Sometimes, things just don’t work out the way you planned.
For example, at the beginning of this school year, I promised myself that I would actively keep up with all the readings in all my courses. With midterm season come and gone, I realized that I fell behind in 3 of my courses while studying for midterms. I’m currently trying my best to mitigate the setback by doing my readings for at least 3 hours a day until I’m caught up with all my courses. Nevertheless, this setback was not planned!
It feels like I have a tower of readings to complete before I catch up!
As a U of T student, we have access to numerous fantastic resources, scholarships, and world-famous libraries. However, personally, my favourite perk of being at U of T is our Hart House membership, or generally, our access to daily free drop-in fitness classes.…
The Thirsty Buddha brand of coconut water.
A few weeks ago, I was talking to a friend of mine who was extensively explaining to me the benefits of drinking coconut water. “It’s changed my life,” she exclaimed. “I drink it more than I drink regular water. I’m on my feet for longer and I hardly get tired during the day anymore, especially during workouts.” When I got home, I googled it and found that there were a lot of benefits, such as good carbs, electrolytes, and a heaping lot of potassium. Since the Community Crew was running a self care campaign that week, I decided to try switching out regular water for coconut water entirely for the week to see where the hype was. I compiled my thoughts from the journal I kept during the week into this blog post for you all to see my experience.
Setting up Forest before tackling one of my essays
One of my goals this year—as a Career Centre blogger and as an undergraduate student—is to focus more on my career through exploring different jobs, networking, and building my skills and resume. However, as midterms and essays and extracurricular activities started to pile up during October, I realized I wasn’t contributing as much time to developing my career as I would like.
In university, I think it’s just as important to strengthen your employability as it is to get an education. An undergraduate degree is usually just four years. After that, you’re in the work force for most of your adult life. Thinking about this partly motivates me even more to prepare for life after graduation, and partly sends me into a panic.
Since October was not as balanced as I would have liked, I decided to try out Forest, a productivity and time management app. It didn’t go quite as well as I thought it would, but it did yield some career insights.
This week, I dropped into the Healthy Habits program that runs every Monday in the Hart House Reading Room from 12 to 1 p.m. Healthy Habits is a laid-back discussion about nutrition and tips for eating well and is led by a holistic nutritionist.
What I really liked about the event was that it was informal and thereby unintimidating. We all sat in the corner of the Reading Room on the couches and, in essence, had a chat. The topic varies week to week and you’re welcome to attend just one session or as many as you like, whenever you can. This past Monday, we talked about sugar – very timely if you ask me, given that Monday was also Halloween.
Source: healthbubbles.com
There are many ways to get through midterm season: all-nighters, coffee, 8 hour long study sessions the day before an exam. I have attempted all of these at some point over the past few years. However, personally, my body absolutely…
As a campus tour guide, I receive a lot of questions surrounding student life and whether a school-life balance is something one can expect to manage at the renowned U of T.
Seeing everyone’s defeated, exhausted expressions on campus, I thought it’d be a good time to share some of my tips and tricks of the trade that have helped me to juggle three jobs, three sports and a full-time course load.
Disclaimer: I don't usually look quite so glamorous while doing it. Source: yummymummyfitness.com.au
1. Sometimes you need to downsize. Sure, juggling five balls looks really cool but if you’re exhausted and you’re about to see them all fall to the floor, consider whether you might be able to take one out of the equation. I know it’s hard, we’re very ambitious students and we prefer to be able to persevere and to succeed without giving anything up, but I encourage everyone to critically evaluate whether the cost is worth what you’re gaining.
The most difficult part of my university experience so far has been learning how to balance. Every September, I am thrown off my feet by my new schedule, and just when I feel like I have a routine set up, midterms hit. As the type of person who insists on combing through every single reading, I often find myself overwhelmed by schoolwork and unsure how to fit in any much-needed self-care activities.
However, spending 8-hour blocks on studying or writing has never worked for me either. I lose focus after a few hours at most, and often end the day cranky and tense from so much studying at once. Last winter semester, during a particularly difficult academic period, I went to see my college's learning strategist for help. Here are some memorable tips that I learned from her, as well as some personal ones that work for me.
Source: Rusaba Alam
I think it’s safe to say I was at the point in midterm season, or huge-influx-of-essays-due-in-one-week season where my mind was frayed.
It was the kind of fraying where I just comfortably threw my clothes on my chair when I got home. I comfortably began ‘forgetting’ to put away the snacks I had on my nightstand. I comfortably hadn’t made my bed in who knows how long. I comfortably stopped using my table as a study space and instead used it as a storage for all the books and articles I had to read.
It was like when Frank Ocean sang “a tornado flew around my room before you came”, only my situation was a lot less poetic and probably wouldn’t win any awards. I’m just going to come out and say it – my room was a mess.
An example of how my room looked at the time
Who knew procrastination would not only be the reason for it but also the resolution of it?
