The Key to Balancing Life and Academics in College

By Ashley Brooks

College is all about new experiences and new responsibilities that many students have never come across before.  In order to make it through your freshman year unscathed, you need to determine the fine line between balancing a social life and the increasing amounts of homework that you will receive daily.  High school and college are vastly different, and in completely different realms as far as the work goes.  Most of your homework in high school was usually “busy work” intended to make sure the students are learning something, while college homework consists of paper after paper, researching articles, and reading around a hundred pages a night.  In order to achieve some semblance of a personal life, you need to establish early on what your limitations are.

Scheduling is the main area wherein homework can pile up.  If you take the majority of your classes on the same days, be aware that you will have homework for all these classes on the alternate days.  Sometimes it’s easier to break up classes throughout the week, and therefore break up the amount of work.  Also be wary of scheduling too many classes on one day, because once mid terms and finals come along, you will be taking back to back tests on one day.  Once you have established a schedule that you are happy with, set aside time each day to work on your homework; it also helps to determine which class will be your most difficult class, and therefore the one that will be the most time consuming to finish work in.

It never helps to labor over a specific problem for hours at a time, when you have professors who have office hours in order to assist their students with homework problems.  If you ever encounter a problem like that, remember that professors are there for a reason, and there are also many tutors and study aids around most campuses.  It becomes increasingly frustrating to spend hours over one specific problem after you discover the solution could have been completed in only a few minutes. 

Projects also take up a great amount of time for college students, although this can be easily avoided should the student do bits and pieces in advance.  Waiting until the night before can cause un-needed all-nighters, as well as undue stress, especially when you could have begun the projects weeks before.  Projects are handed out early in order to cause the least amount of stress to students, and allow them to still have a life while in college, instead of holing themselves up in order to complete the many papers and projects that come rolling in.  Additionally, be advised that many papers and projects will be due toward the end of each semester, so it is easier to get a head start at least a month before so as you will not have huge projects due in every class without ample time to complete them.

College is mostly about finding yourself and enjoying your life as you do so.  True, school is the main focus, but most professors realize that this is a new experience, and try not to complete overwork their students.  Overall, the main goal students should remember is to get parts of assignments completed every day, which allows for more social activity later on in the evening, rather than allowing work to pile up at the end.

5 Ways to Boost Your College Experience

By Ashley Brooks

Yes, we all go to college to study and earn good grades so that we can secure the job of our dreams, but academics are not all that makes college the wonderful experience that it is. There’s much more than books to the four years of our life that we spend making new friends and gaining wisdom through new experiences. If you’re looking to maximize your college years, here’s how you can make the most of them in the best way possible:

•    Adopt the right attitude towards health: It cannot be emphasized enough – without health, there is nothing else. You cannot do the things you want to do or go places you want to see if you’re ill or in a physically poor condition. And since it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks, it’s best to get a head start on good fitness habits when you’re in college itself. You could either take up a sport or exercise regularly or as often as your schedule permits. You also need to eat the right foods so that your mind remains alert and conducive to studying hard for long hours at a stretch. Besides, if you’re healthy and fit, you look great and attract more attention among the opposite sex.

•    It’s not all about parties and booze: College is a time when parties are the norm and where alcohol flows like water. It’s ok to get caught up in the mania once in a while but when partying takes up all your time, your grades are going to suffer. You also need to be wary of getting into drugs because of peer pressure because once you’re hooked, it’s very hard to steer your life back to the normal way of things. Besides, you’re also in a position to get into trouble with the law, something you don’t want on your permanent record. 

•    Be wise about money matters: If you’re paying for college using a loan, you know you’re going to face an uphill climb once you graduate and have to pay it back. Even if you’re there because your parents were wise enough to save up for you, you need to be careful with the way you use your credit cards and spend your money because, let’s face it, a life of debt is a horrible thing to face and money certainly doesn’t grow on trees. 

•    Let down your hair once in a while: And for all you bookworms out there, take the time to socialize and paint the town red once every now and then. The only thing you need to worry about is if you’re doing anything that could be recorded for posterity, something that could possibly come back to bite your butt and embarrass you later in life when you’ve matured and are in a respectable position.

•    Learn good habits: I’m not saying you have to wake up with the birds every day, but it’s a great way to start the day when you’re up with the sun. You feel fresher and more energized, and you have more time for the things you want to do during the day. You can prepare for your classes and get there early, you can use the time to enroll in an additional class, or you can just take the time to commune with nature. It’s also wise to keep pace with your lessons and complete your assignments on time rather than leave everything till your exams are around the corner.

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