GradHacking: Making Time For Yourself

Eric Riley April 9, 2018

Song of the Day

If I just breath

Let if fill the space between

I’ll know everything is alright

Breath

Every little piece of me

You’ll see

Everything is alright

Michelle Branch – Breathe

Hello everyone and welcome back to another GradHack! Today I’m going to be talking about something that is vital to your college career, taking time for yourself. We’re constantly in our books or on the computer researching that we never get the opportunity to just relax and enjoy a day off. We have spring break sure, but we all have those classes that still schedule homework to be due that week. Personally I may have had one spring break off my entire college career. I know that sounds like an exaggeration, but looking back on my life as a college student it feels like there’s no days off. Sometimes I think to myself should there be? College is supposed to challenge you mentally, but at the same time your brain needs a chance to rest other than when you’re sleeping. So, here’s a couple suggestions to help you get some time to relax your body and your mind when you’re starting to feel overwhelmed.

First: taking it back to my procrastination post, don’t procrastinate. I know that’s saying a lot because it’s hard as …. not to, but if you can get your school schedule down and your school work done early then you’ll have time to do nothing. Say you have homework due next week on Tuesday and Thursday, do your homework for Tuesday over the weekend. Then not to over load yourself, try and get the homework for Thursday done by at the latest Wednesday, because then you can have Thursday and Friday to relax before you go back and have to do your homework for Tuesday again. One semester I got blessed and had all my homework due on Sundays so I would just get all my homework done by Wednesday and would have the rest of the week to do absolutely nothing.

Second: For those of you who are like me this semester and feel like at some points you’re drowning these tips are here for you! Take the first idea into consideration, procrastination is bad and creating a schedule is the best way to manage your life and your time. Even though you get your life together and have your schedule you might find yourself still needing one extra day to relax even though you have one scheduled day off already a week. Well guess what! Take the second day off if you feel like you need to! Stay disciplined with your tasks but at the same time, you need to say forget it sometimes. It may bite you in the butt, meaning it might turn into a couple late nights or long hours in the books, but sometimes it’s just worth it. I find myself taking a day that I didn’t plan to have off and saying forget it around once every two weeks, because I need to. We’re only human, and our brains can only take so much.

Third comes from a guy named Jake that I interviewed on campus: He states, “When in doubt bang it out.” When I asked Jake what in the world that meant he told me, “just do all your homework for the week in one day, take a break every once and a while, but keep going until all your work is done. Then once you’re you can do nothing for the rest of the week instead of a couple days at a time.” I like this idea, the lazy me says that’s a lot of work to do in a day, but at the same time you can have an entire week to yourself if you just get it all done.

Overall, I’ve been through all of these tips and I can tell you about all of the things that have worked for me, but it’s not about me. I’m writing these posts to try and help you all out. The only benefit I get from this is being able to talk about my past and kind of vent to you all, and hopefully help someone out there that is having a difficult time in school. All I want to do is help one person and it will all be worth it.

On another note, when reading through the tips which one can you relate to the most? Which one do you think will help you out the most in your college life. Different things work for different people, but at the end of the day there’s only one thing that matters which is getting the work done. The college life is hard and it’s not for everyone, but with discipline and strategy you can accomplish anything. I never thought I would be a couple months away from graduating from Gulf Coast with my bachelors degree, but I’ve made it this far and I’m going to try and finish strong. We don’t work this hard without the idea of the reward in the back of our minds. Keep fighting for your dreams and accomplish them, anything is possible. As always I want to leave you all with something special, first is the full song that I listed above called Breathe by Michelle Branch. It’s just a fun song to help remind you to breathe sometimes and relax and it’ll all be okay. Last I want to leave you with some words of wisdom from AsapSCIENCE on studying effectively and using your time wisely.

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