12 (more like 13) Random Tips & Tricks For College
1. Check your e-mail everyday, more than once a day (I leave my e-mail up every time I get online). E-mail is one of my primary means of communication, so I tend to check my inbox multiple times throughout the day.
2. Cut through buildings to save time and avoid bad weather. Just make sure you figure out your way around a building before you decide to cut through; You don’t want to be late to class because you accidentally got lost trying to take a shortcut through a building! Go exploring during your free time.
3. Be polite, respectful, and personable with you professors/instructors/fellow students/workers. You never know when you might need their help. Plus, you’ll be surprised at all the awesome information that you’ll learn from them! One of my professors taught me about growing strawberries aeroponically, which wasn’t exactly part of the class curriculum, but was extremely interesting to me!
4. Study in 30 minute bursts with short breaks in-between (about 15-45 min. breaks). After the break, skim over the material you studied again and then try to move on to more material. Repeat as necessary, or until you feel confident you know the material well.
5. Use interlibrary loan to get books for free! It may take a while for your requested item to get to the library, but it is well worth the wait, especially if you’re like me and only read the textbooks every once in a while.
6. Check course reserves for class textbooks/lab manuals/solutions manuals, especially if you are a science major (come to the Science-Health Science Library located in Cooper Science Complex to explore the science course reserves).
7. Learn how to properly take notes in class—lots of professors point out the subject matter to study for exams during their lectures, so your notes will turn out to be the best study guides ever!…if you effectively take legible notes. The Learning Center on-campus offers pamphlets, workshops, and one-on-one study help for free, so if you need some pointers on note-taking, go there!
8. Remember to eat. Me and several other of my friends have stories about forgetting to eat simply because we were too busy with schoolwork or whatever. Don’t forget the food. It takes about 10-20 minutes to get food from a dining hall and go back to your room, so it’s not like you’ll be wasting long periods of time eating. Plus, if you have a full tummy, you won’t be distracted by hunger pains while you are doing your schoolwork!
Also, try to make healthy food choices. Contrary to this cat’s belief, cheese puffs are not exactly the best brain or tummy food out there.
9. The busiest times to get food are 12:00-1:30 p.m. and 6:00-7:30 p.m. Avoid these hours to get food if you want to grab food and go quickly.
10. Snow boots, rain boots, sock hats, ear muffs, scarves, sunglasses, gloves (I like waterproof or leather gloves), and sturdy wind-resistant umbrellas are all items that will prove to be very useful during the school year at Ball State.
11. Having a bike on-campus is really fun, but you have to be: A. Pretty adept at balancing on your bike while going speeds of -4 mph, B. Awesome at avoiding pedestrians, cars, fellow bikers, benches, curbs, and trees, C. Extremely careful, cautious, and aware of everything around you while riding your bike, and D. Have a decent bike lock. Residence halls have bike pumps for check-out, which is great because you don’t have to worry about having a bike pump. Plus, there are lots of places to park your bike around campus/pathways to ride on. I love having my bike around, but some days riding around campus is difficult.
12. Stressed out? Exercise! Most residence halls have fitness rooms residents can use that have ellipticals, treadmills, stationary bikes, and/or weight machines. Additionally, the Rec Center on-campus is a great place to workout at and it is free to use during the school year. Ball Gym is also a fun place to workout on-campus. Exercising alleviates stress, gives you more energy, and improves your health/body. It’s a win-win activity to partake in.
I hope you enjoyed these tips and tricks for college. Let me know in the comments section of my blog if you have any other useful tips and tricks, or if you have questions about stuff I mentioned in this post. Also, check back here every Sunday for a new post each week (Monday’s weren’t working out for me). Thanks for reading!
February 10th, 2013 at 7:58 pm
Interlibrary loan is the greatest thing ever. It’s too bad more people don’t use it.
February 10th, 2013 at 8:05 pm
It totally is. I’ve been trying to get more people to use it. A lot of people simply don’t know it exists.