Life Advice

Dear Rachel,

So far, my upper winter has been neither great nor terrible. The weeks pass by in a monotonous cycle of homework, eating, and barely getting enough sleep. Feeling “just okay” everyday is growing tiresome. What do I do to spice up my life?

Please help,

Anonymous

Well you can’t do that if you don’t have time to do anything other than homework. The golden rule here is to put your phone away!

Hi, anonymous! The problem you describe is one that I can relate to, and one that I’m sure many others on this campus also suffer from during winter term. Thankfully, there are many ways you can pull yourself out of this pit of boredom.

School life is inevitably very routine—most days you’re repeating the cycle of waking up, going to classes, grabbing quick meals, retreating to your room to finish homework and then finally going to bed. It’s especially heightened by the monotonous, gray, cold winter weather. However, you can change this.

First things first, if you’re spending more than four hours on homework each night, you can probably cut down on that. Unless you have five or six classes the next day, you’re only going to have four subjects of homework. One of those is probably an English reading or an art assignment which shouldn’t take you a full hour. It is more important to do your homework effectively than to spend a significant amount of time on it.

You want to spice up your life? Well you can’t do that if you don’t have time to do anything other than homework. The golden rule here is to put your phone away! You’re never going to get anything done if you’re checking Snapchat or Instagram every five minutes. Give your phone to your roommate, leave it in a friend’s room or throw it under your bed. While your phone is probably your biggest distraction, it’s also the easiest one to get rid of.

While technology often gets a bad reputation, you can also use it to your advantage. You could try out the Pomodoro Technique, where you work in intervals of twenty-five minutes of concentrated studying, separated by a short break between each session. You could install the Self Control app, which you can download onto your Macbook to prevent you from opening certain websites (Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Netflix, etc.) for a certain period of time.

Now that you have some free time, how do you spend it? Find a passion. While this may sound cliché, if you still find your life monotonous, chances are you haven’t discovered your passion yet. There are many things you can do other than academics: produce music, make films or sing your heart out.

So, you’ve found something in your life to do other than homework. But you still feel too productive. What else can you do to make your life more interesting? Well, did you go to PEA’s First Poetry Slam last Saturday? How about the Neuroscience Symposium? If you said no to either of these questions, you’re not taking advantage of the Academy’s activities. Each week, every student receives an email listing the campus events happening that weekend. While there are weekly trips to the Fox Run Mall, there are several other events that only happen occasionally. If you find you and your friends have nothing to do on a Friday night, there’s probably something occurring that you don’t know about. Attending these events with your friends is always a lot of fun. Not only does your friend group have an excuse to come together, if you find yourself not enjoying the event, you can always leave and go somewhere else.

Anonymous, I hope this answers your question! The main points were that you should spend less time on homework, use this newly-found extra time exploring your passions and make use of the events on campus. Good luck!

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