Well, everyone, it’s that time of year again. The new year has begun and so has another semester at Rutgers; and honestly, I haven’t been dealing with it all that well! This is the first year of my life where the New Year has truly felt like the new year. Usually, due to the confines of the school calendar, September seems to be the time for new beginnings and self-improvement. I always expected this feeling would change when I was done with school and no longer on the academic calendar, but I did not expect it to change once I arrived in college! Nevertheless, with the wrap up of our winter break and the beginning of the spring semester, 2024 felt like a new year… and the stress of it all (new classes, new year’s resolutions, aging, etc.) has been getting to me!
Has it been getting to you, too?
I thought I could share some tips, tricks, and new practices I’m using to deal with the self-pressure that always seems to accompany the new year for me, as well as the academic pressures that always seem to accompany the new semester. Let’s dive into it!
1. Creating an Effective Calendar/Planner
Every day of my life, I’m constantly fed so much information about assignments, upcoming events, extracurricular activities, personal to dos, etc. that it’s almost impossible to keep up. How do I manage it all? I’ve made a scheduling system and calendar that is effective for me! All of our brains work in entirely different ways, and we each need a customizable system of scheduling in order to maintain sanity in our everyday lives. While Google Calendar and the Canvas Calendar are great tools that work semi-automatically, they are reliant on dates, titles, ordering, and assigning from other individuals. They take away some of our control.
Because of this, I opted for calendars and planners I control and customize entirely. These include my bullet journal and the Notion app. At the beginning of every semester, I’ve gotten into the habit of inputting every assignment, reading, and topic available in my course syllabus into my Notion calendar and adjusting from there. By adding my own flair to my Notion, I can embed my music, study timers, and habit trackers in order to keep myself on track with assignments and with my mental health. In order to not mix business with pleasure, I then use my bullet journal* to schedule and keep track of personal events and reminders. No matter how you choose to organize, some sort of planner is the key to staying on top of everything you need to when the new year rolls around!
*What is a bullet journal? A bullet journal is an organizational tool that works as an artistic planner. The journal is completely customizable but is often separated by month and can track a multitude of habits, interests, and events. While some choose to make their bullet journal entirely from scratch, others purchase bullet journal spreads from websites such as Etsy.
2. Physical Health
The new year is the main time of year in which people try to focus on making extreme changes to their physical health practices. If done incorrectly, drastic change can have dire effect. Still, physical health is important! Here are my goals to address my issues with physical health:
- Spend 30 minutes outside everyday — While this may seem like a simple task for most people, getting outside is not an average part of everyone’s day. Before I made this goal, there’d be multiple days a week in which I didn’t leave my house, and I didn’t feel good! Going outside and feeling the sun on my face has been a great experience and truthfully a small change. If you’re already spending some time outside maybe it would be good to try and incorporate mindful time outdoors. Take specific notice of the nature around you and even write down some observations to make your time more active rather than passive!
- Include some form of physical activity once a day — Folks, I’m not a worker-outer! Prior to this month, I’d maybe do an act of mindful physical activity once a week. I wasn’t feeling great about the condition of my body and felt as if I were aging faster than would seem logical! In order to make a small step into the physical activity realm, I’ve combined the practice above with this one by going on a short walk once a day. When I can’t walk outside, I try to find fun physical activity inside, such as playing Just Dance on my Wii! Physical activity is a completely personal thing, and if you don’t like what you’re doing or don’t like doing no physical activity, all I can recommend is trying every sort of activity available to you until you find one that sticks! In my opinion, it’s all about consistency.
- Hydration — This goal is simple: drink your water! I know I’m constantly dehydrated and have experienced a multitude of adverse symptoms because of it. These include headaches, sleepiness, and crankiness. Get a fun water bottle you can bring with you wherever you go and try your best to up your water intake if you aren’t getting enough already. I wish I had more fun hydration tips, but I don’t; it’s just one of those things you have to do.
- Mindful Eating — I’ll be honest here, eating food that makes me feel good physically and mentally has always been a struggle. I’ve tried diet after diet and food trend after food trend, and I couldn’t seem to find happiness with my eating habits. Hoping to find some sort of peace, I’ve included mindful eating as one of my goals this year. By taking time to be present with my food and using mealtimes as a way to escape technology and worldly distractions, I’ve begun to find peace with my food, and I hope maybe you can too!
3. Mental Health
As you can probably tell, one of my overall goals for this year was to better connect my physical health to my mental health. I’ve also been taking extra precautions for better mental health to help with my drive, focus, and overall happiness.
- Journaling — Journaling isn’t for everyone. I know for some people the idea of recounting your day, feelings, or struggles honestly sounds like a unique form of torture. But if you’ve considered journaling, I say try it! Sometimes we can find the most solace by looking inwards on ourselves. Working these ideas out on paper can be the best way to go! Make journaling fun by using fancy stationery or interesting prompts to get out of the rut of simply writing about your day.
- Screen Time — In this day and age, we spend almost all of our time with some form of electronics. In order to combat the harmful integration, I’ve set up two types of screen time limits in my life: social and physical. Social screen time includes social media and other entertainment apps on my phone. If you can, I recommend setting up locked screen time on your device or entrusting a close friend or relative to your screen time password to truly limit yourself and maintain distance. Physical screen time doesn’t relate to content but rather to how much time I spend looking at a screen and how often. I try to limit screen time first thing in the morning, right before bed, and during school hours. I especially focus on the “before bed” period and try to remove all blue light in my proximity at least one hour before bed, if possible.
- Ensuring academics do not dictate my life — My final mental health goal is one I believe we should all strive for. I try not to let academic work overwhelm me. Sometimes enough is enough, and it’s time to put away the homework and partake in hobbies. It’s good to vary our interests and find something that offers release. We’ll always have work we don’t enjoy, but we can’t let a lack of joy create an absence of it within ourselves.
4. Fun! Fun! Fun!
My final goal for the new year and new semester is to focus more on my hobbies and activities I love. Recently I’ve adopted the practice of “procrastinating” my hobbies as a side effect of overall burn-out, and I’d love to change this bad habit. The things we find joyous should never feel like a chore; when they do, it typically indicates an issue in another part of our lives. I hope that by focusing on my mental and physical health and organization skills, I can tackle my “fun procrastination” and get back into doing the things I love.
I hope you can effectively integrate some of these practices into your everyday lives. And hey, maybe knowing that someone else is feeling the pressures of a new year the same way you are will be just as much help as any of the tips above. It’s never too late to assess where you are and set a course for where you want to go. Stay sane, stay happy, stay healthy! ❤
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