Tag Archives: sophomore

5 Studying Don’ts for Commuters

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I know that feeling of commuting home from a long day’s work or classes and just wanting to go home after and grab your laptop and hopping on the couch to relax.  But does this really help you learn or even bring motivation, while going to college?? I think not!!  Such as this example, which was a HUGE distraction for me.  So, I’m sharing these 5 Studying Don’ts and I also provided some handy tips that have worked for me throughout each semester.  I’d like to share these tips to help you get much closer to become an awesome and educated student.  The better my grades are, the more opportunities I have ever had before.

Here we go … 🙂

 

1. Don’t get too comfy on the couch and set yourself up an ‘office’ with as close as you can get ‘desk’, and this helps with getting rid of distractions.  Or put a desk in your room where there is a door you can close for a certain period of time you planned for school.

2. Don’t dehydrate yourself and drink LOTS OF WATER.  This can help you feel focused and refreshed, as staying hydrated is very important for every student to keep their brain strong to obtain a lot of information.  Put a lemon in your water, if plain water is getting too boring to drink after a while.

3. Don’t think your life sucks right now (ha-ha) because it will all be all worth it when you receive that diploma, in the end.  I will talk myself into how having good grades could potentially help me in my future.  I think most jobs know that a lot of young adults have their degree, but not all have really good grades and that takes determination from the student.

4. Don’t eat junk food or eat too late at time.  A way to not binge eat at night is by going TO BED at a decent hour.  You should reward yourself with a ‘sweet treat’ when you complete a planned study or assignment.

5. Don’t cram your work and try harder when it comes to planning and time-management for studying and assignments, etc.  It’s important to be organized and to divide up the school work between the days of the week, and maybe even on Sunday nights.  It won’t be like this forever and if I can do it then you can do it!!!

 

I never found myself going to the library unless it was to get together with the groups from my classes, for the project we have to complete together.  Places where there are a lot of people, seems to be distracting for me.  So, at home I have found that using a ‘HUGE’ desk calendar has saved me!!   Also, having the option in my house to have an office with a desk.  This room is separate from the rest of the house and has NO DISTRACTIONS. When I get in there, I am in the zone and can focus, kind of like when I am at work!  If you don’t have this option then choose an area where you can’t hear sounds that much in your place.  There is the option of going to Penfield library, which is huge and has computer labs and printer access, etc.

Good luck with your studies Lakers.  Comment below if you find any of these to be interesting, if any have worked for you or if you have certain tips of your own that you have found very useful as a commuter.

 

New Year

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Welcome back, or for any freshmen reading this, it’s a mere welcome! So, here we are are back at college, and for me, the summer seems as if it really flew by! It doesn’t seem like that long ago at all that I was packing my bags and heading home for the summer, and now, my sophomore year has begun, and I’m thinking, “Wow, one year of college is already behind me,” and the thought is rather daunting to say the least. Forget about the summer flying by; everything is flying by! It doesn’t even seem like that long ago that I was in high school let alone a college freshman!

This year, I am living at Waterbury, and I actually really love it! The only part of it that I don’t like is that there is no dining hall connected to it. Lakeside and Cooper are approximately the same distance, with Lakeside perhaps being a bit closer, and right now, I don’t mind in in the least, but when it starts getting really cold, and the snow starts to fall, which basically always guarantees for ice, then it becomes something that I mind. Other than that, however, I really feel as if Waterbury matches me; whereas last year, when I moved into Oneida at the start of my freshman year, there was quite a bit that I didn’t like.
There’s always the homework, which never seems to end. For any freshmen reading this, keep that in mind. I made the mistake last year of assuming that college was going to be high school with a dorm room, and it’s not by any means. College gives a lot more homework than high school, and you need to do your best to manage your time, because I myself ran into a lot of problems last year with that, literally being driven insane with the homework and feeling as if I didn’t have enough time to do it. Already, I have been given a great deal, but I have figured out what to do differently.

The work actually doesn’t take as much time as is usually taken to complete it. The problem is when your mind wanders and wants to check Facebook, or go on AIM, or talk on the phone, or text, or eat, etc., and I therefore learned that I needed to go somewhere where distractions such as these weren’t going to be an issue, and what better place is there than the library? That’s therefore where I have been doing my work, because I have come to find that the work gets done a lot faster there. I feel more concentrated and “in the zone,” and things like Facebook and AIM don’t distract me, which is surprising, because if it’s not reading out of a book or something to that effect that needs to be done, I am on a computer, which still gives me the opportunity to steal time and hop onto Facebook, but for some reason, I don’t feel the temptation like I do in my dorm room. I think that it might be because in my dorm room, I am in a tighter, more enclosed space.

Another thing that I vowed to change about this year as opposed to last year is a more appropriate bedtime, which, so far, I have been doing a very good job upholding. Last year, I often went to bed at like 4 or 5 a.m., and that simply didn’t work, because then I had class, and I was exhausted, therefore taking a nap in the afternoon, losing more time. The first night that I was here, I went to bed at around 1, and last night, I went in at around 10 (I am currently sick and therefore felt pretty tired early). It’s been awesome, because this morning, I woke up at around 9:30 feeling totally revived and awake and got right up and went to the gym to workout. I even had time to do a little bit of work.

I know that this year is going to be better, despite the fact that my current issue with books is looking like a bad omen. I tried to get a job over the summer, but my attempts were futile, because no one was hiring, and I therefore have no money for books. Yesterday, I got my refund, which totaled over $300, and I figured for sure that that was going to be enough, but it isn’t. I bought everything yesterday except for what I need for two classes, Psychology and History, and that came to $213. My Psychology book is going to cost $90 used, and the books that I need for History are going to cost $40 and $60. To break it all down for you, I still need almost $200 and only have a little over $100. I’m trying to figure something out. My Psychology professor brought up a really good point in my class last night. He said that in the book that we will be using for our class, there will be roughly thirty pages out of the 150 or so that are really going to count, and yet we pay $90 for that book, which breaks down to approximately $3.00 per page; it’s ridiculous. Books are so expensive. I’m not looking at this as a bad omen, though, because I just have a very strong feeling that this is going to be a great year.