Week 3 at Berkeley and my classes are starting to hit their stride, but some of the most important lessons I've learned have been about myself. The big takeaway so far is that living alone makes procrastinating is really, really easy. Here are a couple awful but effective ways I've found to kill time in the past couple weeks.

1. Youtube. For hours.

Ah, yes. The mind numbing and semi-therapeutic ritual of distracting yourself while youtube autoplays the next relevant videos continues. Except this time, unlike back in high school, there's no one to call you down for dinner or tell you to go to bed. So unless you have a roommate that needs you to turn off your light, "10 hour Nyan Cat" can very possibly become your entire night.

2. Organize.

On the other end of the spectrum, I've also found it really easy to get caught up in the minutiae when I'm avoiding actual important things. Because I can't possibly do my math homework without my pens, highlighters, and post-its color coded right? And what about making folders for every class on my desktop? Imperative, honestly.

3. Walk across campus for a snack.

Or any wildly inefficient action that could be easily replaced with an effective one. This includes walking across campus to sit in Moffitt instead of your own room (because you need that specific library vibe, of course), climbing to an obscenely high floor in Evans to talk to a GSI when you could read the textbook, or spend an hour drafting an email to your professor when your classmate across the hall probably has the answer.

4. Scroll through the course catalog.

Thinking ahead is important! It's the same story too many times: I start harmlessly thinking getting work done for an actual class I have in the present, but one thing leads to another and 2 hours later, I'm scheduling classes for grad school. Oops.

5. Wikipedia.

Definitely one of the more educational ways to avoid work-related thoughts. There have been more than a few trips down the black hole that is wikipedia. I recommend starting at the conspiracy theories page and working from there. Guaranteed to give you enough interesting talking points to get you through the first few awkward weeks of introductions and trying to make friends.

So there you go, some of the regrettably common ways I've found to avoid work. And now, if you'll excuse me, I have a wikipedia article to get back to.