Student Work Day – Day 22-35

Whew, it's been quite a bit of time since my last update! Here are some significant happenings, study-wise, since then:

1) Thanksgiving Break wasn't as productive as a normal school week, but looking back, that was to be expected. Still, I had a good time in Vermont and relaxed...or slept during those long car rides.^^

2) The student work day is still going quite fine! Sometimes I'll hit on a bump like a longer afternoon nap than expected, or resistance to work, but all in all, staying in the library surrounded by studying students is a good thing for me. I haven't actually gotten any of the rewards I listed in an earlier blog post because having the evenings free is a reward in itself!

3) I've noticed that my room has been getting messier. I spend less time there, so there's less motivation to clean up, and when I am there, there seems to be a million better things to do than to clean my room. This is pretty different than before, when I think I was using cleaning my room as a way to procrastinate on starting homework...

4) Finals have begun! My first final is tomorrow evening. I'm more ready for this than I have been for any previous (math) final, and less stressed about it to boot. Overall, with my finals nicely spread out (three days between each one), I'm having a very reasonable end to the semester. Today I finished off the last assignment for my FWS (freshman writing seminar), which meant I got to move my "GERST 1170" folder to the "Inactive" folder in my computer files! It was exciting, I swear (it was a good class, by the way).

Student Work Day – Day 12-14

Everything has been going great so far this week. This morning (despite sleeping in a little on accident), I finally finished off the problem set due tomorrow, and near the end of the day knocked out a sh0rt problem set due Wednesday (having homework due the Wednesday before Thanksgiving Break is kind of evil, but it's done now so HAH!). That one wasn't too bad, and I didn't even have to go to any office hours or get any other outside help for it, beyond discussing two problems with a friend and some google searches to brush up on certain concepts. I'm hoping this all means my problem solving/reasoning skills are getting better, because I noticed that math is starting to make more sense as well. Either that or all the work is finally paying off!

The only hitch now is an essay rough draft due Friday that I've only written the intro paragraph and general argument for, but that's OK. Not ideal, but things are still looking pretty darn good relative to how the beginning (and easy part!) of the semester looked.

As for my free time, I finally got around to going to a "German Dinner." Cornell has language houses, and every Monday night there are tables at the dining hall at Alice Cook where you just get together to eat dinner and talk in foreign languages with other students, workers, and Cornell faculty. I've been meaning to go the whole semester, and I finally went on Monday! I also got a chance to pick up The Original of Laura,  Vladimir Nabokov's previously unpublished manuscript...and I finally invited someone other than my boyfriend over to my room for the first time in what feels like forever (not that I don't hang out with other people outside of my room haha). I'm starting to wonder if I should structure my "free time" more now that I've pretty much got the work week down though. The first thing I'm working on is putting in more hours into my part-time job, but I've been neglecting other things lately, like playing piano. Usually I do flashcards and then read blogs to chill, but I realized that playing piano can also be relaxing! Unlike playing Portal (the video game) tonight...I've been freaked out ever since my friends talked about the boss at the end (Him: "It took me like five minutes to kill her the first time" Me: "THERE'S A BOSS??"). Haha. Overall though, my fun is definitely much more before^^.

Last thing I've been thinking about: how much work should I do during Thanksgiving Break? I'm visiting my boyfriend's family in Vermont, and I'll definitely have time to watch video lectures or revise essays while driving...but should I just ignore work the whole time there, otherwise? I know I should relax, but on the other hand I really want to ace my finals, and every hour counts. You could argue that I should just increase my workday hours, but I suspect that I'm only feeling so good right now because I had adequate time to chill and play video games today. Hmmmm...

Student Work Day – Day 8-11

Luckily one of my professor gave the entire class an extension for one of my problem sets, so now I can say that that problem set is (with the help of classmates and TAs) perfect and ready to go for Monday. Oddly enough though, when I asked all my friends from that class about the last problem I was stuck on, the vast majority hadn't even started on it yet, hm....To be fair, everyone's had a killer week, but personally I wouldn't have been able to finish that problem set without spending the 3-4 hours I did in office hours...Maybe I'm just not as good at problem solving. =(

Other than that, Thursday and Friday went swimmingly. The only hitch this weekend was Saturday, where I worked out, went shopping, and then worked on the CS assignment due at 11:59 the rest of the day. Hmmm this wasn't ideal, but the assignment got done (I did get a good start on Friday, but all the hard stuff got done on Saturday)..at 11:56 PM. Especially since I had to spend some extra time last weekend reading a book for GERST 1170, I'm starting to think I need to do five hours of studying on Sunday instead of three...But today I still spent just three hours  studying - I used the extra time to relax, and attend a Yamatai (taiko drumming) concert. =D It was pretty kicking!

At least prelims are over.^^

Student Work Day – Day 7

Today was a great day. I finished one problem set and got halfway through the other one due Friday, so there shouldn't be any (late-night!) problems tomorrow night, if you get my drift. ;-)

I've been thinking a lot about a certain problem lately, though - does my student work week actually include enough hours for me to get my desired results in classes? Things I'm considering:

1. I'm probably working more, maybe much more, than ever on my classes. If not in terms of hours, definitely in terms of work completed, even though I only manage to fit in at most six 50-minute study blocks. I think that if I had actually followed this schedule since I started college, I might have been totally covered for the semester by now.

2. But...what do I really know? My dad tells me he came home at 6 every day during college, cooked dinner and watched a little TV with friends, and then studied further until 11 PM. Plus, he worked through Saturday and Sunday. He says, "If you can manage this work schedule, you must be a genius." I consider myself a fast learner, but I don't think my classes are *easy*.

3. Also, friends and family have always told me that college is hard. "You will pull all-nighters. Multiple nights in a row."  I definitely see enough Cornellians spending working on essays or studying until 6 AM (I even encountered one around 6 this morning - I was up and about because I was heading out to the gym, but he was just finishing up for the night!)...but is it really because of procrastination and poor study-skills, or is it just too much work? For some of them it might be the latter because of too many courses and too many extracurriculars, or a poorly planned schedule, but what if...college is just hard? I could accept an occasional week where one would have to buckle down and study the entire day, but little to no free time?

4. My study schedule does seem a little sparse. No work at all on Saturdays? Well that's not entirely true - I teach piano lessons, have side projects, and have a part-time job...but it does seem a bit easy in a way. Especially since today I met a high school student who claims he has studied for the SAT for 10 hours every day on Grockit.com for the last two weeks, while I write about slow mornings, afternoon slumps, and decreasing productivity as the day moves on and winds down.

5. Work expands to fill the time allocated. So maybe by timeboxing my study time, I make myself more efficient. Always possible. And there's got to be time in a college schedule to pursue an interesting extracurricular or two while partying the way we college students are entitled to. :-D

I'm interested in hearing your guys' ideas. Is college that hard, or is it just time management and overcommitment that results in late-nights with your friend the textbook? Am I just a study sissy? Am I missing something, or am I right on target?

Student Work Day – Day 3-6

I just took my last Prelim (Cornell word for midterm) tonight, so that will be the last test until finals in December. Studying for it was reasonably spread out over four days, but as always things could be improved. I ran out of steam at 5:30 today (the Prelim was at 7:30) - I had a practice prelim in front of me and no other distractions in sight, but for some reason my the computer screen continued to just come in out and out of focus, while my mind wandered, despite a running study timer and attempts to focus my attention on the questions. So, I concluded I probably wasn't going to get any more productive study time in for the Prelim. After surfing the internet, I grabbed dinner and chilled before taking the test. In total I think I spent about seven 50-minute blocks on the Prelim as well as about 4.5 hours in my AEW (extra CS tutorial class), at a review session, and asking other people related questions.

Heading into the Prelim I thought I would have liked another 2 study blocks to solidify some definitions and concepts, but looking back, I don't really think that would've helped at all. Either way, I think it's important to forget about what you "could have" done when taking a Prelim - let go of the guilt and concentrate. I never have problems though because usually enough adrenaline kicks in to help me out.

Day 3-4 (Saturday & Sunday)

Saturday and Sunday were great days, as you can all guess (they are break days!). I spent my 'free' time working at my part-time job online, giving piano lessons, running errands, and reviewing Japanese and Vietnamese flashcards (it's my hobby, and pretty low-key since the only pressure comes from myself). After getting stuck at a puzzle in Portal I was bored and called some people up but everyone was busy studying. Haha. So I browsed MIT OpenCourseWare and watched the first video lecture for 6.000, their intro programming course. It was actually pretty interesting because the professor started talking about computer architecture, among other things that I have/had no idea about. On Sunday I'd finished my three study blocks by 10:30 AM so after another piano lesson, I headed out to hit a prelim review session. After that I walked to downtown Ithaca with my boyfriend, where we bought Girl Scout cookies, a used book called "Your First 100 Words in Vietnamese" (he's learning Vietnamese, sort of), and picked up some books at the library.

So there's an example of some good 'rest days,' although I really need to learn how to have more fun, heh. I wonder if there's a "fun bar" you can fill up just like in The Sims, and if there are some ways you can fill the "fun bar" more quickly so you can get back to work? Hmmm.

Day 5-6 (Monday & Tuesday)

On Monday studying went great. I looked ahead at my assignments for the week though and found that time might be tight Wednesday through Friday, so I attempted to block out some extra time in the evening so I won't have any nasty surprises (staying up late) later in the week...but it didn't really work. I did finish off some homework for my writing class but that didn't save me very much time.

..It should be OK as long as the problem sets aren't impossible...but they have been at least once so far this semester, and it's dangerous to bank on them being reasonable...Yay, rising tension!

I felt vaguely sluggish as I started out studying today (Day 6), but overall it was alright and I can't complain too much, other than an intense desire to nap at 3 PM (which I indulged for 10 minutes..so not really). Some people claim that an afternoon nap is a good way (or the only way) to beat the afternoon slump, while others say you just need to eat right and/or eat a good snack. I'm not sure at all - seems like something to experiment with?

Student Work Day – Day 2

Today went fine in terms of getting out of the dorm and staying out at the right times. I was at the library around 9:10 AM and came back around 6:40 PM. Mentally I wasn't as 'on' as before though, probably because it was Friday, and because of a vague stomach pain that started around noon and intensified around 4 PM. Potentially from not being careful enough while cooking chicken for dinner recently. If I'm consistently slowing down significantly by 3-4 PM though, I'll definitely need to find a solution, or maybe just wait until my ability to work for longer periods of time improves.

I've decided to have weekly mini-rewards for the each week till the end of the semester, and a relatively big final reward. :)

Week 1: Wooden coat hangers! (My dad refused to buy them for me...they're not even that much more expensive than plastic hangers, sigh.)

Week 2: 2raumwohnung 2009 album Lasso (5 euros...because sometimes you just can't connect to Last.fm)

Week 3: Pedicure :D

Week 4: 2raumwohnung 2001 album Kommt Zusammen (also 5 euros)

Week 5: Manicure ^^

Week 6: One-time housecleaning (mommy will like it too!)

Tomorrow is my free day!

Student Work Day – Day 1

After reading these blog articles:

Study Hacks - Establish a Student Work Day

Make It Happen - In 30 Days - Just Go On An Adventure!

I've decided to start a 30 Day (well, till the end of the semester, so more like 43 day) Trial for the Student Work Day Cal Newport suggests. The whole idea is to have a set time where the bulk of your work gets done, just like a 9-5 job, and then relax, guilt-free, the rest of the time. This is pretty simplified so check out the Study Hacks post if you're interested in getting into the nitty-gritty details.

I tried doing a Student Work Day the last two weeks and it's worked really well, except for two things:

1) I burned out by having too many 8:30 AM- 8:30 PM workdays in a row, and only had a minor break for Saturday and Sunday, which resulted in an existential crisis by Tuesday night (seriously)...which seriously did not help for my math midterm. I have a new theory that one has a certain threshold for studying, or "academic endurance" level that can be raised over time, but mine was definitely too low for this amount of work, with no significant (day-long) breaks.

2) It's just not a habit yet. Hence the "30-day challenge."

So, I'm hoping to address these issues over the 43-day trial (adventure!). This will be a constant give-and-take thing - we'll see how things have worked out at the end of the semester, and whether I'll want to stick with this permanently! But the benefits I noticed while actually following the schedule were really great - work got done before play, and playtime became much more fun because it was "guilt-free."

New Habit: Student Work Day

[[Adopt a student work day, take Saturday off, and follow a Sunday ritual.]]

MON.-FRI.

• After shower and morning prep (hair, makeup, clothes), get the hell out of my room and go to the library (ideally by 8:30-9:30 AM).
• Return to dorm building only after 6:30 PM (exception: cooking dinner).
• Once a day, enjoy one long meal with friends.
• After student work day, do nothing but relax or work on personal projects and errands.
• Sleep by 12 AM on school nights and pack everything for next day the night before.

SAT.

• Relax, work on personal projects, or work on part-time job and errands.

SUN.

• Enjoy Sunday brunch! (It's really good here at Cornell)
• Work outside of dorm building for 3 hours, then sign out!
• Relax, work on personal projects, or work on part-time job and errands.

And to keep me on top of this, I'll be reporting to friends, and on this blog. :) All I need now is a reward at the end of the semester for trying out this new habit for 43 days. Any ideas?

Day 1 Report

Things went perfectly today - I went to the gym, ate breakfast and was at the library by 8:40 AM. There I did 50 minute blocks of work separated by 10 minute breaks (where I browse the internet, check e-mail, and sometimes even drill flashcards) before heading to classes, which lasted until 3:30 PM. After that I fit in two more 50-minute blocks before meeting up with my boyfriend for dinner at around 5:30. By the time we got back to the dorm, it was 6:30!

Now everything's ready for tomorrow, and I've got tomorrow's studying planned out. Random observations:

• You can use your 10-minute breaks to convince yourself to study for 50 minutes first thing in the morning (or whenever starting a session) *before* checking your e-mail.
• My concentration started going down around 4 PM.
• Thinking this whole thing as a "30-Day Adventure" instead of "Trial" or "Challenge" will probably help a lot.

Till tomorrow!