“Brrring”, the sound of my alarm rings as I ‘wake up’ startled from a 3 hour night sleep. I rush to the washroom, splash my face with water, and brush my teeth only to jump back into bed… but with a laptop this time. As I open up my class Zoom link, join, and triple check that both my mic and camera are off, I remind myself that it’s okay if I end up dozing off during the lesson because “the class is recorded anyway.”
Fast forward a year or two and well, things aren’t the same anymore. No more making breakfast while my teacher rattles on about theories and technical rules. No more rolling into class with the same PJs I slept in because no one will even see me anyway. No more banking on Covid extensions for assignments and switching between Zoom tabs during back-to-back classes. The reality that faces us now is: in-person classes. As a second year student, these are some habits that I have installed in order to set myself up for success both during and after this switch.
Step 1: Intentions, Intentions, Intentions!
Before I do anything at all, my first step is to start with clear goals. Norman Vincent Peale, an American positive thinking author, once said, “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss you’ll land among the stars.” Though most of the time we interpret that as setting high and unconventional dreams, I like to take the general idea of having clear and visible goals and not falling into the finer details. The best method for setting goals is to use a goal setting system like SMART. When choosing goals, I find the best thing to do is:
- Reflect on my habits.
- Make a list of things I want to improve.
- Choose the top three things that I can incorporate into my daily life smoothly.
Bonus tip, a study done by Gail Matthews at Dominican University showed that actually writing out your goals makes you more likely to stick to them. Guess it’s time we entered our journaling era, sorry technology!
Step 2: Making a Routine
After coming up with goals, it’s time to build a routine. During Covid, my typical school and self care schedules were all over the map, not to mention the nocturnal habits I picked
up. When entering into university, it was important that to built a routine suitable with my lifestyle and also incorporated healthy habits. My sleeping and eating habits were the areas that needed the most support. Getting minimal sleep and eating poorly depending on my mood were not going to help me excel. Because of this, I made sure to set aside blocks of time where I would sleep, eat, and MEAL PREP. After a week of on-campus food, things don’t hit the same. I still struggle with prepping food all the time but I try to limit meals outside to 2-3 times a week so that my wallet and stomach stay happy. Learn more about routines by visiting this blog by my fellow CLCAs!
Step 3: Time Blocking and Scheduling
Our day-to-day activities, events, social commitments, and appointments take up a considerable portion of our time. A game changer method that I love to use to track my commitments and to make sure they don’t conflict (as well as preventing myself from feeling too stressed or overwhelmed) is time blocking! To learn more about time blocking as well as all things calendars, check out this blog post.
Summary:
Too long & didn’t read it all? The biggest takeaway from all of this is to reflect, reflect, reflect, create a routine, and create a visual time-blocking system to help you schedule. University is tough, but a good organization system can go a long way!
P.S: A good tool I recommend is using Notion. You can read more about this gem and all it has to offer on one of our blogs. I was afraid of it at first because it seemed too complicated for me, but once you overcome the fear, it’ll become your bestie!
