Factors like how you stay organized and manage your digital life greatly contribute to how well you do in school. You also need to organize your life in terms of your relationships and building social and cultural capital while in college. Finally, unexpected things will happen while you're in school -- if you prepare for the unexpected, it won't knock you off track. Here we will provide resources on all these factors and more so you can keep on top of your work, stay organized, and ultimately be successful at IU.
Creating priorities
Creating and maintaining priorities is crucial for collegiate success. As a college student, you do not have all the time in the world. So, you will need to prioritize the different things that you need to do.
Critically Assess Your Pie of Life
- Do you find yourself with too little time for family or friends?
- Is there too little time for school in your life right now?
- Do you think you have too much leisure time?
Many times, the issues students have in creating collegiate success spawn from the inability to properly manage and balance their lives. The key is to identify where your time is being spent and determine if changes in priorities need to be considered.
As a college student, there are three main pieces in your pie of life: school, work, and leisure. It is crucial to learn how to properly balance this pie of life and ensure that your priorities are in line to allow for academic, professional, and personal success. For your pie of life to be successful, you must be willing to take time to examine the ways you utilize your time and commit to trying new strategies that might help you to be more successful.
Description of the video:
Welcome to learning. Iu, my name is Amber and I will be guiding you through your journey here at U with the help of your fellow students. These videos will help you learn how to study smarter, grow professionally, stay healthy, and find tech. As a college student, you do not have all the time in the world. So you will need to prioritize the different things you need to do. Let's hear from your fellow students about how they prioritize their student life. So managing time is a big issue for a lot of people and it's something that I often work with when I'm teaching with other students, is how do you manage your time? How do you focus on yourself while also excelling in your own right in your school work? But I think a big portion of it is also finding things that are fun to you and they don't feel like chores, especially as you're getting involved on campus. And having to throw that in as well, like school work is a chore and you can view it as that or as a job, but you also should be doing things that are fun even if they are attached to school as well. I actually go to canvas and there is a section on there that you are able to change the way that you see your canvas from being card view to what is called list view. And the list view will show all your assignments that are due on which day that they're due. And that is the biggest thing that helps me because it helps me keep in mind what's coming up, when it's coming up, when it's due. So I'm able to just see it. And it's a great reminder because I check canvas nearly every day. My biology professor gave me this time tape. She told me to highlight the times I was definitely not available, right? I highlighted those, and then she told me to look at all the white spaces. Let me tell you, there's so much of it. There is seriously abundant of time you can use for studying, you can use to making friends. Just know how much time you have and that will solve your problems. For you to be successful, you must be willing to take the time to examine how you use your time and commit to trying new strategies. Thanks for watching and be sure to visit learning that UDU for more tips on enhancing your IU experience.
Dealing with the Unexpected
You've done it! You pie is balanced, but then the unexpected happens. You lose your job, you get sick and miss a week of class, you fight with your best friend who just so happens to be your partner on a group project for class. Now what? Don't wait until the unexpected happens -- plan for it in advance. Watch the video (to the left) to hear from your fellow students about how they deal with the obstacles life always manages to throw in our way.
Description of the video:
Welcome to Learning IU. My name is Hanna and I will be guiding you through your journey here, I U with the help of your fellow students. These videos will help you learn how to study smarter, grow professionally, stay healthy, and find tech. All sorts of personal emergencies can impact you while you're in college. You could find that your car needs expensive repairs. Your roommate moves out on you with no warning. You lose your part time job, or your partner breaks up with you right before a big exam. We're all human. These things happen. Create a safety net for yourself and ask for help. Let's hear from your fellow students and how they have prepared to deal with the unexpected. If you can, have a college emergency fund, a separate savings account designated specifically for emergencies or unexpected expenses. Whenever you get extra money, a gift, financial aid, refund, extra shift at work, consider putting at least some of that money into your emergency saving account. Only tap it when the expenses is a surprise and a necessity. It's not for a vacation, dinner out, or rent. Okay. You experience something unexpected that affects your studies. Talk to your teachers. Tell them what's going on and ask for help. They may be able to provide lecture videos, extra time on assignments or modified assignments so you don't fall behind and notify your advisor. They know about the right resources on campus and can ensure all right people know about your issue. You will need a plan to catch back up. Talk to your advisor if you are having trouble putting them together. Once you have it, ask your professors for feedback to make sure your deadlines are reasonable. They may also have suggestions about what work to tackle first. Once you have a plan, stick with it. Your campus financial aid office may have emergency funding. Advisors and success coaches will support you, and professors are generally sympathetic and what to see you succeed. Counseling Services are there to support you in dealing with the aftermath of an emergency. Use your team. Thanks for watching, and be sure to visit Learning.iu.edu for more tips on enhancing your IU experience.
Managing your digital life
Get organized
- Create folders on your computer, in your Exchange Online IU email account, and in Google Drive or OneDrive - IU (for quick document creation accessible from anywhere, file sharing, etc.), one for each class, all named the same way.
- Sync your Canvas calendar with your IU email.
- Go through your syllabi and add due dates and start dates (and/or set reminders for these events) to your IU email calendar for all big assignments (papers, projects, exams).
- Create a file-naming system that works (you can tell what it is without opening it, it's sorted in a way that makes sense, and you can find it easily by searching for it using key words).
Description of the video:
Welcome to Learning IU. My name is Sergio Ortiz and I'll be guiding you through your journey here at IU with the help of your fellow students. These videos will help you learn how to study smarter, grow professionally, stay healthy, and find tech. Factors like how you stay organized and manage your life contribute to how well you do in school. Technology can help you stay organized. Here we will provide advice on managing your digital life so you can keep on track of your work, stay organized and ultimately be successful at IU. Let's hear from your fellow students and learn some of their digital life tips. One of my favorite things with Canvas is being able to sync the notifications through assignments like big tests, homework, and sync it so it comes straight to my email and be able to see what an instructor might be presenting for us. And it helps you to just be able to manage those things. And for me, checking my email is like, it's like clockwork. So being able to see those assignments in my email is what helps me the most to keep up with them. So for all my classes, I like to make a folder for each of them; it's for my computer and for OneDrive. And being able to have them all laid out in front of you is really good for organizing and making sure you know where to access everything. So during your time at IU, there will be a lot of different messages and input you'll be receiving from all sorts of different places. The amount of things that come into your box is a lot. Sometimes it could be overwhelming. So the first thing you can do with your messages is trashing it. By trashing some of these unnecessary things, it will help you focus on what's really important to you, whether it is your curriculum or your extracurriculars or things that are important to you. Another thing you can do with your emails is tasking it. By allocating certain times of day to write your emails. It would help you keep things manageable. And last but not least, if you can just do it now, right? If someone asks you a quick question, yes or no, or if you're available for this time, just just hop on, pull up your phone and just send it. Managing your digital life is all about balance. It's never a bad idea for a sacred day off from all things college. Thanks for watching, and be sure to visit Learning.iu.edu for more tips on how to enhance your IU experience.
Email every day: surviving the flow
- Set aside a confined time for email and a plan to deal with it. There are 10 tips here.
- Check it twice a day and file things in your folders as you go. You might try this system while you do that: "Trash it - task it - or do it now." Explanation: "Trash it" (do I really need to keep that?), "task it" (I schedule a time in my calendar for when I'm going to deal with it), or "do it now" (self-explanatory).
Create a time management systemÂ
- Use your IU email calendar to create repeating events for all classes and other important things that happen regularly every week. Consider color-coding them by type.
- Schedule daily 2-hour blocks of "learning time." You may find you need more than this, but no more than 2 hours at a stretch is best in order to avoid burnout and promote concentration.
- Consider a "sacred day off" from all things college!