4 things not to do during study breaks

When I wrote my post about what to do during a study break, I felt tempted to write also about what not to do, so here is the follow-up with four advices addressing this issue. 

The first thing you should not do during your study breaks is going on the computer, unless you have iron discipline. Facebook, twitter, and all your other favourite websites provide more distraction than you are aware of, and before you know, your 10-minute break becomes a 40-minute break. Despite all this, computers and Internet may be necessary in order to study. In that case, download everything you need to your harddisk or an external memory and shut off the Internet for the time you plan to study.

The second thing is slightly related to the above. As much as you want to reward yourself with an episode of your favourite TV series halfway through the day, it is wiser to save these up for the evening. Your break is at best 10-15 minutes: long enough to empty your mind, but not so long that you get so distracted and your mind gets set to very different things. Episodes of TV series usually take 40-45 minutes to watch, which is far outside the 10-15 minutes range.

Next is staying in the same room as where you are studying. Being surrounded by your textbooks and lecture notes will not help you relax, so it is better to get away from them. If you really insist on staying inside  the room, then turn your back on your books. 

Last but not least, avoid stressful people during your study breaks. Avoid the people who always complain about things. All these complaints have a very demotivational effect on you that is likely to keep you from studying when your break is over. Also avoid stressful people because stress is contagious and another thing that inhibits good study behaviour. 

This was my post on what not to do during study breaks. What do you do when you take a break from studying? What do you avoid to do? Is there something else people should avoid during study breaks, according to you? 

A little note in between ...

Dear reader(s),

I am sorry for not having updated much the past week. Unfortunately, my schedule for the next few weeks turns out weirder and busier than I thought, so I will not be able to update more often than once or twice a week. I expect to post my updates on Sundays. It's simple: university course work and other work have higher priority for me than my blog. If you have something you want me to write about, let me know, but I cannot promise I will incorporate your ideas immediately. Same goes for comments: I cannot promise I will approve them the day you write them. Feel free to take the time and read the posts that are up already and I will update next Sunday! 

Greetings, 

your busy college student.

Professionalize yourself online

Today, almost everyone spends time online and almost everyone has at least one personal niche on the web where they profile themselves. This is often a social network site, like Facebook or Twitter, but it is also common to have blogs on WordPress, Blogspot or even a website of your own.  It is therefore not unthinkable that people go look you up on the internet when you are going to apply for an internship or a job. I happen to know the lives of some people on my Twitter timeline from minute to minute, which can be amusing for the followers, but which also gives away very much about yourself. The people in companies and businesses who check the online profiles also try to analyse your personality based on what they find on your profiles. So, if you often complain loudly and with swear words about your jobs and lectures, they may consider you inapt for the labour market in general. Hence why I decided to give a few tips about professionalizing yourself online. 

It is best to start searching for yourself on the web first. Try different search entries, such as first name + last name + hometown, your e-mail address(es), and some other combinations of tags by which you are easily identifiable and findable. If you come across 'unwanted' profiles of yourself, delete them or, less rigorously,  (temporarily) deactivate them. I just found a LiveJournal profile of myself that hosted immature stuff from when I was a teenager, I immediately copy-pasted the posts into private documents and deleted the profile. My stories are safe, yet they are not openly readable to everyone. It is also important to browse yourself from time to time. When I googled myself a few months ago, my LiveJournal did not show up in the search result, but today it did. 

Now that you have searched yourself on the web and deleted unwanted information, it is time to take a look at the profiles that you wish you keep active and that you cannot live without. Facebook has an option that allows you to view your profile as it is shown to the public or to specific friends. Analyse all visible information: what do you want your future employers to know immediately about you and what not? Do you want them to see you lying on the beach in bikini? Do you want them to see you pole dancing on the bar the one night in your life you were drunk? Does it add something to you if your future employer knows how often you declare your love to Robert Pattinson on your wall? To all these questions, the answer is probably no. You either delete these things from your profile or you change your privacy settings so that only your friends can see these things. What you do want your future employers to see, however, is a curriculum vitae or résumé. I personally have my settings so that they can see my education and work experience. In the following picture you can see what my Facebook profile looks like to non-friends. No posts, no wall, just an overview of where I worked what I did there.  

On Twitter, you can protect your tweets, that is, your settings are such that only those you approved as followers will be able to read them. Of course, you might as well just think before you post. Once online is always online, after all. Keep in mind that you decide what others can see! Check your settings and deliberate who you want to see what of your online profiles. 

So, you have cleaned and cleared your social network profiles (at least, I hope you have, or maybe you were one of those wise people who never had everything visible to everyone). Now it is time to have a look at your e-mail addresses. angelofhell@hotmail.com or pinkpetals@gmail.com sound cute and might say something about who you are as a person, but in professional contexts, it is better to have a more professional address, based on your name(s), initials, and/or date/year of birth. My university gives every student a university e-mail address, based on initials and your surname. You may use this, but you have to be aware that there will be one day that your university mail address is no longer for you.

Now comes the real thing, the thing that shows the world that you are grown-up and mature, that you are ready for serious internships or the labour market. The most well-known website that hosts millions of résumés and CVs of people all over the world. LinkedIn. I was joking about the grown-up and mature thing, but it is a great place to show the world what you are capable of and what you have done in the past. It allows you to provide the world detailed descriptions of your education, (volunteer) work experience,  extra courses you have taken, internships, theses, publications, languages, skills and expertise, and projects you have participated in. LinkedIn is basically a website that shows an extended résumé of yourself and where you can connect with teachers, classmates, (former) co-workers, and other people who work in your field. Since it comes down to sharing strictly professional and educational experiences, it is perfectly safe to add all of your teachers and colleagues. I love LinkedIn because it lets me connect with teachers from university without having to show them my holiday pictures. 

What you see in the picture above is a short summary of my LinkedIn profile. But you still are not done. It is also important to check your settings your Google or Yahoo or whichever cloud services you use. Imagine you save your holiday photos in Picasa (using Google cloud services here because I use them most frequently), but you have them set to be visible to everyone. Unwanted situation, of course. The same goes for Google Docs. You just do not want your future employer to know about your Hunger Games fanfiction or your online diary about how much you hate how a course is taught in your university without giving any constructive criticism for improvement! The same goes for any blog, photo sharing, and whatever services  are provided online. Just check your settings and change them if they might yield undesired results. Congratulations! Now you can profile yourself online without concern.

Last but not least, it is important to know that it may occur that people from inside the companies try to befriend you so that they can check more of your profile. It is thus important to only add people if you have met them in real life and if you are sure that you are going to work for the company. You do not want to be refused in the end because some HR person you have never met shared your bar and beach pictures with your no-longer future boss? 

Do you have a LinkedIn profile already? What are your settings for Facebook and Twitter? Do you think twice before you put stuff online? Have you looked yourself up on the web already? How did that feel for you? Let me know! 

How to organize yourself and your college stuff

We all know that awkward moment when you stand in front of your door and you realized you forgot your key. We also know that moment that you were convinced that you had your books packed for class and that, once in class, it turned out you did not have them with you. This exactly why organization is important, but sometimes it is difficult to awake the discipline inside yourself and actually start getting organized. There are different tips and tricks and today I will share some of my own with you. In an earlier post, I gave tips for saving room. Some of these tips might complement the tips from that post. 

Files can hold very much paperwork and protect it at the same time. In Dutch, they are called ordners, and for a reason. Not only can you easily and chronologically order your stuff in the files, but with tabs, you can also make sections for the paper work of each course. No more searching for old lecture notes or papers that might be handy for a follow-up course. As long as you file everything, you will not loose anything! I always keep lecture notes with the printed powerpoint slides of that lecture and add the readings to them, so that I have everything ordered by class session.

In order to know which documents are in which files, you need to use labels. You can keep them very general, such as 'Bachelor, year 1' or 'Master', but if you need several files for one semester or year, it might be wise to label them by course. I have, in fact, gone as far as to label them in the same order as they are in my files: 

I also value mail partitions. Sometimes you get mail that you only have to store, other times you get mail that requires you to undertake some action, such as transferring money to another bank account. Or maybe you just want to have papers within reach of your arm, regardless of what it is and how often you really need it. Mail partitions are the solution, as long as you use one shelf for each type of mail or documents. This should also help you keep track of your private finances. 

It is also tempting to make a mess of the drawers inside your desk. I know all about it and the only solution is to keep your discipline, so that your drawers will keep looking like this: 

Note the divider between the front and the back of the drawer. This way you can also keep things and items for different purposes separate from each other. 

I also like to keep my books together. When you read a series such as Twilight, Harry Potter, Hunger Games, or Gossip Girl, this is fairly easy, but with college textbooks, you might need to rethink your methods. While you can order by colour, I prefer to order them by general, overarching topics, so I keep methodology and statistics books together, I have a section for psychology books, a section for interpersonal and conversational skills, and so on. 

Last but not least, we often forget stuff because we start packing at the very last moment. It is therefore wise to keep a look on the clock and pack your bag the night before your 9 am class next morning. It is an advice my 7th grade tutor gave me, when my class was fresh in junior high school and still afraid to forget books because forgetting something could result in expulsion and detention. In college, no teacher will remove you from class when you forget something, but for yourself it is handier to be prepared. So, pack your stuff in time so that you can remain organized outdoors, after the aforementioned indoor organization advices. 

What do you do to stay organized? Or is your (part of your dorm) room an 'organized chaos'? Do you have other tips to become and remain organized? We probably all have our own ways, so everyone gets wiser by the exchange of information ;) 

6 things to do when you take a break from studying

Studying, just like anything else you do, tires you and your brain after a while. While it is important to know when you function best for study purposes (some work better in the morning, others work better in the evening), it is also important to know that it won't help you to study 5 hours in a row without a break. Your brain will get tired and eventually, you will just be staring at whatever you do and function on automatic pilot, which is not the way to go if you really want to remember something. It is therefore wise to take a 5-15 minute break after 45-50 minutes of studying/working. Here are a few things you should do during those breaks: 

• Go outside for fresh air. Fresh air will really refresh your brain. If you really insist on staying inside (some weather circumstances demand staying inside), open your window for the time you take a break. Fresh air in your study room is just as important as fresh air in your brain. If the weather is on the better side of the spectrum, keep your window opened while you are working. 

• Exercise. I do not mean that you should go to the gym for several hours, but just a few short, little exercises improve your circulation to your brain and thereby improve your focus. Dancing to your favourite music also counts, so you might as well turn on your mp3-player and shake that booty! 
• Take a healthy in-between. I keep emphasizing healthy food because it is crucial to your entire physical and mental functioning. Bite an apple, get a whole-corn bun, or enjoy some non-salted nuts for new energy. 

• Relax. You might listen to your favourite music or anything else that makes you feel calm and at ease. Yoga / meditation exercises, a short walk in your neighbourhood, or a magazine are some great distractions that do not need to cost much time. 
• Power nap. A twenty minute power nap can get your brain back in business when you have had a long evening the night before or when you have just exhausted your brain with hours of studying. 
• Use your break to relocate yourself and your stuff. As I mentioned before, changing locations can help you memorize things better because you brain tends to link processed information to the physical environment and context.

So, these were the tips for things to do during a short study-break. What are you doing when you take a few minutes off from studying? What do you eat and drink throughout a typical study day? Let me know! 

7 items every fashionable college girl needs to take with her

Fashionable college girls come in all types and sizes. Some will carry their stuff in a huge backpack due to having heavy and big textbooks; others will get away with a clutch because they can take notes on their smartphones. No matter what type of bag you have, however, there are 7 items a fashionable girl must carry with her at all times in order to keep her looks nice and neat.

First comes a small mirror. The mirrors in the toilets on your campus are likely to not shed a good light on how you really look, so with a small mirror you can detect the need for upgrades of your looks anywhere. They are also handy when you want to see how a dress, skirt or pair of pants fits around your butt when you are out for shopping. 

The second necessity is lip balm and/or lipstick. Throughout the day, your lips get dryer and dryer, at least, mine do. In order to keep a comfortable feeling on your lips and to keep them smooth, make sure you have lip balm with you for emergencies. When your lips have had their hydration boost, you can colour them with lipstick. Even if you wear no make-up at all, lipstick can boost your whole face by drawing the attention to your lips instead of to your sleepy eyes or grey face.

Third is a hairbrush, especially on windy or rainy days. With a hairbrush you can save the day by making neat pony tails or just brush your strands so that they look tidy again. My hair is of the type that frizzes as soon as there is a little, gentle breeze, so a hairbrush is definitely a must-have for me! And although umbrellas might keep your head dry, they do not guarantee a messed up hairdo. 

Fourth is hand cream, especially during the winter season. Most hand soaps on campuses tend to easily dehydrate the skin of my hands, so for me the season does not matter, but during winter, there is nothing wrong with treating your hands every now and then. They are available for all skin types and in all price classes, so there is always one you can afford. 

Fifth item that must not miss in your bag is toothpicks. While chewing gum is easier to use and might look less gross for others, picking your teeth is usually more effective. For example, chewing gum does not remove that annoying little crumb between your front teeth, and it also does not help you get rid of that spinach leaf between your teeth, so toothpicks are necessity number 1. They are also far more effective in removing plaque, which can eventually cause cavities. If you then wish to go for a fresh breath, chewing gum is the next step. 

The sixth necessity is a pair of sunglasses. Where I live, the weather can change over the minute, so I have experienced that I walked through my city with squeezed eyes. Since that not so cool experience, I always check whether I have my sunglasses with me. Needless to say you need to carry them with you in a generally sunny climate! Sunglasses are ideal as well when you want to hide sleepy eyes or dark circles.

The seventh and last item you must have with you all the time as a fashionable college girl is a killer bag. Even though you might be one of the girls who needs to carry huge textbooks and binders, you can still add a cute clutch or envelope bag to your backpack. I personally feel like I am pulled to one side when carrying heavy books in a shoulder bag, so I combine my sporty purple backpack with either of the bags in the picture below.

What do you think of these must have items for fashionable college girls? Do you have them all with you already or do you value additional items as must-haves in your bag(s)? 

Five ways to live on a budget

Many students around the world live on a budget since studying is not cheap. There are tuition fees, books and other supplies for your study, but you also need to eat, pay rent and/or public transportation costs, and many other things, and not everyone is blessed with rich parents or parents who are willing to pay the college experience for their grown-up children. No matter the cause of your limited budget, here are five simple tips you can follow if your months are longer than your money. 

First, check whether you really need the latest edition of your textbooks or that an earlier edition will suffice. The earlier editions are often offered second-hand on the web, so they are cheaper than the brand-new editions. If you even do not manage money-wise to buy books at all, check at your library whether your course books are available there. In my faculty's library, they have the textbooks at the desk that are not for lending, but for short-term use within the library. You go to the desk, ask whether you can use the book for X hours and bring it back when you're finished. Our library also happens to have the readers of all departments for instant use. Also check whether your faculty has this, because this can also save a significant amount of money. And, now that we're on the topic of books anyway, you might as well check out whether your teacher has written the actual textbook(s) needed for the course. I once had a teacher telling us that she would not mind sending us all other chapters of a book  via e-mail that she had written and published. 

The second advice I can give is to try to print as much as you can with two pages on one sheet of paper. This, of course, depends on the lay-out of the text you're printing, but it has occurred to me a couple of times that I was deceived by the lay-out on the computer screen and therefore printed one page per sheet while I could easily have printed two pages per sheet. If you use the two pages per sheet setting for all your prints (other than official documents, such as papers, essays, and theses, that must be handed in!), your print costs can be reduced by almost 50% !!!

Thirdly, it might be useful to find out whether there are second-hand shops within a reasonable distance from your campus. What is a reasonable distance is different for everyone, but a reasonable price for students is probably not! Second-hand stores are usually closer to reasonable prices for students than the 'normal' stores, unless it comes to collector's items. If you have no objection against using things already used by others, going second-hand is an ideal option for those living on a budget. 

My fourth advice is to keep track of the sales and other special actions of the shops. Since a few years, I am  under the impression that there are more weeks in a year that especially clothing stores have 'sales' racks throughout their shops than that they have not. Also be aware of shops that are about to move, renew the interior of their building, or going bankrupt. These shops usually try to get rid of as much stock as they can by reducing the prices like crazy. This one is for people who do have an objection against used things, but who are also on a budget. Since many fashion trends are also allowed to be worn for a longer period of time, buying during the sales does not necessarily mean that you're dressed old-fashioned next season! 

Last, but not least: think economically! Weigh the costs of an item versus its perceived usefulness or benefits. For example, some biological foods are more expensive than non-biological foods, but biological foods yield a stuffed feeling faster than non-biological foods, so you need less of them. Besides, biological foods really are tastier, so you also weigh the price-quality balance. Also try to find out for which grants and compensation you are eligible as a student. This may cost some time and reading tough paper work, but it might be worth it. Thinking economically is really not that difficult, you just have to make a cost-benefit analysis and be realistic and honest to yourself. If you see a super cute cardigan that does not fit with the rest of your wardrobe and therefore ends up unworn, it might be a waste of money, no matter how cute it is. 

These were my advices for living on a limited budget, but I'm sure that you have your own ways of figuring financial stuff out. How do you manage? Are you the lucky one who get everything from the parents? Or are you okay with taking a loan and having debts for the first years after your graduation?