Recommended for you

Start writing a post

Health and Wellness

If You Need Help Focusing Through The Mid-Semester Slump, Try These 5 Things

Simple tricks to make life SO much easier.

Camila Pedrosa

Oct 25, 2020

Arizona State University

3917

If You Need Help Focusing Through The Mid-Semester Slump, Try These 5 Things

Unsplash

We've all had those days when even thinking about homework gives us headaches and we find ourselves instinctively reaching for our phones when our Zoom lectures get too boring. In order to make it through these long days of online classes, I've found five main things that have saved my sanity — and my grades.

1. Silly Putty and Kinetic Sand have helped me keep focus, whether I'm on a 9 a.m. Zoom lecture or listening to a dull episode of "True Crime."

Giving your hands something to fidget with while you're losing focus can help you concentrate your energy into a simple act that won't distract you from the looming task at hand.

Get a 5-pack of Silly Putty from Target for $4.99 or a 2lb. bag of Original Kinetic Sand from Amazon for $9.99.

2. The game "I Love Hue" is probably the most relaxing and satisfying puzzle game on the market.

The premise is simple — turn the jumble of colored squares back into a gradient. The levels get progressively harder, but the satisfaction of finishing a level never fades. I've used it to take a break from work, calm down, and even ground myself before therapy sessions.

Get it free on the App Store and Google Play Store.

3. This journal has changed my daily routine since entering college by giving me a chance to reflect on my day and wind down.

Amazon

I've never been one for journaling or having a diary, but the simple layout and small size of the One Line A Day journal make it easy to fill up a day's worth of space. The five-year aspect of the journal is also a great tool to track progress and see how you've grown through college and adulthood.

Get it from Amazon for $10.25.

4. Tree-themed productivity apps that give you a well-needed guilt trip whenever you distract yourself with your phone.

You can set a timer for however long you want to study or take a technology break, and while you work, you grow a tree! These apps also have options to set timers and plant real trees across the planet, so you can save your grade while saving the environment!

Get Forest on the App Store for $1.99 and the Google Play Store for free, and Flora on the App Store for free!

5. My "Paint by Numbers" kits are the best blast from the past if you loved coloring books or painting as a kid.

My roommate and I both got one and they have helped us both wind down at the end of a long day by sitting down, putting on a calming playlist or podcast, and painting. The kits come with all the necessary items to create one painting: the canvas, paints with their corresponding numbers on them, and three paintbrushes.

Get this painting or this painting starting from $19.99.

mental health

Report this Content

Student Life

The 12 Stages Of Course Registration, As Told By "Friends"

No one best represents the struggle like our favorite 90s squad.

The State University of New York at Stony Brook

5508

YouTube

As college students, we are all familiar with the horror show that is course registration week. Whether you are an incoming freshman or selecting classes for your last semester, I am certain that you can relate to how traumatic this can be.

1. When course schedules are released and you have a conflict between two required classes.

Bonus points if it is more than two.

Keep Reading...Show less

registration

Featured

Economic Benefits of Higher Wages

Nobody deserves to be living in poverty.

Florida International University

302415

Illistrated image of people crowded with banners to support a cause

StableDiffusion

Raising the minimum wage to a livable wage would not only benefit workers and their families, it would also have positive impacts on the economy and society. Studies have shown that by increasing the minimum wage, poverty and inequality can be reduced by enabling workers to meet their basic needs and reducing income disparities.

I come from a low-income family. A family, like many others in the United States, which has lived paycheck to paycheck. My family and other families in my community have been trying to make ends meet by living on the minimum wage. We are proof that it doesn't work.

Keep Reading...Show less

Entertainment

13 Times April Ludgate Perfectly Explained College

Because who understands your bitterness better than April?

Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis

1816

Every college student knows and understands the struggle of forcing themselves to continue to care about school. Between the piles of homework, the hours of studying and the painfully long lectures, the desire to dropout is something that is constantly weighing on each and every one of us, but the glimmer of hope at the end of the tunnel helps to keep us motivated. While we are somehow managing to stay enrolled and (semi) alert, that does not mean that our inner-demons aren't telling us otherwise, and who is better to explain inner-demons than the beloved April Ludgate herself? Because of her dark-spirit and lack of filter, April has successfully been able to describe the emotional roller-coaster that is college on at least 13 different occasions and here they are.

Keep Reading...Show less

april ludgate

Recommended for you

If You Need Help Focusing Through The Mid-Semester Slump, Try These 5 Things

Simple tricks to make life SO much easier.

In This Article:

1. Silly Putty and Kinetic Sand have helped me keep focus, whether I'm on a 9 a.m. Zoom lecture or listening to a dull episode of "True Crime."

2. The game "I Love Hue" is probably the most relaxing and satisfying puzzle game on the market.

3. This journal has changed my daily routine since entering college by giving me a chance to reflect on my day and wind down.

4. Tree-themed productivity apps that give you a well-needed guilt trip whenever you distract yourself with your phone.

5. My "Paint by Numbers" kits are the best blast from the past if you loved coloring books or painting as a kid.

Subscribe to our Newsletter

No one best represents the struggle like our favorite 90s squad.

1. When course schedules are released and you have a conflict between two required classes.

2. When there is only one section of a popular course.

3. Receiving the 18,000 emails reminding you to register ASAP.

4. When you need to see an advisor, but they are too busy/unresponsive.

5. Trying not to dress like a bum for your appointments with your advisors/department heads.

6. When you have a perfectly planned out schedule, and one class ruins it.

7. Carefully moving things around to accommodate a different class/section.

8. Waking up at 6:00 a.m. for your enrollment time.

9. Concocting a new schedule at your enrollment time after your original plan gets changed.

10. Getting into a class and filling the last available seat.

11. When all of your classes finally go through.

12. Realizing that you forgot a class that was a pre-requisite for everything else.

When your capability of "adulting" is put to the test

Nobody deserves to be living in poverty.

"Nobody living in one of the most influential nations in the world should be worried about making ends meet."

What is the current minimum wage at the federal level?

What are the benefits of raising the minimum wage?

What are the states that have set a $15/hour minimum wage?

Told through Parks & Recreation GIFs

Because who understands your bitterness better than April?

1. When you have to provide an "interesting fact" for your first day ice-breaker.

2. When your professor is babbling on and on in his lecture.

3. When you edit your friend's paper and they get an A.

4. When it's 2 AM and you remember you have a test tomorrow.

5. When you finish taking the test and you're pretty sure you failed...

6. ...but then you get the test back and somehow passed.

7. When you've been up for 12 hours straight writing a paper.

8. And then you manage to stay awake in class the next day.

9. When you have to butter up your professor for an extra credit opportunity.

10. When you're assigned a group project.

11. And your group-mates are trying to chat about life instead of the assignment.

12. When it's your last class of the day and you're about to go home.

13. But then you remember rent is due tonight and the anger comes back.

Trending Topics

Top Creators

Trending Stories

Best of Health and Wellness

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

Facebook Comments

Subscribe to our
Newsletter