As winter break comes to a close for us college students, it is time to start thinking about the coming semester. Being in college for a while now has made me more prepared for the coming semester, especially the spring because it is a much shorter time frame than summer break. If I am being completely honest here, I really try to prepare at least two weeks before the semester starts in order to prepare. Why? You may ask? It is not because I am reading textbooks ahead of time or perusing over the syllabus (if I get it early). Most of the work that goes into preparing for the new semester has to do with the behind the scenes work that goes into making my semester go as smoothly as possible. In this post, I am going to show you five ways in order to make that happen.
1. Print out your schedule This is probably the easiest, but the most crucial tip because printing out your schedule gives you an overall view in how your schedule is going to look like for the semester. Decide to take the 5 minutes out of your day to print out your schedule and keep it somewhere you can find it (because you are going to need it later). Or, if you don't want to waste any ink printing it out, another great option is to write it down in your planner or agenda so that it is easily accessible and you can easily reference it. 2. Buy your books (two weeks in advance) If you've been in college for a while, I'm sure you've heard to wait to buy your textbooks until the first day of classes just to be sure that the professor assigns the right textbook or just in case anything changes on the first day of classes. My opinion is that if you find out which books you need from your classes from either the bookstore or the professor themselves, just buy them early. If it is the wrong textbook, you can always return it. There is nothing worse than arriving to class the first day, receiving an assignment to read x amount of chapters and not having the book. However, if you absolutely have to wait until the first day, maybe ask the professor if they could put up the first couple chapters in your school's portal while you are waiting for your textbook. If there is more than one student like this (and usually there is) the professor might be more inclined to do this. 3. Set goals/ intentions Before the semester begins I think that it is very important to set goals or intentions for the semester. Without setting goals and/or intentions you may run the risk of falling behind on your classes, not having your time managed, and you might be more stressed out. Make it a point at the beginning of each semester to write out at least one goal for every class. At the beginning of the semester, evaluate your classes try to see which ones seem more challenging than others, and based off of this, set some goals/intentions. For example, one goal can be for my Statistics class that I will go and see the professor before every exam to make sure I have and understand all of the information that will be on the test. Although this is something relatively simple, I think that it can definitely change the course of how your semester goes by setting goals. 4. Maintain healthy habits This is probably the tip that gets taken for granted the most! (well, at least for me) It is so important to maintain healthy habits such as exercising, eating right, and also getting enough sleep. When you're in college it is so easy to brush off these things for the sake of academics. From my own personal experience, I have skipped many workout sessions and just used snacks as a source of fuel and energy. This really took a toll on my physical and mental health. So before the semester begins, take a look at your schedule (see point #1) and make healthy habits (i.e. exercise, sleep, and healthy meals) a PRIORITY. If you don't make these things a priority your schedule will take control of you and your time and you could find yourself burnt out by the amount of stress. 5. Put everything into your calendar/agenda Referring back to point #1 again, once you have your schedule put all the dates and times in your planner. Then put in dates for extra-curricular activities, volunteer/work hours, upcoming events you plan to attend, and also those healthy habits. Once you have all of these dates set and planned in your calendar it will be much easier to see what you have coming up. This way you won't double book yourself for a meeting with your advisor that interferes with one of your classes. So that's it! These are five easy ways to prepare for the upcoming semester. Let me know what you think. Leave a comment below on what kind of tips you have in order to prepare for the semester. ~Stephanie
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Hi, I'm StephanieI am an undergraduate psych major who enjoys creative writing, collecting stationery, and watching The Walking Dead.
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