If there is anything that I have learned in these past few weeks of being on campus, its that OSU Engineering and high school are on two different universes. The overall structure of your day, and classes is different in so many little ways that I never expected. While the classes never seemed to end in high school, the days never seem to end in college. I always have a long list of items that I should or could be doing at practically every moment of the day. Finding a rhythm and sticking to that seems to be one of the hardest transitions for me here at OSU. Distractions are everywhere and while there is a lot of time that is not scheduled for a specific tasks, there is a seemingly never ending laundry list that needs to constantly be taken care of. For me, a lot of this is classwork and dedicating time for studying. I have had a hard time with setting aside specific time and being motivated to study. I am a very social person, and because of that am easily distracted from my work by simply talking. However, I also do really well with smaller study groups and other group work environments. This makes it deciding where and how to study a dilemma.
To help me tackle some of these issues, I decided to see an academic coach at the Dennis Learning Center in the Younkin Success Center. Peiliang, a second year, talked to me about my classes, study habits, and stress management. He listened to me, and would suggest some strategies for me to use. The biggest idea he focused on was determining what is important in your day and trying to schedule around it. He suggested that I rank tasks based on urgency and importance, and to complete tasks in a certain order based upon how I rank each task in each category. These ideas seem pretty helpful and so far I have been successful in implementing the strategies in my studying. In addition, he stressed the importance of going to office hours and seeking help even if you feel that you have a good grasp on the subject. For example, learning how my instructors would think and solve specific question could be beneficial to gain a diverse understanding of the topics. This made a lot of sense to me, so I decided to go to my physic’s professors office hours, and ask him if the way that I approached some of the more complex problems was the way he would recommend. He was able to explain other ideas and shortcuts that would help me answer the problem. In addition, I listened to how he explained some questions to other students, and it helped me to know what topics I understood well, and which ones I didn’t understand in full. Overall, some of the tips that Peiliang suggested to me seem to be very beneficial and tailored to who I am as a student. I feel more confident in taking on the immense class load that I have this semester, and am excited about the future.