Back In The Groove

If you’re anything like me, life does not schedule its curveballs, nor does it favor flexibility and balance over chaos and overloading. Alas! All is not lost. You knew taking online courses wouldn’t be easy, however, you also knew it would be rewarding, and entirely worth it!

The summer is coming to a close and a new semester is upon us, and your first order of business… take a deep breath! The first few weeks of a semester can be filled with much anxiety and angst; registering for the right classes, dropping the wrong classes, sorting out financial aid issues, getting settled into ANGEL and let’s not forget BOOKS, BOOKS, BOOKS! The best way to deal with it all is to resolve to do it bit by bit, then think forward and devise a plan of attack.

There are many tools available to you through the World Campus, but they will only help you if you decide to use them. Utilize your calendars and your student planner, as well as the seemingly endless tools on eLion. If you’re not sure where to begin, pick up the phone and call your academic adviser. I recently had my adviser changed and it was a sad transition. Even though he and I had no more than three conversations last year, the content of those far outweighed their frequency. I succeeded and was able to navigate my way to that success because of my academic adviser and his availability. It is a bond you should be sure to make!

Finally, pace yourself. We all want to be academic superstars when it comes to earning our degree (some of us anyway – some of us just want to pass…lol), but we must remember that circumstances and conditions will not always be perfect or even optimal, but they are what they are and we must make the best of them!

Burnout is not a component of success! Not only should you offset your study/work days to ensure some balance in your load, learn how to schedule your classes in a way that they complement one another. For example, as a Law and Society major, I try to ensure that I take two “law” related classes at a time where the content is similar so that they complement each other and offset my other two classes which are likely a science course, language course or even a math course (all of which are more time consuming – for me anyway).

Now that you’ve screwed your head on right, have taken your deep breath and have your game plan… Go get ’em LION!