Academic Bingeing

Like I said in the last post, I'm a resident assistant (RA). What I do is get paid to live in the dorms and make sure the dorms don't burn down and let people into their rooms if they get locked out. Most of the time it is pretty easy. One of the exceptions is making signs, especially if they are door tags with residents names one them. As RAs we are supposed to have "themes". A theme can be anything from a movie to some message or goal you'd like to impose on the residents. Last semester I choose the later. Since BYU's mascot is a cougar, I thought the theme "conquering your inner cougar" would be a cool theme. The point was to focus on how to overcome your weaknesses or challenges (cougar) this semester to be better people.

So I don't know how to rotate the picture.
I tried in the photo editor on my computer.. 

When I made my signs, I didn't want to make any spelling mistakes so I asked my mom, my boss, other RAs and friends how it looked and if everything was spelt right. They all said it looked fine. So I printed them and put them on the doors. That was in August. So October comes around and one of my residents asked me, "Whats a courger?" On all 30ish door tags they all said "Conquer your inner courger". 

I can only think of two explanations why this happened, besides the fact I just can't spell. 

1) my mom, my boss, other RAs and friends all collaborated and wanted to tease me, so didn't say anything.

2) my mom, my boss, other RAs and friends didn't really look at it when I asked them.

Knowing my mom it was probably the first one.

So now fast forward to this week. New semester. I was asked to make new door tags. I was determined to not repeat the same mistake. Not trusting my mom, my boss, other RAs and friends I went to get them printed off. The layout was correct. I didn't use any word more than a syllable and had more than five letters. So when I got them, my girlfriend was looking through them and asked a terrible question, "Did you mean to miss spell Brian? It says Brain." Luckily, I gave a lot of the returning residents nicknames or made fun of their names on their tags, so I'm going to try to make them believe that was the plan all along.. So we will see what happens!

Well, the first week of school happened. It was great. I really like all my classes. The first day of classes were a little rough trying to find where my classes were. At BYU, all the buildings have acronyms. Most of my classes are the in the Crabtree Building (CTB) and the Clyde Building (CB), to make it better they are right next to each other! I wrote down where my classes were by their acronyms. I only mixed them up only a few times.. haha I felt like a freshmen all over again.

What really helped me last semester was to make a schedule to make sure I get everything done. For me I have four main things I need to get done everyday/week: set commitments, personal time, social time and work/school. For me, when I do not have a plan, I tend to binge in one of those areas. For example, if I have been spending too much time with my friends/girlfriend (social life) (and so take out) I have to pull an all nighter to catch up on homework. I think college students can relate to that! More personally to me, I have subject days. Last semester for my economics class the homework was due on Thursdays, so I would spend all of Wednesday doing the homework. When I made my schedule for this semester, I wanted to avoid dedicating one day to a subject and balance it out throughout the week.

So I am going to walk through how I made my schedule for this semester.

First, I like to write down my set commitments (that I have.take out) because it doesn't matter what I do, the time isn't going to change. For me these things are classes, work and church meetings. Normally these things are week to week and consistent.

Next I like to take care of my personal stuff. Examples may include eating, sleeping, personal time and exercise. I wrote these in purple. For me it's important to plan to do these things, then spend as much time possible studying. It doesn't matter how good my study plan is if I don't eat, sleep or have fun, I will go crazy and not do my best. Even though I have these written in pen, they aren't set in stone. So if I don't go to bed at 10:30, I don't get mad at myself. It's just a set time plan for myself. You can say it's like a mini goal. Quick side story, when I was putting my time to sleep. I was just drawing a line across the page for my personal "bed time", I got half way across Friday and thought who am I kidding and stopped. Therefore there is a purple line half way across the Friday column. 

(The take out) Next I planned for homework. BYU says that to get an A you need to study three times  as many credit hours as your class is. I don't know if that is true, maybe for upper level classes, but for me, and judging off the syllabi my teachers have given me, I have about an hour of homework and another hour of readings for every hour of class. If you think like me, you'll understand this better: hours spent outside of class ≥ 2 x hours spent in class. So what I do to get a realistic idea of how much HW I will have, I go through my syllabi and put all my HW in the reminders in my phone and to go off the day it's due or the day before. It's pretty helpful to see how much is due. I also put reminders for tests, papers and projects based on the syllabus of the class. It gives me an idea in advance how much time I should put into a class. (Currently I only have January in my phone because it can be a little time consuming.)

Then with the hw load in mind, I plan out when would be the best and most realistic time I should work on something. I do this in pencil because things change. Several TA's in my class are going to put review session times up so I may need to adjust my schedule. But I don't have every single hour filled up, that time is free time or wiggle time to help me get everything done. Also, I would recommend putting in study breaks. For me, every hour I need to stand up and move. I have found calling people for ten minutes to catch up and walking are much better study breaks than checking facebook, emails or espn. 

Even though I've scheduled out my week, it is mostly just an outline or a guide. I don't walk around with this piece of paper. It just helps me see how much time I have, try to have a balanced life and still reach my goals. Doing this, I realize how much time I really have.

Now the most important thing about planning, do what works best for you. This schedule is a little over the top and is mostly to make my mom proud. If you have a hard time sticking to a schedule, try planning out only three hours. Try making lists. I am sure you're smart enough to think of something!

Well I hope this is helpful! Take care!