Sleep and homework at the same time?

This blog comes a bit early, but it’s actually part of my plan to accomplish my goal of studying for classes. It has been about eight weeks since I picked three goals to pursue here at college. As the semester starts to wind to a close, I feel as though the quest to accomplish one of my goals is coming to an end as well. The other two goals could be classified as longer-term goals, so chances are that I will never fully accomplish them.

            This blog becomes part of one of my goals because when I thought about how I could study for my classes in a new way, I realized that I should just do my work ahead-of-time. It seems like I’ve already done just about everything to better study for my classes, so I thought I should just do my work and study ahead of time, which in turn should make me more relaxed when it comes to be time for the actual class. If I have work to do, it is very hard for me to feel relaxed because I’ll always have the thought of the work in the back of my mind. Even though I’ve always thought like this, I was a chronic procrastinator all throughout middle school and high school just because I couldn’t get motivated to start doing my work. Now I have been trying to get my work done ahead-of-time, which has actually allowed my to relax and made college life all that much easier. I’ve realized how much added pressure comes with procrastinating and how it isn’t worth it.

            This week instead of talking to someone new, I actually talked to somebody that I met a while ago at an open house here at Paul Smith’s named Mark. It just so happens that Mark lives about thirty minutes away from my house, even though that’s about a six-hour drive from Paul Smith’s. It’s always good to talk to people who are from nearby towns especially when you’re as far away from home as I am. It was nice because we could talk about all of the unique Western New York things such as saying, “pop” instead of soda, Tim Hortons coffee/donut shops, and sports teams like the Buffalo Bills and Sabres. It’s just nice to know that my two lives (college life and home life) aren’t so separate after all; that they can actually be intertwined. Talking to Mark made me feel more comfortable and willing to open up, because it’s just more comfortable talking to somebody that you can relate to.

            When it comes to my goal of clearing my mind and focusing on positive things, I have made an interesting discovery. It just so happens that sleeping is a great way to clear your mind. We all know that disoriented feeling you feel for the first couple of minutes after waking up from sleep. That feeling is almost like an eraser, and the mind a chalkboard. The “eraser” wipes the mind clean of any negative thoughts and thus makes the mind into a clean slate. I discovered this while doing homework, because I tend to lie down on my bed when I do homework. Sleepy college student plus a comfortable position on a bed, equals a very high chance of sleep. I find that I usually fall asleep when I have hit a mental wall, or when I just can’t think clearly. I’ve found that after I wake up, I develop several ideas that I could never get myself to think of before. This is a risky tactic to use when doing homework, but if you have enough time to try it, I highly recommend it.

            I researched sleep and if it can actually help to clear your mind, and little did I know that there was actually a scientific term for the concept. The homeostatic theory of sleep describes how your brain’s resources are actually balanced during sleep, which makes sense of the fact that you can get new ideas for an old topic after sleeping. The article that describes this in more detail can be found here (https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/sitnflash_wp/2011/08/issue100/). Now if only college students could somehow convince their teachers that there were only trying to comes up with new ideas by sleeping in class…

            

Finding Relaxation in a Hectic College Weekend

It has now been seven weeks since I chose three goals to pursue while here at college, and that means it’s time for another update. This past week has been more hectic than most before it. For starters, I drove home Friday night to spend the weekend at home and to hunt at least once during bow hunting season this year. I drove back up here to school on Monday (Halloween) so that I could finish some homework, only to be bombarded with even more homework the next day. I never would have thought that I would be driving all day on Halloween, but thus is the life of a college student. Through everything that I had to do, I think I still made some progress towards accomplishing my goals.

            I’m normally able to get a jump on my homework and studying, but driving home for the weekend pretty much crushed any hopes of getting ahead on anything. Also, It’s pretty hard to get ahead on homework when you already have a lot of it to do in the first place. These past couple of days have definitely put my time management to the test because the only way that you can do homework all day is if you take breaks from doing homework. Also in order to cram everything in, you might have to multitask, like I did this weekend. While I was at home this weekend I was on the couch typing out notes for statistics, and eventually completing a series of problems for the same class. While I was working on those problems, I had my sister quiz me for my upcoming biology test using flashcards I had made the day before. I’d say it’s definitely not the ideal way to study, but when you honestly don’t have the time to do it any other way, multitasking just may “fit the bill”. I don’t plan on multitasking like this very much, but I think it’s definitely a good skill to have going forward in college.

            When it comes to my goal of being more open to others and talking to a new person every day, I have made some progress as well. This past week I contacted my advisor, Russ DeFonce, so that we could meet to set up my schedule for the spring semester. This may not sound like much, but it was different for me because I was reaching out to somebody that I’ve never met and I was setting up a meeting with them. I met with Russ and talking to him was one of the easiest things I’ve ever had to do. He was so down-to-earth that it was like talking to somebody that I’ve known for a while. It eventually required a couple of meetings in order to get my schedule straightened out, but those meetings were painless. Once again being proactive and reaching out to somebody was much easier than I thought, which seems to have been a theme so far in college.

            Although I had a lot of homework over the weekend, I was still able to find time to slip in a healthy chunk of relaxation. This chunk came in the form of hunting Sunday morning. Hunting is definitely one of my favorite activities, and it is one of the few activities that can put me into a good state of flow. That being said, hunting was the perfect activity to work on my goal of clearing my mind and focusing on the positive. It is almost impossible to hunt if you’re constantly thinking about something else, so a clear or optimistic mind is a necessity. Sitting extremely still in a tree stand in the middle of the woods for several hours is honestly one of the best ways to clear your mind. It makes you sensitive to every little sound and movement in the woods. You would never know how noisy squirrels or falling leaves are unless you sat in the woods while being completely silent. Even though I had a lot of homework, nothing mattered except for enjoying the outdoors and giving myself a chance to harvest a deer.

            When I think of the beauty of the woods unfolding itself to anyone who is patient enough to sit still for an extended period of time, I think back to a quote by Henry David Thoreau. He says, "You only need sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns." In my opinion, Thoreau couldn’t be more correct, because I have witnessed the same thing while hunting. This brought me peace and relaxation in a hectic weekend and I can’t wait until a get to hunt again during Thanksgiving break.

Reading About Foreign Lands

I know it sounds corny, but books really are some amazing things. I’ve realized this even as a child, but it still remains true even though I’m now in college. Books are nice because they allow the reader to formulate their own images of what they are reading. They can transport the reader to a place where the reader would not otherwise ever be able to visit. This could be the reason why I have been a fan of studying history and geography throughout my years of schooling. I can formulate the events in my mind, which in turn makes them much easier to understand. This has also been the case so far in college.

I never really studied India in extreme detail in middle school or high school, but I feel like I’ve almost visited the country based on the images I have created in my mind. Don’t get me wrong, I know that no amount of reading is a substitute for visiting a place, but in some ways, I think that reading can almost be more beneficial in learning about a place. In particular, books can be quite effective in relaying images of the culture of a place. This is because the reader can see the day-to-day lives of people in a certain place such as Raju in The Guide, for example. Textbooks can only tell so much about a place such as the population, total physical area, major landmarks, and so on. You will never truly understand that place until you understand their culture, and one of the best ways to understand a culture is to examine that culture’s arts; in this case their books. In my opinion, studying India through reading books that show its culture has been much more beneficial than any textbook has been.

I think the books we have read from so far in my first year seminar class have been quite effective in helping me understand Indian culture. I think this is mostly because we started by reading books written by people from places whose cultures could be characterized as western cultures. This made it much easier to understand because it was easy to relate to the authors, which therefore made it easy to understand their reactions to Indian life and culture. Once we read a few books from the perspective of a western culture, we moved on to read a book (The Guide), which shows Indian culture through the eyes of somebody who is actually from India. I don’t think you can get a true vision of a place without both of these views (the view of somebody from your own culture and the view of somebody from that place).

Books talking about another culture are so effective because they not only make the reader think about that culture, but they also usually make the reader compare that culture to their own. To me, India seems like it has two different facets to it (even though there are many more in reality): the India with the hustle and bustle of the insanely packed streets and the India in the mountains that are littered with calm temples that seek to provide peace and enlightenment. I think that both of these perceptions are due to the rural setting that I grew up in. Indian cities seem like the busiest places in the world because they just seem to be the polar opposite of the small town that I’m from. The Indian mountains seem so calm because they are like my hometown, only even more secluded and less “civilized” or industrialized. I know that this is not how India really is, but it serves as a basic understanding of the country and culture.

The more I think about India and its culture, the more I realize that I barely know anything about the place. I’ve just kind of accepted the fact that there is too much to know about India, so I’ll never know everything, but the books that I've read have helped to provide even a basic understanding of the complex country. While browsing the Internet, I came upon a website that quickly glosses over some of the diversity in India. It even says that there are over 400 languages spoken in India! That’s something I could never keep track of, but I’m doing my best to understand the country through the books I have read.

http://www.kamat.com/indica/diversity/

First Semester Challenges

With only a little more than five weeks left in the semester, I guess it is only appropriate that I look back on my experiences so far at Paul Smith’s College. There is no doubt in my mind that this semester has been the biggest academic transition thus far in my life. That is obviously because I graduated high school and began studying at college. This transition has presented unique challenges, none of which are impossible to overcome. Sure, some challenges are easier to overcome than others, but they are challenges nonetheless. I think I can actually say that I was fairly prepared to meet these challenges, despite never facing them before.

            Perhaps the challenge that is most easy to identify is the challenge of not only living away from home, but living with a roommate. I, like the majority of college kids, grew up with my own room, so having to share living quarters with somebody who was a total stranger presented a challenge. Sure I had been to plenty of summer camps before, where I had to share sleeping quarters with other kids for a week. College is definitely nothing like a summer camp; that’s for sure. While college may be fun and like so many people say “some of the best times of your life”, it’s not all fun and games. I can personally admit that I was homesick for pretty much the first time ever upon my first days here at college. It’s not like summer camp where your parents come and pick you up after a week; you’re here to stay. I know I am probably making this sound quite ominous, which is not my intention. It does, however, show the difficulty of the transition. There is really nothing that you can do to prepare for living with a total stranger for a year.

            I eventually overcame this challenge, because I knew it was part of the territory. During those first couple of days at college, I yearned to be in a room by myself. Now I think a room to myself would be kind of awkward, and I would rather have someone else around (granted that I am comfortable with that person). Don’t get me wrong, I still value the alone time that I have, but I’ve learned to be comfortable living with someone else. The great part about overcoming this challenge was that I really didn’t have to go out of my way to do so. Becoming comfortable with my roommate kind of just happened. Sure I started a couple of conversations that I may not have before coming to college, but nothing very much at all. Experience is really the only way to overcome the awkwardness of living with a stranger, and I’d definitely say that I have overcome that awkwardness.

            I’d say that the second biggest challenge for me this semester has been the transition from the work that I did in high school to the work that I now do in college. High school was really just a breeze because most of the work that I got, I finished in class, because I could do the work quick enough that I didn’t have to take it home and do it for homework. Not only that, but a lot of times, I didn’t receive homework on a regular basis. Don’t get me wrong, I knew how to handle those nights where I had to write two essays, make a poster, prepare a presentation, and do forty math problems. I think the biggest thing in high school was that the work and the classes just weren’t as serious as in college. I took my grades very seriously, but I usually didn’t feel a great sense of urgency, because it was just high school; and as long as I looked good for colleges, it was all right.

            College is just different simply because it has to be taken more seriously. It just goes to show you the value of money in society nowadays. When we were kids, we didn’t think anything of the money our parents were paying for school taxes, because everybody was forced to go to school. Now that we see how much a college education costs, and when added to the fact that we, the kids, now have to help pay for it, our education is taken a lot more seriously. I think I can say that I’ve definitely worked harder to strive for good grades in college when compared to how hard I worked for my grades in high school. I’ve never been more motivated to take notes or to study than I am in college. So, transition hasn’t been difficult because I’ve always had a pretty good work ethic, but it has been a transition nonetheless.

            When it comes to the transition from high school to college, young adults usually face the same challenges. These challenges are basically summed up in this article I found online (http://www.d.umn.edu/tutoring/transition-to-college/). For me the biggest challenge was adjusting to life away from home, and now that I’ve already overcome that challenge, college has become more and more enjoyable. 

Goals and Progress

It has been yet another week (now six in total I believe) since I set three goals to pursue throughout my stay here at Paul Smith’s. I’ve gone through periods where progress came easily and I’ve also gone through periods where progress seemed to be more than lethargic. Now that the semester is already half way done, I’d say that my progress has actually outpaced the timetable I set for the goals. With this being said, on to the new progress.

            I have already applied several new studying methods throughout the year, but this week I have made progress in my time management skills; especially when they apply to my schoolwork. It is pretty easy to manage homework and extracurricular activities when you don’t have much homework to do. This past week I found myself with a considerable load of homework, which had to be completed in one day. When I approached the work, I first had to prioritize my tasks. For example, I had to push the studying back in time because the homework took priority over it, due to the fact that it was due the next day. I then took the group of homework assignments and looked at the time it would take to do each assignment. I completed the assignment that took the most time first, because I prefer to get the tough things done first. After that, everything was pretty much downhill. The lesser assignments flew by quickly, most likely because they were much easier than the big assignment. I found this approach to a large amount of homework to be quite successful, and I will use it whenever I need to.

            I have also continued with my goal of being more open to others as well as my modified goal of talking to someone new every day. Talking to different people has actually been quite easy because I don’t have to change anything about what I already do, I just have to be a little more proactive in my day to day social situations. An example would be when I go to workout. When my workout calls for dumbbells or a pull-up bar, I workout in my dorm room, because it’s much nicer than going to the gym. When I do workouts such as plyometrics (jump training) or kenpo (a mix of martial arts and cardio), I do them in the dance room. I have met several interesting people in the dance room, and it’s even more interesting to see the different things that people use the room for. I’ve talked to people who liked to use the room for dancing, martial arts, and some for listening to music as loud as they possibly can. The bottom line is that I have found how easy it is to talk to new people, and it has already made my college experience more enjoyable.

            When it comes to my goal of clearing my mind of negative thoughts while focusing on the positive, I have also made progress. Lately my mind has actually been focused on positive thoughts partly due to registration for classes next semester. I really like my schedule the way it is, but I’m excited to take some new courses. With course-registration comes the realization that the year is coming to a close, which means that holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas will soon be upon us. As much as I love it up here, I can’t wait to be home celebrating the holidays with my friends and family. It’s surprising because these feelings would usually bring on feelings of homesickness, but instead they now bring me feelings of optimism. I’d say that this shows progress through my efforts since I set my goals.

            It seems like every time I think that I can’t make any more progress on my goals…. I do. Thomas Edison once said, “Discontent is the first necessity of progress.” I completely agree with this quote because progress doesn’t happen unless something different happens. The difference doesn’t need to be big at all, but you have to be willing to do some things that may feel uncomfortable. Initially, talking to random people was uncomfortable for me, but it isn’t now; because I’ve made progress.