How to Start a New Semester or School Year the Right Way - College Info Geek

Key Takeaways

Hello friends a new semester is upon us and in this quick video I want to give you a few things that you can do to make sure that semester goes smoothly and one of the biggest things I want to focus on in this video is setting yourself up to not burn out and lose motivation as the semester goes on because I know when a new semester comes Upon Us you're full of a lot of motivation right you're full of all this like new refreshed energy and you really want to do well in all your classes and get involved and hang out with people and do all that stuff and as the semester goes on you start to lose that motivation right things just pile on and due dates start to pile up and your motivation starts to wne so I want to talk about some things you can do to make sure that doesn't happen or at least to let you mitigate those effects and uh not let them make you lose steam but first I want to talk about just the changing of habits so in Charles Dick's book The Power of Habit which I have read and highly recommend he talks about how people are apt to change their set patterns their regular behaviors more often during large Life Changes such as moving to a new house or becoming a parent or getting married people who get married or move to a new house are really apt to change the brand of coffee they drink or the cereal they eat and the book mentions that people going through these big life changes are actually more vulnerable to marketers because of these huge upheavals in their life now this is great information for marketers maybe not such great information for you if you want to be a Discerning Shopper but it is good information for you if you want to change your own habits because just just as those habits are vulnerable to marketers they're also vulnerable to intervention on your own part right so a new semester is the perfect time to look at your habits and see what changes you can make see what systems you can build to become more efficient and effective as the semester goes on so I want to talk about a couple of things that can really help you out in that regard but first I have some quicker tips that will help you before the semester starts or right when it starts to make sure things go as smoothly as possible number one you want to know exactly what you require in terms of gear and textbooks and all that good stuff before the semester starts does this mean you need to buy all of your textbooks right away before classes start not necessarily um what I recommend doing is at least looking at the book requirements maybe even emailing teachers and saying hey do I actually need the book do I need the newest edition can I get a used Edition and just having that knowledge stored in your pocket know it in the back of your mind now if there are books that are going to take a while to ship you can only get them in paper you can't rent them uh as an eext book or you can't get them from the campus bookstore and a pinch yes you're going to want to get those books well ahead of time just to make sure you can get a good start in the first week of the semester uh I always think you know in my opinion that it's better to spend a little bit of money on a textbook you're not quite sure about than it is to lose a lot of progress in your first couple of weeks of class while you're waiting for it to ship because that can derail an entire semester however for books that you can rent uh very quickly via Amazon Kindle or other e textbook methods or maybe something you can find very cheaply in town maybe it's okay to book gamble you know wait till the first day of class see if you can share a book with a friend or something or see if it's actually that required and if it is you can go pick it up very quickly if not you've saved yourself a good amount of money another tip that I have used a lot uh during my whole college career was actually put my professor's office hours on my Google Calendar now Google Calendar lets you actually create multiple different calendars that you can turn off and on so usually I would only be showing my class and work and event calendars but I had this other calendar that showed all my professor's office hours that I could turn on at will and that way if I did need to go see a professor I didn't need to go digging through the University website to see when they'd be in the office I had it all in the calendar I had that set up before the semester started and everything got busy and I could see exactly where their office was when I could go in what their phone number was and all that good stuff so highly recommend doing that it's really easy just look on the syllabuses that you get uh syllabi I guess is the plural word or look on the University website most professors have their own little website and you can create that stuff right there now a couple of other calendar related tips number one get all of your classes into your Google calendar before the semester starts and a little less obvious tip to attach to that actually look on the University website and map figure out what the locations and room numbers of your classes are and put that in the detail section of Google Calendar I actually wrote an article last year about how I every semester before classes started would go around campus making sure I knew exactly where my classes were especially if I had multiple classes that had a very small Gap of time between them that way I wasn't wasting time getting lost and uh it was just a better way to start the semester I think but having that information Google Calendar even if you don't go looking for your classes locations personally In the Flesh before the classes start you'll actually have that information and you can look up a diagram I would also link to the campus maps and building diagrams like floor plans in my Google Calendar just in case I got really confused and needed to see where something was on in more than one occasion I actually was able to help somebody else who was lost and needed to find a classroom on the same floor that I was going to and lastly on that calendar front it's good to put the semester significant dates in your calendar I'm talking stuff like days when there won't be school the start a spring break the start a Thanksgiving break when finals are that stuff is usually up on the University website they usually have a calendar for significant dates in the semester and you can transfer that stuff all towards your calendar the reason this is a really good idea is because I advocate every single week looking at your calendar on Sunday and creating a week's plan of events and tasks and if those events are already on the calendar you can look at say Monday and say oh that's Labor Day I don't have school I can work on a new project or I can go have fun and you don't have to go looking at the University website for those dates during that week and you don't have to be surprised about those significant dates you'll know well in advance because you put in the groundwork beforehand now let's talk about things you can do to ensure that you don't run out of steam as the semester goes on you know you're really motivated as the semester starts we want to make sure you can keep as much of that motivation as the months we on as the assignments and tests pilot up and the first thing that you want to do is make sure you have good study habits and one of the best ways to build good study habits is to make sure you have a good location for studying if you remember in a previous video I talked about a study done at the University of Hawaii where students literally just turn their desk towards a wall and put a note on a lamp it said study area and the students that actually did this were able to raise their GPA so before the semester starts or maybe during the first week identify a good location for you to do most of your studying in and you can pair that with set studying time each day or maybe a time that works for each day on your calendar so maybe the library is a good location for you it's quiet there's a lot of other people working so you kind of get that good vibe of focused work and you can put on your calendar that every day from 2: to 4: or something like that you're going to go there you're going to get all the studying and reviewing and assignments done that you need to get done and that'll start building a habit so two months down the line when you're a little bit stressed and you've got a lot more assignments you still have that habit ingrained you're still going to be at the library every single day like you said you would and you're keeping steam going throughout the semester one final tip for that first week of classes is to introduce yourself to your professors maybe go up to them after the first class shake their hand introduce yourself and that's going to make it a lot easier for you to get over the initial uh mental blocks for going to office hours if you happen to need help during the semester you already know the professor they're familiar person familiar face and you won't have as much trouble going in and asking for help that's going to help you if you run into difficulties during the semester which could otherwise cause you to derail in your studies the worst thing is getting behind yes you can can recover from getting behind with a lot of hard work but if you can prevent that by seeking help and assistance when you need it and if you can make that as easy as possible then that's going to be to your benefit so I hope these quick tips helped you out if you're watching this at the beginning of a new semester I hope your new semester gets off to an awesome start and stays that way thanks for watching and I'll see you next week hey guys thanks so much for watching this video on how to get a great start to the new semester now if you want to get new tips on being a more effective student every single week you can click that big red subscribe button right there also I wrote a completely free book on how to earn better grades so if you want to get a copy of that click the picture of the book and if you want to find a summary blog post with links to other resources and other articles I've written with more detail you can click the orange logo right there to get to it last week's video was an absolutely massive video on how to get better test grades we talked about things you can do during the test and also ways to prepare more efficiently and if you want to connect with me I'm on Twitter at tomf frankley and you can also leave a comment below with questions you might have or other feedback if you like this video leaving a like definitely helps the channel out so thank you so much if you do that and I will see you next week