"Goodbye." That's always a difficult thing to say, but sadly, this is my last post for Life @ U of T. Being the Centre for Teaching Support & Innovation (CTSI) blogger this year has been the opportunity of a lifetime…
I am drowning in essays, every single word coming out of the pages of my novels and off of the multiple Microsoft Word documents I have open all at once. It...is...essay season! In all honesty, I don't mind writing essays…
Looking back on my (almost!) four years of university, I think I'm most proud of how much my time management skills have improved since high school. Part of it has been out of necessity -- I've taken on far more…
Happy New Year, U of T! When New Year's comes around, I've never been one to make New Year's resolutions. I couldn't see the point, especially when I knew that I would inevitably give up after a week (at most).…
I know you just read that title and exclaimed, "Exams? Prep? Already?" But I checked my calendar and today is exactly three weeks until my first exam. Initially, I thought that sounded very far away from now as I still have final…
I lived near campus when I was a full-time student and I still had to rush to just barely make my 10 am classes but lately, I’ve been out of bed by 6:00 am and out the door by 7:00 am. I recently started working full-time while being in school part-time two days a week. I didn't quite feel done with my undergraduate experience when I first got the notification of having completed my credits so I decided to step into the workplace and get the experience but still stay in touch with academia. Before this new position, I had never worked 9-5 every day; I have had summer jobs but all with odd shift hours or 4-6 hours per shift which made sense for me at the time. Now that I have joined the workforce, I am in complete shock of how much more my body is capable of in a full day.
coffee and I, what a wonderful love story
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.
Now that the storm of mid-term season is done for me and the Fall Break is upon us, my mind turns to my neglected readings and upcoming essays. This year, I had the unfortunate luck of having a bunch of mid-terms one after another. By the end, I felt completely drained and ready for relaxation. But after a bit of relaxation time, I realized that I was two weeks behind on readings in all of my classes. Oops. In my majors of English and Book & Media Studies, I have a lot of readings that range from novels to textbooks. When I looked at everything I had missed out on over two weeks, I noticed that I was behind on over 500 pages of readings total (granted, that total included a 250 page novel). I've started the process of catching up on those readings and trust me, it's important to do so. Every year, my profs have emphasized two key aspects to success: attending class and doing the readings. They know what they're talking about, so take their advice! So far, I've learned a few things about this process.
When I think of October, grainy vignettes of nights spent in Robarts during extended hours begin cycling through my memory. Moving images in sepia of myself weeping as I struggle to finish multiple essays due the next day; or in grayscale, of myself flustered as I burn my tongue on my second pot of coffee in an attempt to stay lucid while I rush to learn neglected chapters because the midterm is in nine hours, are two of the many depressing images that I automatically associate with this spooky month. Sometimes, for tolerability’s sake, I accompany these memories with a cameo of a sad panda playing a tiny violin. Essentially, October has come to represent an exhaustingly, unhealthy concoction of sleepless nights and excessive stress.
Researching paper #2
Surprisingly, this is where volunteerism has swooped in to save the day.
October is HealthyU month at U of T, an entire month dedicated to celebrating physical and mental health! October 17-21 (starting today!) is Self-Care week, which promotes ways to take care of yourself physically and mentally as well as how to de-stress. Okay, I'll be the first to admit that when I initially thought about self-care, I wondered, "Why do I have to be concerned with how I'm doing?" Well, after some careful consideration, I realized that if I don't care for myself, I get burnt out...easily. I can't always be on the go, go, go (although I do enjoy that) because otherwise all aspects of my life: social, academic, and personal would suffer.
My not-so-secret way (according my friends and family) to de-stress from the enormous amount of midterms I have coming up all in the same week (scary) is to watch some good TV shows and movies. But first, let me explain the source of my stress. I prefer to study in 2 to 3 hour blocks, even though concentrating for that long can sometimes be difficult. Finding time to study for that long can also be difficult, especially with my other commitments. Sometimes I feel stressed out because I feel like I haven't studied enough. However, at the end of my long studying sessions, I mostly feel like I've just come out of a deep slumber, blinking rapidly and looking around wondering "Where am I?" Robarts in the Winter: a building that pulls me in for many hours of studying
