In this lovely modern age a lot of my studying is done online. I have to use Blackboard for several of my courses, watch missed lectures on a professor’s website and, of course, use Wikipedia to do “research” for papers.

Recently I noticed that when I sit down at the computer to do those things I keep finding myself on Twitter, Facebook, Lifehacker or CNN.

I briefly toyed with the idea of banning those sites on my computer (they make software for it, I’m sure) and more old-fashioned methods, like snapping myself with a rubberband when I visited them.

My new solution is simple, practical and totally easy to implement.

1. Turn off the toolbars that distract – especially Delicious and the built-in Bookmarks bar for your browser. If you don’t have a quick link to Twitter you have to do more than click a button to visit.
2. Google search is often not your friend. It’s so easy to run off to lose time by using it. So, type in the box, all in caps “STAY FOCUSED ON (COURSE NAME)”
3. Open a text file and save it as “GetBacktoStudying.txt” – whenever you want to check something on Google or have an idea un-related to your current course type it in there and save it.

None of these things actually stop you from “being bad” – but they all make you pause a few seconds longer and have actually made a huge difference in how focused I am. The third one has been especially helpful, as it’s saved me from doing pointless research – what was so pressing while I was studying cell biology is of no interest several hours later when I could be going out for a bike ride instead.

* To turn off toolbars in FireFox just go to View > Toolbars and click the name of the one  you want to turn off. Easy as pie.

Image Credit: CarrotCreative / CC BY 2.0

If you’re keeping up, we spent time on Monday putting our base schedule together.

This next step is something you should probably do weekly. For the rest of this week you’re going to plan 1-3 hours of studying per evening. On your “weekend” days you can schedule up to 6 hours of studying, but don’t make it all one block. In fact, schedule a big block later that night or right in the middle of the afternoon to go out with friends or play video games until you pass out.

What order should you do things? I’ll discuss this in-depth in future posts, but I prefer to split studying into 1.5 hour blocks. It’s enough time to get really into a topic, but not enough to make you start mumbling gibberish. It’s also important to separate similar topics – don’t study Dev Bio and then move on to studying for it’s accompanying lab. That doesn’t count as switching topics. Read the rest of this entry »

The slump is burnout. It’s when your fun-self is having a fantastic tantrum due to your courseload/workload avalanche. Meanwhile, your responsible half is lecturing you for fantasizing about running away, increasing the tantrum. You spin your wheels on useless stuff, you’re not having fun and you’re crazy tired.

Sound unproductive? Oh yeah.

You need to do several things over the next week to cure this madness. Let’s get started!

1. Scheduling – you need to know when the exams and due dates are for the next month. This step is insanely depressing. I prefer Google Calendar, but pencil & paper work, too.
2. LEAVE YOUR DORM/APT/HOUSE. For three hours. You can spend this time with friends, go on a bike excursion or see a movie. Avoiding meltdown is critical, and that requires blowing off steam. However, do not exceed the three hours. This is not a free day to forget your cares – this is a long lunch break.
3. If you haven’t already, get your work and class schedule for the upcoming week(s) into your calendar, too. You now know what daylight hours are free to be used to get caught up.

Wednesday we’ll figure out how to sanely fill up that time, and let you have a semblance of a life, too!

I am suspicious that Google is the precursor for Skynet. Despite this,  I love Google Calendar like I love my real-life BFF. I’ve tried everything from the Hipster PDA, single sheet calendars and mini-planners. None is so simple and flexible as Google Calendar.

• It fits in my pocket, courtesy of Blackberry syncing.
• It lets me plan study schedules, then entirely re-arrange them the day of via drag-and-drop.
• It sends me email reminders, so I never forget to do that weekly online quiz and get all my assignments turned in on time.

But the best part? It allows you to create multiple calendars, and change their colors. I have a calendar for Classes, Assignments Due, Upcoming Exams and Study Time. I share my husband’s calendar, so I know when he’ll be home and can juggle homework time to be able to have dinner with him most nights.

Google Calendar, you are my pal.

I made it through mid-terms only slightly brain-damaged and reveled in a week with no exams looming ahead of me. Then I survived the second lab practical with confidence, using the At Home Practical Mayhem technique (TM totally pending).

Now it’s nearly midnight on Tuesday, and I have an OCHEM exam on Monday. I also have not even started payroll at work, which is usually done by the time I leave Tuesday evenings, and promised to have scripts for tutorial videos ready and waiting for the “film” crew by 10AM tomorrow.

Long story short? I am feeling major burnout and have hit the mid-semester slump.

The mid-semester slump is like a tiny mid-life crisis that occurs only to college students, twice to three times per year. That point when you start to fantasize about signing on to teach English abroad or becoming a yoga instructor on a cruise line. Until you remember you suck at languages and don’t know more than 2 yoga poses. Crap. You don’t want to study, but you can’t rationalize having proper fun… so you stay longer at work or clean the kitchen or lay on the couch and watch 80s movies instead.

It is the worst part of the semester, exponentially worse than finals, which at least give you a shiny beacon of “Oh thank God, it’s almost over!”.

And it has grabbed me by the face like a zombie about to nom my brains.

Last Friday I slept through my morning alarm. This hasn’t happened in a very long time, but as a result I missed my early morning class. I wasn’t too concerned about it, because the professor happens to record his lectures on a tablet PC, so you see what everyone in lecture does and hear it fairly well. Yet I’m upset that it happened.

Why? Because once I skip a class it becomes easy to skip again. And again. Ad nasueum.

On a related note, if you are given a limited number of allowable absences (ie: such as in lab courses or mathematics) hold onto them like precious gems. You are almost guaranteed to get sick when all your friends get back from Thanksgiving break, and you will need every sick day you have to keep from bringing swine flu to your classes.

In closing… no matter how lenient your professor, I advise you resist the urge to skip your class. Else you may find yourself missing an entire week and wondering what you did with your time.

It’s the first day back on campus, or for some of you your first day of college. Welcome to school everyone.

1. Talk to strangers. Introduce yourself to whomever you meet and ask them questions. Try not to talk for more than 30 seconds at a time and ask new people about themselves. This is the core of being charming, and will make people remember you, because you made them feel important, instead of being that jerk who talked about themselves for 10 minutes.
2. Don’t be afraid of your professors. Just go to their office hours and introduce yourself, let them know you stopped by just to be sure you could find their office when you need it. DO IT THIS WEEK.
3. Know your college’s add/drop dates, and if you don’t feel good about a professor DROP YOUR CLASS before the last add/drop date. It sucks to get a W on your transcripts just because you didn’t know the dates. Iffy on one of them? Check RateMyProfessor.com (or something similar) and see if the reviews match that feeling you’re getting.

Chegg’s slogan? “Don’t buy it.”

As I mentioned yesterday, I have seven books to buy for fall semester – which would total $515 to purchase new from the bookstore, or $419 used. Instead, I only bought one book from the school, because it wasn’t available used anywhere.

The other six were rented from Chegg.com, a textbook rental service. The premise is simple – you find the books you need for class and choose a rental period (I chose the full semester, so I don’t have to return them until December 21st) and then select a shipping method. All your books come to you, you use them all semester and send them back. The advantage is that a rental costs less than buying used. In some cases it is only $10 less, but for two I saved over $30 each on the used price.

There are disadvantages:

• You can’t write in the books
• Although highlighting is okay if you highlight like most college students (ie: every other line) you can’t return the book. However, I learn better by re-writing, so I never write or highlight in my books.
• There is a shipping fee, but for the six books I got the total shipping was $12.74 (to arrive within 4-7 days)

In the end, the total for the six books rented from Chegg and one book purchased from ASU, as well as shipping for both orders, I paid $320.

Total savings compared to buying all used from ASU: $99
Total savings compared to buying all new from ASU: $195

Fall semester starts for me on the 24th, so that meant it was time to login to the ASU system and look at my book list. It was looking pretty brutal going over the list – I’m taking 2 difficult lecture courses (OCHEM and Developmental Anatomy), the lab for DA and a writing-intensive online course. Total number of books? Seven. Plus an OCHEM modeling kit and the dissection kit for lab.

So, for the first time ever, I considered not getting books from the school bookstore. I always spend between $400-600 each semester, and at the end am able to sell back less than half of my books for less than $100. It’s infuriating and frustrating, and so I turned to Google to search out alternatives.

Online used textbook stores – Their pricing for used copies was $1-$10 less than getting used at ASU, which came out to a savings of about $60 overall. But then there was shipping, which averaged $10 across the board. Saving $50 is cool, but I wanted more. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s about one month left until the end of spring semester, which means on top of everything else it’s time to start thinking about what to do this summer. Applications for research positions at your university, internships at local businesses, and businesses looking for summer help are likely to give a handful of extra weight to those folks who start talking to them this week, rather than this time in May or even June.

But consider using your skills to start your own summer project – something related to your desired profession that capitalizes on a skill you already have and will make you look different from all the other kids when interview and application time rolls around next year, or for grad school.

I personally believe that every student should start a business over a summer, if only to learn something outside the rigid confines of school and your major.

There’s a great article by Ramit Sethi that points out a simple fact – everyone knows something they can leverage for profit. Just imagine how impressive is it if you take something you already know how to do, make a business out of it and get to add “entreprenuer” or “business owner” to your resume?

As a college student, it would be fairly easy to tutor highschool kids algebra, biology or physics. Hate teaching? Try another route – web kids can run their own development company, while artists could start an Etsy store. Just do whatever will take advantage of what you’re already good at.