Heading back to school is always an exciting time, full of photoshoots, fun backpacks, and single-serve snack packets. Oh wait, that’s primary school. When you’re going back to grad school, which is a very different experience, it’s easy to lose some of the enthusiasm and fall right into a mindset of 9-5 drudgery that lasts the rest of the semester. So in the interests of helping you feel both optimistic about and prepared for Spring 2024, today’s article is going to be about some top tips for going back to school.
Make a Planner
It’s important to stay aware of your schedule, especially when you have not only work to keep track of, but classes, meeting obligations, teaching, emails to answer, and a thousand other things. Having a really great planner can help you keep track of this information and ensure you’re at the right place at the right time. Now, some of you may be naturally drawn to more traditionally handwritten planners, with their sorted-by-month sections, the sticker pages, and color-coded “contacts” lists. If so, go out and get one, and set yourself aside a few moments every week to make sure that it always stays up to date.
Now, if you’re like me, you may be a “guilty planner.” Guilty planners buy themselves very nice, comprehensive, intensely coordinated planners and then never use them for more than a week, but definitely feel guilty for not doing so. If buying a traditional planner is not for you, then there are a lot of other options available. For instance, logging all your engagements into your Outlook calendar so that they’re always right next to your email can be a quick and easy way to keep all your information together. Or if you simply want to keep better track of where your time is going, apps such as Toggl can help with seeing how much time you spend per task, while linking with your calendar to also keep track of future events. But these aren’t the only scheduling systems out there, so take some time to look around and experiment with different methods so that you can find what works best for you. The result may be a planning system that not only improves your grad school life but continues to be helpful as you enter the job field.
Set a Routine (With Reasonable Goals)
Between a new year and a new semester, it’s easy to get carried away when making goals, especially goals about your daily routines. This then leads to overcommitting and not being able to sustain some of the more ambitious choices when the busy part of the semester hits. Now, if you’re a person who can easily make drastic changes and stick to them through thick and thin, then go for that new 5:00am wake up and running twelve miles a week routine: what matters most is to be aware of where you are in life and what pace is best for you. And sometimes that means taking a slower, more structured approach to altering your routines.
So, if you’re looking for ways to introduce more incremental changes, then pick one or two goals that are important for you – maybe getting a full eight hours of sleep, going outdoors regularly, or spending more time with friends – and think about what you want your life to look like when that goal is met. Then, break that goal down into small, practical milestones that you can achieve over time. For example, instead of just saying you’ll get more sleep, think about ways you can help yourself wind down more in the evenings with a solid nighttime routine, setting a cutoff time for work (and drinking coffee), and having an idea of when you want to regularly get up in the morning, so that you’re always ready to fall asleep around the same time. Achieving each of these goals then becomes a milestone you can celebrate arriving at, further assisting in solidifying that new life change.
Choose a Workspace
Maybe your department has an office, maybe you use a home workspace, maybe you’re a coffee shop regular, or perhaps the GRC is really where you thrive. Whatever you do, it’s important to have a regular, designated workspace, a place your brain can associate with being in “work mode” and getting tasks done. As you select this workspace, make sure it’s one that will meet your needs. Are you someone who works best in quiet or with music? Maybe choose a quieter space or invest in some noise-cancelling headphones. Do you need to talk to other people during your breaks and do some light socializing? Office spaces can be great areas for this kind of community. Feel the need to get out and about away from campus on a regular basis? Try out one of the many wonderful coffee shops located in and around Waco.
Of course, the workspace you use doesn’t have to be exactly the same on a daily basis; the kind of work you do often affects the places you go. If you need to use lab facilities to fill out a report, then you’ll probably be working in a lab. For myself, whenever I need to write a long seminar paper, I always end up in the GRC, even if it isn’t where I tend to regularly work, since the more focused environment helps me with higher-intensity tasks. If you hold office hours while teaching, you may need to work out of a department office area. Don’t get so locked into the idea of a single location that it ends up being more unhelpful than helpful. However, having certain spaces that you associate primarily with work can not only assist in boosting productivity, but in solidifying your work-life balance when you leave those places to go home for the day.
Space
Finally, you may not think of photoshoots, fun backpacks, and single-serve snack packets when you go back to grad school. But guess what? No one says they can’t be a part of your grad experience. So have a cringy (or maybe really great) back-to-school photoshoot with friends, use a bookbag that makes you smile, and pack some of those snack packets in with your lunch for a late afternoon energy boost. After all, the opportunity to pursue an education and learn more about what you love is always something worth celebrating, and that is what we are in grad school to do.