to not let that happen this time around. At college, sometimes it can feel like if you are ahead, you are on time, and if you are on time, you are already behind.
To combat this, I tried to stay ahead for as long as possible. The sheer amount of panic of falling behind was enough to get me to generally avoid procrastinating. Technically, I had this realization before this semester, but I really got to work implementing it this time around: Today’s you can make tomorrow’s you so much less miserable. Work a little bit on that lab. At least make a Goodnotes notebook for that assignment. You don’t have to wait until a certain time to start studying for that midterm — if you have time now, go for it.
Your time is like your bank account.
Would you overdraft your checking account or try to live paycheck to paycheck? At least if you’re fiscally responsible, you’d attempt to avoid it. Unexpected expenses always come up, and you have to find a way to pay for them. Your time is no different — things will always take longer than you expect, and random things you didn’t plan for will always end up on your calendar. If you’ve blocked out every waking moment of your life to something that has to be done, when anything extra pops up, something’s going to have to give.
The goal is to avoid that.
Debugging your lab takes five more hours than you anticipated. You can’t just … not finish your assignment. Your friend might ask you to go with them to a recruiting event (that you should probably go to, too).
If you’re here after stalking me from Viterbi Admissions (hi!), this is the real, unfiltered answer of how I stay on top of things. Next semester, I would like to improve the way I budget time for assignments, though.
Straight out of a movie
Make incremental quality of life changes
If you notice something isn’t working for you day-to-day, find out where the problem is and fix it. While this definitely sounds easier said than done, I found that testing small changes for their efficacy would inspire me to find more solutions to my problems.
For example, I have an alarm at 22:45 (15 minutes before my target bedtime of 23:00) to clean up my apartment. I’m not doing a deep clean by any means, but I’ll get up and try to at least clean up one section of the apartment — take my clothes off my bed and stick them into my closet, wipe down my desk, or sweep my kitchen. This makes it a lot more manageable when I inevitably have to do that deep clean. It’s also a good reminder that it’s time to wind down and get ready to go to bed!
I also started setting reminders for recurring tasks (like daily Duolingo, budget logging, or paying my rent) to force myself to do them at regular intervals. If I know my friends also need to do the same task, I’ll remind them, too; I’ve helped friends remember to submit their timesheets to get paid by the university!
A beautiful sunset to welcome me home
Health is wealth
I’m sure you’ve heard this lots of times before, but literally nothing matters if you are not physically and mentally well. After implementing the first two lessons I pointed out above, I realized that the only ways I was getting irreparably derailed during the semester was due to factors out of my control — with the biggest one being my health. It’s really hard to do anything cognitively demanding when you’re sick or hungry or tired. What if we just found ways to minimize those times as much as possible?
I prioritized getting 8 hours of sleep per night, eating foods that made me feel good, and regularly working out to try to stave off those unavoidable pesky college-borne illnesses. While I still ended up getting sick (of course), it definitely wasn’t as bad as it could’ve potentially been, and trying to stay ahead definitely helped me not collapse any more than I already did towards the end of the semester.
Three more to go? I can’t tell if I want it to all be over or if I want it to last forever.
Who said the leaves can't change color in LA?