College Life Tips
Welcome to the third part of my college tip series! In part 1, I talked about general study and class tips to help jumpstart your study experience. In part 2, I talked about several Gulf Coast-specific programs and resources that you should take advantage of. For this entry, we will talk about tips on how to approach managing time, spending, and productivity.
Tip 1: Manage Your Spending
Create a budget, and stick to it. There are a lot of reasons to be stressed out as a college student, but being financially unstable shouldn’t be one of them.
If you arent in debt and have some money in your bank, you are already miles above the majority of the American population. Nonetheless, if you don’t have a written budget, or track your income and your spending closely, you may not be as financially responsible as you think you are. For those of you who don’t have every single dollar of your income and expenses accounted for, you need to. If you are in debt, live paycheck to paycheck, and have a bad credit score (or don’t know your credit score) stop putting your financial independence on the backburner.
How I Budget
To budget, I use an app called “EveryDollar.” It is an awesome way to visually see your income, where that money goes, and how much money you have to spend. Every time I make a purchase, At any point, I can look and see how much money I have to spend on things like food, gas, and recreation. Check out EveryDollar here.
If this isn’t easy for you, don’t worry. Millions of others find their finances hard and choose to ignore them instead. The difference is, you are taking control, and changing your entire future because of it. Simple things like budgeting are the building blocks to more complicated things like mortgages and investing for retirement. Understanding these concepts now will set you on the right path to literally retire a millionaire. Don’t wait until you are in your 30s to work on this stuff.
For budgeting tips, I always recommend Dave Ramsey. He is a financial advisor, famous for his 7 “Baby steps” to help people get out of debt. While his advice isn’t gospel and some of his methods are debated, they are a good start for those looking to redirect their lives and reach financial independence. To check out his courses and materials, click here.
Tip 2: Manage Your Time Better
Recently, I have developed a morning routine and started to track my habits and what I do with my time throughout the day. In half-hour blocks, I outlined what I spent my time doing from the hour I woke up until I went to sleep.
In doing this, I learned a few things. First, that I am very busy. Second, that it is much harder to let myself get distracted when I know that I will have to write down that I wasted that time. Third, that time goes by really fast. And fourth, that when you make an effort to get up earlier and fill that first hour or two doing something productive like journaling or reading a book, you set the pace for the rest of the day. Who wakes up 2 hours earlier to watch TED talks or classes on skillshare, just to waste a few hours later in the day scrolling through Facebook?
Unless you have other commitments outside of school, you might find that you have more free time than you realized. Time is the most precious commodity. You can make more money, you make yourself smarter and healthier, but you can’t make more time. And yet we waste this free time constantly! Take advantage of your time, and fill every minute of it. Study something that interests you, learn a foreign language, work on that small business idea you started. When you manage this time the same way you would budget your expenses, you “spend” it on things that matter. I would recommend, for just a week, documenting what you spent your time doing. You will find out a lot of things about yourself, and hopefully, identify habits you need to work on!
Tip 3: Treat School like a 9-5 job
You are paying for college after all, and it definitely isn’t cheap. The grades you make may not matter, but the material you learn will. Here is a tip: you get out what you put in, so put 100% effort in. If it isn’t worth 100%, then why are you spending big bucks on it?
When you hear professors say things like “Don’t submit this to me if you wouldn’t submit this to an employer” this is what they mean. If you will suddenly work harder when you are getting paid for your work, then you aren’t really getting the most out of your studies.
If you treat your assignments like they are for a client, you will be much better prepared when you graduate and start working professionally. Depending on your career, you can also use the work you created in college on your resume. If you wouldn’t want to show it to a future employer, you aren’t working hard enough on it. Treat it like you are getting paid for it!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alex Christodoulou
Student Author - Spring 2021
