Starting a new semester always brings on so many feelings – excitement, stress, anxiety, or relief. I wanted to drop some tips on things to keep in mind and I hope you find it useful! If you have any questions head over to my instagram or comment down below. For a short and sweet version, check out the instagram post where I chatted about this. And scroll through for some PRO-TIPS
Audit your time
You guys already know how much I think planning and getting into a routine just makes life so much easier. You won’t miss important things and you’ll be able to breathe well and not feel like you’re putting out fires everyday. If a day dosen’t go as planned, IT’S OKAY! Pickup where you left off
Everyone has a different method
- Notes app on their phone
- A Notebook
- A Planner
Choose the best option that’s best for you and stick to it! When you plan out your day or week have your calendar in front of you with your due dates/exam dates. This way, you’ll have a big picture idea of what you need to get done each day.
You may not always feel 100% before each exam
And that’s okay. School is hard, school is a lot. You’ll get through it. Use the concepts you studied and process of elimination to answer the questions you don’t know
Take inventory of your career
Even if you don’t know exactly what you want your “career” to be, please try to always do something that you’ll learn from and something that’ll give you extra skills whether that’s leadership, research, networking, soft skills.., etc that will add to your CV and give you experiences to speak about on interviews
A great piece of advice I got in undergrad is to be doing something every semester for your career. While I didn’t follow this exactly, I think it’s a good principle and here’s what I recommend:
Have a couple long-term thing(s) you do, for example:
- A job in your field
- Actively in an organization
- Volunteering at the same place
And then every semester (or summer) or every school year add something small that’s more short term, for example:
- An internship
- A health fair
- Research
- Organizing an event
- Being on a panel
- Volunteering at a new place
- Tutoring
Join an organization
If you want to take your time to get a ‘lay of the land’ first, that’s okay! Get settled, go to a few meetings or an involvement fair and join! You DO NOT NEED to be president of an organization to be considered ‘involved.’ Also, don’t let the time needed to be involved in organizations overtake your other responsibilities. They are fun, but they aren’t everything. Stay committed to a few (1-2) of them depending on what you can handle.
Try to stray away from saying ‘I’ll wait until things slow down’ I don’t think that actually every happens LOL, there will never be perfect conditions, just go for it! You have time to join another organization if you don’t like the one you’re in.
PRO-TIP: Join an organization that has multiple committees. This way, every year your can be in the same organization but on a different committee. It’ll switch things up and add more to your CV!
Don’t get caught up in the hype
There will be some things that happen in school that get people ‘riled up’ don’t let it distraction from what you know you have to do
There will be a lot of ‘I heard you have to do this to get this job/residency/fellowship’ while advice is good not all of it is well meaning. Seek the right knowledge for yourself and speak with people that have gone through what you’re trying to get to.
Learn your study habits
This can take A WHILE (it did for me) and it might change with every class, but that’s okay. Give yourself the grace. As you go on, you’ll learn what works for you and what does not.
Just because flashcards and elaborate study guides works for your friend, it may not work for you and that’s OKAY!
You’ll also learn your professors teaching and question asking style so you’ll be able to better pinpoint questions they may ask and concepts they want you to focus on.
Please don’t spend so much time making fancy study materials that you neglect the actual studying part.
PRO-TIP:
Try to make the most of your time – one thing I liked to do when I was having a busy week was to listen to lectures during my workouts or during my commute so by the time I sat down to study it, I heard it once in class and then 1-2 times on my commute.
This makes taking in the information to memorize it so much easier!
PRO-TIP:
Something I like to use when my professor uploads a PDF and I want it in a powerpoint or microsoft word or even when I want to merge multiple PDFs for a study packet, I use SmallPDF.com
It’s FREE, there’s just a limit on the amount of conversions you can do per hour.
There will be a lot of information at once
I know, at first it can feel like A LOT! If you’re on limited time, study smart!
Think to yourself, there’s 8 lectures on this exam and 50 questions on the exam, so from each lecture there will be about 6-7 questions.
The point is, even though one lecture has 50 slides +/- readings, figure out what is important and likely to be asked if your short on time and mental capacity lol.
Be okay with the losses, there will be wins
I promise.
Take breaks
Your life is happening while you’re in school. Don’t sacrifice too much and miss out on life events.
There will always be another assignment, or quiz or test. I mean honestly, there has been since like Pre-K right!?
And guess what? Life has moved on. Be sure to take care of yourself, and your health, see your loved ones and find outlets outside of school.
Back up your documents, PLEASE!
Nothing is worse than working so hard on a study guide, a presentation or anything and losing it (real tears will flow HAHA)
Some services that I use and love are:
- Google Drive which is free ninety-nine and you can access all the files from any device
- Microsoft office 365/One Drive
- PROTIP: This isn’t free, BUT your school probably has a program to give it to students for free or at deep discount, so check
- You can also access all the files from any device
Have any questions? Drop them down below or head to my instagram for more!
