I know I've been promising a dorm/campus tour for a while now but I haven't had time to record it yet. So next week. I PROMISE. And if I fail... well, you can think up a punishment.
For those who are new: College Journey is something I post the last two Thursdays of every month to both record my own experiences and help those who will be starting college next year or have just started this year. It's been a while since I collected all the posts in one place, so I'm including all the links in this post as well.
Freshman Year
Sophomore Year
I know that's quite a few links, but I like for it to be accessible to people. If you ever have a question about college life, personal or broad, don't be afraid to email me at tsundokusam@gmail.com
I think I've spoken about this topic sporadically, but reading college can be hard. It took me about a month this year to get into the habit again and figure out my time management in a way that let me actually read regularly, so I wanted to share with all of you, who might be having a hard time carving out time to read. And, honestly, this is applicable to not just college students but all students.
Read before you sleep. I go to bed at midnight every night. That might seem late, but it actually gets me 8 hours since I wake up at 8:30 every day. I never have enough energy at night to really make it worth doing any homework. I could stay up and talk to friends, and sometimes I do do that, but since I see them a lot every day anyways, unless there's something special going on it's not my priority. What tends to happen is around 10 I retreat to my room and read. This only works for weekdays, though, since on weekends I don't even aim for midnight to sleep.
Read when you wake up. This is what I tend to do on weekends. I don't meet friends on weekends until around noon, since everyone likes to sleep in. I have a hard time sleeping in that late, so I normally, unless I have pressing homework, just read until it's time to meet everyone. This is one of the times I get the most reading done.
Read after classes are completely over. I love to read once I get home after all my classes are done for the day. I don't normally read for that long during these times of the day, since I want to get to my homework, but a chapter or two doesn't hurt and it lowers my anxiety.
Don't read in spurts. This is what I was doing wrong. I was using reading to be the padding between other work, but only reading one chapter in between hours of work was just killing my reading juice and I needed more than that. Now that I read for huge chunks of time I can actually notice a difference- I do more work during work time and relax more during reading time and enjoy reading more.
Don't force yourself to read or feel bad about not getting things read. This hasn't been much of a problem this year as much as it was last year, but sometimes I get mad or start to hate a book if it takes me too long to read, even if it's not the book's fault. And this, too, drains the fun out of reading when I'm stressing about finishing a book.
That's just my advice for reading! Do you have any particular advice? I'd love to hear it, so please comment!
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Even though I'm not in school, I ten to read before bed and when I get up.
ReplyDeleteIt's such a great way to relax into sleep and wake up!
DeleteAwesome advice! I just started college this year and I'm definitely feeling the pressure of not getting books read. I'm going to take your advice and try to stop reading on spurts because it really does kill my reading juice and makes me not want to pick up the book again.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to help! You'd thinking reading in spurts would help but it unfortunately doesn't.
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