1. Set Realistic Goals:

You are not perfect because you are human. A lot of the time students forget this and it brings bouts of unrelenting stress and sleepless nights. The fact that you may want an A in that class is amazing and you should work hard to achieve that goal, but don’t allow yourself to be devastated about a grade on something you know you worked hard at.

2. Please, for the Sake of Everyone, Socialize:

Confining yourself to a bedroom with a box of Ramen Noodles, your laptop, and piles of notes and textbooks could not be any easier at the start of a semester. We want to do well; we naturally come in putting our best foot forward. It’s a new semester, it can be better than the last as long as we put double the work in and skip showers on Mondays and Thursdays, Right? Wrong. Your brain needs a break, visit family, visit friends if you’re as extreme as I am, go to another country; treat yourself! You deserve it. As a college student, I look forward to seeing my friends happy, rejuvenated, clean, and without too much stress.

3. Find a Hobby:

Personally speaking, exercising is my hobby. Running outside and feeling the cool of the night against my face while looking out over the river, or heading to the gym to lift until my body literally cannot do so anymore, even a casual night of skating at the nearest ice rink helps. It eases my mind to know that school while important, is not the only thing life has to offer. Some of my friends hate the gym and like to play video games, watch Netflix, read for pleasure instead of a requirement, go to plays, and participate in clubs; whatever it is for you set some time out of your week to maintain your hobbies.

4. Keep up with your coursework:

This is something that all students seem to have an issue with especially if the coursework has a deadline that is nearer to the end of the semester. That girl over in the corner of the library studying all the books she has yet to read, hair a mess, hasn’t slept in a week due to her inability to stop cramming before finals; that’s me. I refuse to let it be me again this semester; the procrastination is never worth the stress. Don’t let the next victim of the late night cram be you.

5. Rest:

You might think your extra light iced double Macchiato with skim milk is your saving grace in the morning until two o’clock rolls around and you find yourself in a three-hour lecture with no idea what the professor is saying with your eyes barely open. Do not be this person. Get an above average night of sleep as often as you can. Take the weekends to make up for the sleep that will unquestionably be lost during the week. After all who doesn’t love sleep? Between studying for hours, assignment after assignment, and your part-time job, your mind begs you for recovery time. Make sure you give the brain the recovery time it needs, so it can perform its daily duties without hesitation.

6. Focus Being the Best you:

For me, that means buying a planner, being organized with folders and color-coded notebooks. I could never maintain a study group as I talk too much. I can hardly focus when I am with others and often leave a study group feeling more stressed than when I came to it. For other students, study groups can be amazing, and extremely helpful. Many of my peers choose to study in the Library or in quaint coffee shops near the city. I suppose there is something relaxing in the way coffee tastes while the Charles River flows below the skyline of Boston. It is interesting to see the city come alive and people bustling about, but again as a writer, I would be more interested in what I saw, rather than the assignment I was meant to be writing about. Find your studying niche and roll with it.

7. Have fun:

College made up the best years of my life. I know you may think that sounds cliché, or you’ve heard it a hundred times. As a graduating senior I can tell you, you will hear it a hundred more times. If I could do it all over again; I would. College brought me to my friends near Boston, at the first university I attended. College taught me about all the greats poets, and literary geniuses and it taught me not to take three shots of anything straight up consecutively. It brought me to seven different countries where I met my best friends, kissed the Blarney Stone, took the tube to Westminster, climbed to the top of the Eiffel Tower, and lost my friend in the Coliseum. Attending college closer to home has taught me the importance of family in my life. It has taught me that comfortability and connection with faculty in a school can make a great difference in an academic experience. I can look back on my college experience and say that it was worth the impending debt, that I would not have changed a thing. College gave me my independence while providing me with skills for future job opportunities. So make sure you make the best of your experience, get your work done, but enjoy the world around you, discover yourself, and make every cent worth it.