Category Archives: class

avoiding the curse of study irritation and exam-time fallouts

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I have vanished from here because studying (all the studying – all of it in the world) has swallowed me whole. I had three final papers due this last week and, wow, third and fourth year literature courses at UBC are not for the faint of heart (or people who like to slack off and procrastinate on tumblr, like me).

Still, I am done with the papers and on to the exams. Which is no less stressful, but does give me a little more free time. Not that that’s a good sign of a work ethic.

Exam period is always an awful time, but I had forgotten how stressful it gets living with people who are also stressed out at this time of year. It can be really not fun, and it’s getting to the stage where everyone just wants to go home for a few days to chill out.

There are a couple of things that have been working for me when I’m trying to keep my ‘irritation at life’ levels lower than ‘oh my gosh I am going to have to kill someone’, so I thought I’d give sharing a bit of a go.

#1. Napping.

There have been studies that show that people who nap are happier than other people. You can bet Scrooge wasn’t a fan of napping. I found a handy tool that shows you when it’s the best time for you to nap through the day, and it’s helping me to stay level headed. There’s no better break from studying than getting to go to sleep. (Warning: double the irritation may occur if the people you live with do not respect your nap time. Pretty sure it’s grounds for homicide in BC, though, so you’re good.)

#2. Spending time with people other than those you live with.

Res Life can get pretty close-nit, and you might know everyone on your floor, maybe even a fair few people in your building or in the whole of your Res complex, but if you’re anything like me then you probably find yourself spending more time than is healthy hanging out with the same people. All the time. And that’s great, best friends are best for a reason (sorry, that was awful), but I’m beginning to get to the stage where even the most endearing traits are starting to annoy me. The fact that they annoy me is starting to annoy me. And with no classes and all that studying, I’m finding that I don’t get out much.

So spending time with other people, fresh faces, people whose stories you still don’t know yet, or even Skyping a friend or family member from back home, can really recharge you, friendship-wise. Even spending time with that person you don’t really like so much might not be the worst idea ever – maybe they have hidden depths (personally, I am the worst judge of character ever – some of my best friends are people I hated the first few times I met them), or else maybe they’re just as awful as you always thought, and it reminds you why you like the people you spend all your time with after all.

#3. Laughing at something, anything.

There have been lots of studies about how good laughing is for your health. I’m not going to track them down, because they’re in the news every other month (and I have procrastinated from studying long enough already). But: laughing is very good for you, and if you get to that stage in studying where it’s laugh or cry, I know which I’d rather be doing. If you need something to set you off, I’d recommend a good comedy. Romcom, sitcom, dramedy, whatever. I have lots of specific recommendations for all, but that’s maybe for another day when we aren’t all procrastinating (and I assume that’s what you’re doing, being on the internet during finals, but I can hardly judge).

Studying is hard, and looking after yourself is hard, and being stressed while being surrounded by other stressed people is hard. But, hey, it’ll all be over in a couple of weeks, and then we all get time off to recharge. Things and people and (if you’re in Totem or Vanier) caff food won’t be so irritating on the other side of the New Year, I promise (and I hope).

Finally, another handy little tool I’ve been using to stop myself from Procrastinating (with a capital P), is a thing called Self Control. It allows you to set up a blacklist of websites that you don’t want to access – say Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, You Tube, your email – and a time that you don’t want to access them for, and then it blocks those sites for the duration of that time. It means you can still use the internet but you can prevent yourself from using it for anything other than your studies. It only works for Mac, but there’s a rough PC equivalent called Anti-Social, too.

Happy studying!

entering the deep unknown

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I have just finished my first (half) week of classes. And wow. I have a lot of work to do.

That’s the part of moving out here for my exchange year that, thus far, I have managed to ignore. The ignoring it part has been pretty easy. You know the feeling; it’s the same one that you get at the end of every summer as you return to school, when you pick up your pen and think, wait, how do I use this thing again? It’s the brain turning slowly to reality TV mush feeling. That one. In the midst of that feeling, I’d managed to almost totally ignore what it means that I have to actually… work this year.

Ugh, work… I’m taking five classes this semester where I’m used to just three, though the reading per class is significantly less. I still feel like… how can I begin to keep up with this? It’s a lot. There is a lot to do.

On the other side of things, a week in, I feel like I’m getting the hang of living on campus. When I’m walking around I mostly know where I am now (and, okay, I still check a map before I set off anywhere, but that’s just me bowing to the very real fact of my awful navigational skills and seeking the help I need). I’ve been to the Village four or five times, and I’ve clocked where the libraries are and how to get things photocopied (though printing still eludes me, but I’ll get there). It’s a slow-going slide into familiarity and there are still ten things a day that jar me from thinking okay, I’ve got this into thinking wait what just like that, but the days are busy and I feel good about keeping them that way.

Before I came out here, people kept asking if I was nervous and I kept saying no. I wasn’t lying; it honestly didn’t occur to me to be nervous. In my imagination, this was only ever an amazing opportunity in my life, and being nervous would have suggested that it wasn’t a great thing I was planning to do. I couldn’t, and still can’t, see where the bad aspects of this exchange year are. Not that I don’t think parts of it won’t be hard. I’m sure parts will be very hard. Some parts already are, like my courseload and the fact that I have to remember to say ‘zucchini’ instead of ‘courgette’ (not particularly hard, right? But I’m an actual idiot).

But, in the scheme of things, what’s to be nervous about? If things are hard, I’ll deal with it then. Hopefully I’ll learn something from it. I’m not going to be nervous about something I can only imagine as wonderful and exciting and all of those good things that unreal futures are. So, I’ll keep going. Tomorrow I will learn the printing-on-campus ropes, and I might even figure out the banks out here. And maybe I’ll learn something.