Living as a university student is no joke. You probably heard your high school teachers say things like, “your schedule will look a lot more hectic in university” or, the classic, “your assignments are going to be much harder.” Honestly, they weren’t completely wrong.
University can be challenging, but one of the hardest parts is figuring out how to balance schoolwork with everything else in your life — and, perhaps most importantly, learning how to deal with procrastination.
Every student, no matter where they are academically, has procrastinated at some point. For whatever reason, final papers and exams tend to sneak up on you more in university compared to high school. After completing a rigorous assignment, you think you have a few weeks to relax before the next one, and suddenly it’s due in two days and you haven’t even started.
Although it might appear this way, procrastinating doesn’t have to be a problem. There are plenty of ways to make university life easier academically while also building a system that works with your procrastination habits, rather than pretending they don’t exist.
Use a Google Calendar
As a new student at Brock, you can use your student email account to create a Google profile. With that comes access to a calendar provided by Google, which could be your best tool for your plan to succeed.
Right after you register for your courses, use the Google Calendar to create your schedule. Doing this can tell you one of two things: Your schedule is incredibly hectic, so maybe enroll in one or two less classes, or your schedule is more workable than you thought. When you manually put your classes into a calendar, you unintentionally start learning your own student schedule: you can see exactly where you have free time, when your busiest days are and how you can make time to get work done.
Getting comfortable with the Google Calendar functions will also make the next step much easier because keeping your tasks, deadlines, and plans in one place can make university life significantly less stressful.
Set consistent deadlines
Now that you’ve set up your Google Calendar and know your class schedule, it’s time to use those empty spaces to set consistent times to do homework and study.
As a student at Brock, you will start using Brightspace, where you can access the assignment calendar to see all the due dates for your upcoming assignments for all your classes.
Speaking from experience, I do not recommend relying solely on Brightspace to know when everything is due. I’ve had too many instances where I’ve missed a quiz because I was too reliant on the Brightspace calendar. Last semester, I skimmed the syllabus for one of my online classes and I didn’t know that we had to complete a quiz every week. For whatever reason, these weekly quizzes never popped up as a task on my Brightspace calendar. Since I relied on it so much, I missed the first few deadlines for my quizzes.
So yeah, you’re not quite done with that calendar yet.
Another helpful tip is to set your own deadlines earlier than the actual due date. For example, if an assignment is due on Monday, you could make your personal deadline Friday the week before.
It might seem tough at first, because you are choosing to give yourself less time than your classmates to complete an assignment. But if you know you worked hard all week and have a relatively homework-free weekend ahead of you, that can be surprisingly good motivation to get things done earlier.
Of course, it isn’t always possible to make Friday your personal deadline. Sometimes you genuinely have too much work. The point is to structure your week so that you have at least one or two days that feel free from homework and pressing assignments, whether those days are during the week or on the weekend. The earlier you get used to adjusting your schedule this way, the more natural it becomes.
Create an effective work environment
Okay, great. You have your calendar, you’ve created your goals, and you’ve set yourself some deadlines. Now comes the hardest part: actually doing the work.
If you think working at your desk is effective, make that space comfortable. Decorate it a little and set yourself up somewhere you can focus for long periods without constantly needing to get up. Keep a water bottle or drink beside you to avoid constantly getting distracted by being hungry or thirsty.
If you’re anything like me and you simply cannot work effectively at a desk in your bedroom, try to go somewhere else.
One of the great things about Brock is that there are actually a lot of places to study on campus. They might not always look obvious, but once you start exploring, you’ll find plenty of spots.
And if you want to get off campus, there are also cafés within a reasonable distance:
- Soban Sandwich Café – about an eight-minute drive
- Bright Pours Cafe – about a 15-minute drive
- Mahtay Café & Lounge – about a nine-minute drive
- Fine Grind Cafe – about a nine-minute drive
For my bubble tea lovers:
- Lazy Bugs – about a five-minute drive (my personal favourite study location!)
- The Alley – about a 15-minute drive
- Chatime – about a six-minute drive
Making the effort to study and work someplace away from your home makes students more willing to work. In a way, you’ve already made the effort to pack your computer, textbooks, notes and everything else you need, so you might as well make that trip worth it and do as much work as you can.
Sub tip: Find your study soundtrack
One of my favourite parts of creating a good work environment is figuring out what I want to listen to. Sometimes that means music, and sometimes it means absolutely nothing.
If music helps you focus, create or improve a playlist on Apple Music or Spotify. But here’s the interesting part: try creating a new playlist made entirely of movie soundtracks – so none of the songs have lyrics and they are purely instrumental.
Listening to music without lyrics can help you study and work effectively by preventing the verbal interference that comes with vocal tracks. As someone who spent years creating my perfect study playlist, a great way to start exploring soundtracks is looking at ones from your favourite movies! Movie scores from How to Train Your Dragon, Pirates of the Caribbean, and The Lord of the Rings are great examples. I would also recommend finding specific songs that really motivate you to get a certain academic skill done. For example, in high school I took Calculus and Vectors, and whenever I was about to start difficult math question, I would play War by James Horner from the movie Avatar. It’s a ten-minute song, so I would challenge myself to finish the question by the end of it. The more you experiment with different soundtracks, the more likely you are to find songs that connect with your studies and homework, giving you that extra motivation you need on tougher days.
Another great option is listening to white noise or ambient study music, especially if you find any external sound distracting while you work. You can find plenty of these on YouTube, and they tend to be a couple hours long, the perfect amount of time to lock in!
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The best part about this entire system is that you can modify it however you want. You can experiment with different calendars, deadlines, study locations and soundtracks until you find something that suits you.
I never knew how much more effectively I could work in different locations until the end of my freshman year. So, if you’ve made it this far into the guide and you’re already thinking about how you can organize yourself this semester, you’re already one step ahead. But remember, it’s impossible to always stay true to your schedule the whole year, and that’s okay. The goal isn’t to create a perfect schedule that you follow every single day. The goal is to create a routine that can ground you when things don’t go according to plan, while also completing your academic goals in a sustainable way.
The more you accept the little mistakes and unexpected changes that come with being a student, the more adaptable you’ll become. University can be an emotional rollercoaster, but it’s one you can learn to handle — and maybe even enjoy — once you figure out what works for you.