Off To College Soon And Wondering Who You’ll Keep In Touch With

As summer passes, you’re hopefully spending your days visiting friends who will soon be heading off to different colleges, starting new jobs, or perhaps sticking around your hometown while you’ll be off to a new place! It’s all very exciting, no doubt, but an unspoken question arises: who will you keep in touch with?

Hopefully everyone, right?! Hopefully. However, you’ll find as you start college, that that’s very tough to do. Actually, it really isn’t too tough considering how easy it is to email, Facebook, or text an old friend. Still, really keeping in touch can be tough. You’ll be busy, you’ll be making friends, you’ll have plenty of other things on your mind... and so will your now far-away friend.

It would seem awfully impersonal to try and make a list of friends you’ll keep in touch with and friends that you likely won’t. So instead of going to such an extreme measure, take a more natural approach to it. You’ll be in touch with your best friends, but give other friends an occasional shout-out on Facebook. In truth, keeping in touch doesn’t have to mean sending pages-long letters to each other or talking for hours at a time. A quick hey, how’s it going? will make old friends feel good. It’ll mean you’re still thinking of them. Sure, it can be a little harsh, but the truth is you won’t be able to fly or drive out to visit all those old friends who are now so spread out. So do the best you can.

But if you do have the time and resources to get out and see old friends, by all means. We’re all guilty a bit of taking friends for granted, especially when we see them every day. When you can reunite with an old friend after not seeing him or her for a while, it makes anyone’s friendship that much better. So when it comes down to it, understand that you won’t be in touch with every friend from high school. But not being in touch doesn’t mean ignoring someone either. Keep in contact at least somewhat, and when you can take the chance to see old friends in person, do it!

Is Procrastination Really Such A Bad Habit?

Perhaps the most amazing and unrecognized—and certainly unofficial—of college students’ academic feats is the ability to complete an assignment at record pace. A 10-page paper? Done in two hours. Earning an A after a full night of review for that test? Actually, it was  a full hour of review. Teachers and parents will forever lament this bad practice of procrastination. But is it such a problem?

You’ll never find a universal answer to that. However, procrastination, a college habit of which we’re all guilty at times, could have its benefits. Firstly, however, any benefits seem slim when compared to the advantages of not procrastinating: getting work done at a steady pace will allow you to think carefully, plan out your completion of an assignment, and review your progress at the end—a procrastinated assignment allows for none of this. But it’s now Sunday night, and that big project is due Monday morning—let’s look on the bright side, if there is one.

Procrastination offers little choice: you have to concentrate on your work. Between checking your email and checking your cellphone, there are enough distractions to keep your mind off your work on any given night. Those tempting distractors will hold a lot less sway when you’re on a tight deadline; procrastination forces you to concentrate on the task at hand, and sometimes great work is the result.

Working under pressure, while never exactly pleasant, is a good skill to have. College life and academics offer plenty of pressure, but so can the workplace. When you’re out of school and on the job, there will be more to learn and new pressures to settle with. Hopefully you’ll take a more active approach to work when entering the working world, but at least you’ll have had experience working under time pressure, a job skill that can even be carefully applied to a resume.

Procrastination also develops your on-the-fly critical thinking. If the sun’s creeping up and that 10-page paper still doesn’t have a theme to it, it’s time for some speedy critical thinking. Perhaps you’ll come up with just as good an idea as if you had weeks to plan—consider yourself one gifted procrastinator if that’s the case. If you can still produce acceptable work at that pace, not only can you think quickly, but your results aren’t half bad either. This is the type of skill that can’t hurt to develop, but it’s also one that shouldn’t be your focus. Knowing you can complete an assignment in a time crunch is a nice crutch to have, but procrastination is procrastination, and it shouldn’t be your go-to method for schoolwork.

The most important thing to learn is how to better plan your time so you don’t end up procrastinating every assignment. Alas, that’s easier said than done; procrastinators don’t plan very well, now do they. Procrastination will happen, but try and keep it to a minimum. When it sets in, though, just think, working well at that pace is a skill, a skill that’s even worth taking some time to hone. 

College Can Be Hard Enough. Sleeping Shouldn’t Be

When you’re trying to catch a few Zs in college, it shouldn’t feel like a chore. On some nights, after studying late, late into the night, it won’t be hard to fall asleep at all; you’ll have wanted to get to bed for the past several hours! Still, other nights it can be tough trying to get to sleep in college. You’ll be in a dorm room, which might be the size of your closet back home. Suffice it to say, it can take some getting used to trying to sleep in your new surroundings.

If you’re having trouble sleeping, we could tell you to cut the caffeine, but we know that realistically that’s just not an option sometimes. Being realistic, if you’ve been sucking down coffee all night to stay awake, don’t plan on sleeping well or falling asleep easily. But for non-caffeine-induced sleeping issues, there are better solutions than just saying oh well and staying up all night.

DormCo sells some dorm products designed to help you rest better. From eye masks to white noise machines to the softest dorm bedding you can get, there are a variety of dorm supplies to help you rest better. Still, those college items can be coupled with other techniques. First off, as difficult as it may be, try to get to bed around the same time most nights. Some nights you’ll be up late studying or being social. Those nights will happen, and you just won’t be able to be in bed every night by 10 or 11. But when you can, by all means go for it. If you don’t start classes until later on most days, staying up late and sleeping in won’t necessarily be a sign that you’re slacking! Hopefully your class schedule isn’t all over the place, and if it’s not, you should by all means attempt to get to bed around the same time.

If you have trouble sleeping at night, what about trying during the day? That’s right. Naps in college are huge. Since your class schedule probably won’t have you going back to back to class after class, you’ll have time to catch a nap during the afternoon. Take advantage of that time. Most dorms are located near classrooms around campus, meaning you’ll have time to sleep and not be late for your next class. If you have trouble sleeping at night, at least a nap can help you get through the day!

Reading when you can’t sleep has long been recommended. But don’t go reading fantasy novels! You might as well read your textbooks for class. If that doesn’t put you to sleep, we don’t know what will! Just kidding... sort of. You might not absorb material as easily when you’re tired, but if it helps you sleep, that’s what’s important. Or, if you already did your reading skim back through the textbook. Either way, we’re betting you’ll start feeling tired soon. If not, trying answering those review questions at the end of each chapter. That will take your mind off things, and probably tire you out quickly too.

Don’t Waste Your Summer! Start Preparing Now

Now that summer’s landed, it’s finally time to relax and hangout with friends all day, right? Well, yes … and no. If you just graduated from high school, you’ll have at least a couple months to relax. It’ll give you plenty of time to chill, but don’t overdo it! The summer is a terrible thing to waste, so don’t let it happen. Whether you work, start early on your studying, or do some volunteering, try and make summer months constructive. Yes, you’ll still have plenty of time to relax, but why not do something else before you begin having to spend your days studying and studying away?

A summer job is never a bad idea. No matter what it is, and even if you don’t like it, you’ll obviously have some more money if you take a summer job. College life, even on a budget, will be expensive. Aside from the big bills that college tacks on, there will be the cost of textbooks and other school supplies. And when everyone’s going to the movies or out for dinner, it’s a bummer if you can’t go because you don’t have the money. A summer spent working also means that when school does roll around, it’ll be a break from your summer job! Maybe you’ll like your summer job, though … maybe. It can also be quite a system shock to go from lounging around all day to having to study a lot! If you had a summer job, though, you’ll be used to having to get some work done.

If you don’t have to spend your summer working, it’s not a bad time to get a head start on your studies, if you know what you want to study. It might sound a bit bookish, but grab a textbook or just do some general research on the subject that should be your major. The nice thing about doing school-related work that isn’t required is that you can schedule your own study times and frankly do as much or as little as you’d like. Reading a single paragraph might not count as studying, but there’s no need to be pulling all nighters and making it rigorous. It’s summer after all! Any knowledge you can gain ahead of time will come in handy, as it can only help out those grades and make the whole learning side of college much easier.

You should also consider doing some volunteer work over the summer. You’ll feel great knowing that you helped out and did something more beneficial than sitting on the couch all day. Who does that benefit? Well, no one really, aside from the TV network business. It’s true that volunteering shouldn’t be done solely to pad your resume, but having some volunteer work on your resume will look good at any point. It can also be a cool way to try something different or be a part of an organization you wouldn’t have otherwise been a part of. If your alternative to volunteering is sleeping in until noon and then staying in your bathrobe all day, which situation sounds better? You’ll feel good and help out plenty of other people too.

So no matter what you decide for the summer, don’t waste that time! Your next summers might be spent having to work to help pay those college bills. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but if you do have some freedom. Take advantage of that. Finally, don’t forget to have some fun! It is summer, the weather’s nice, you don’t have any homework, and it is glorious.