How having and training your resilience can help build you up for a great semester

What is resilience? 

Resilience is the ability to bounce back from difficult situations. Didn’t do so well on an exam? Then your resilience can be shown by how hard you study for the next exam or how you might take better notes. Perhaps the role you were hoping to get was filled by someone else in your club, perhaps you take a few steps to congratulate and help the new officer with their role by telling them about the things you would have liked to do in that position.

Research done by Richard Sagor showed that students who have had more positive experiences earlier on in school show more resilience, such as, ones that proved competence, demonstrated a sense of belonging to the community, made them feel useful, or gave them a sense of agency.

Now that we are in college now, we have more independence and it can be more difficult to really get recognition that can build up our resilience. Some activities that you can do to help build resilience can include, but are not limited to…

Building a sense of competence:

It can be hard to feel that you are doing things correctly when your schedule consists of spending most of your time completing assignments to turn in the next day digitally, only to be assigned another and perhaps receive a number rating how well you did maybe a week later. 

There are lots of apps available for helping including habitica, trello, and asana to name a few.

Develop a sense of community:

It can be difficult to gain a sense of community as most of our daily lives have been transformed into a digital landscape, void of most face to face communication. However, you were fortunate enough to pick Coe College for your campus where we have lots of clubs and groups to join! 

You also aren’t limited to clubs and activities on campus. Find volunteering opportunities with a quick google search or check out this site here with a few good opportunities for students!

Feel useful:

In the last bullet point, we discussed briefly donating our time or resources to charity. You can also help a little bit more within campus by taking on roles in your club or buying seeds to feed to the squirrels. More things that you can try is to check in with some friends or set up a group chat where you can talk to your friends all at once like at a table at the caf. This would be a great chance to ask for favors and offer to help others with their own. Helping friends to the grocery store, lend some notes, or be a sounding board for a presentation or prep for a test.

Take back control of the things you can:

While there are things we cannot control, like how long we will be wearing masks for or what they’re serving in the caf, but we can take control of things such as some of the design of our rooms, our schedule, our style of notes, what activities we do in our free time, and while relaxing, this can also cause some anxiety if you have too many things that you would like to do. To help relieve this, Be aware of what you let in — Netflix, online games, social media posts. Allow yourself some space and time to declutter your mind and religiously build in “me time” into your day. This could simply be some time for quiet meditation, home workouts, or doodling. Respond to situations or people only after you’ve taken the time to think. And when you need to think, repeat step one.

Above all else, it is important to think of yourself as a learner in this situation — something you did at school and are continuing to do at college. While these are dark times, they have also given you the opportunity to get to know yourself better, to connect with how you experience the world around you. So keep calm, and learn on.

Top 5 Tips to Manage Online Classes

2020 has been quite the year, and it’s not even over yet. First the Covid-19 Pandemic, then the fight against racial injustices and inequality, and now... just add online classes to your list. 

All of my classes are online this term, which is a change from my previous all in-person courses the past three years. If you’re coming into Coe as a freshman, you should know that we seniors feel for you. Freshman year is your time to have fun and figure out how college works. Now that this game we call “student life” has changed, it’s almost as if everyone is starting over. We’re all freshmen, in our hearts. 

Jokes aside, there’s no need to worry. Despite these changes to our class schedules, locations, and methods, college is still college, because school is school. Many of the techniques we’ve discussed on our student blog (here in the Learning Commons) still apply, and many are more important now than ever before! 

Last spring, I got some experience with online classes when I went back home. Although I’m back on campus, with a hectic schedule, my new habits still serve me well. Here are five ways to ease into online classes and survive your first term in this new normal!

1. Set Up a Study Space in Your Dorm (or home, or wherever you have access too)

Our usual study spots are no longer viable, which sucks, but we’ll just have to make due with what we’ve got! Make sure to keep your academic materials in one place. In the dorms, desks and shelves are provided for you. In the apartments, you’re on your own. Now’s a good time to consider creating some storage space. You could go out and buy shelves, bins, or just use cardboard boxes from when you moved in.

In my case, sticking to a budget is very important. I’m using a few tiny grey bins to hold my school and craft supplies, and a white draw-cart-thingy to hold my books and folders. I purchased a foldable desk that I use for all of my work, and can move it to any room I want. I move my desk lamp (that I hadn’t used since freshman year) to any surface it can sit on. 

All I need to make this study situation foolproof is a proper light and a proper chair. 

2. Schedule break times

It’s important to give yourself breaks since you won’t be leaving your dorm too often. I understand wanting to work on a class for a few hours straight, just to get it out of the way. I do it all the time. However, I always feel refreshed and ready to get work done when I take a nice break. 

Take a quick walk around campus, and breathe in the fresh air. Wave to your friends from at least six feet away (social distancing is important). You can sit by a window and read for fun, or even read a book for another class. Watch TV or play on your phone, just do something to take your mind off that assignment for a few minutes. Then, you can look at your current projects with fresher eyes. 

Without breaks, going from classes to assignments, every day for hours at a time, can become overwhelming rather quickly. If you pace yourself just right, you can balance free time with classes. 

3. Create a Work Playlist

Many students need absolute silence in order to get their work done, but I am not one of those students. I’ve created several playlists, each one for a different mood. Some songs make me want to dance - which helps to keep me active. Other songs allow me to picture myself in a cafe, typing away at my laptop, sipping tea. 

You can switch between silence and noise as often as you wish. The closer it gets to my bedtime, the lower the volume goes, the less music plays, and, eventually, all I want is silence. 

4. Communicate with Your Roommate(s)

Learning to talk to your roommate(s) is a basic life skill you learn in college. You are not clones, so there are bound to be times when your personalities conflict. Different class schedules, different study styles, different sleep styles, different energy levels, different anything, or sometimes everything about you and roommate(s) differ. This semester more than ever before you interact with your roommate(s). 

Normally you’d be apart for classes or extracurricular activities, but now you need to stay together for hours at a time, in the same room. If something is bothering you, I recommend talking about it. If you let it fester for too long, you’ll explode, and that won’t be good for anyone. 

As an example, let’s say your roommate needs to jam to music to get any work done, but they’re also a night owl and it’s already 11 pm. Maybe you can all come to an agreement where they wear headphones and keep only their desk light on. Or maybe they find a new study spot away from people so they can focus on their work until 1 am. Who knows? At least you can say you tried. 

5. Prioritize! Prioritize! Prioritize!

The average college student does not solely take classes and do their homework. No, students are involved in clubs, sports, and other extracurricular activities. Students have work study positions on and off campus, and even work outside jobs here in Cedar Rapids. It’s fun and exciting to try new things and challenge ourselves to be better versions of ourselves, but it also takes a lot of time. The fact is, you won’t have enough time to do everything you need and want to do all the time. 

The semester is just beginning, and it’s tempting to fill up any blank slots on your calendar. That’s the college experience. However, you are still a student and passing your classes is a top priority. Listen to me, I learned this lesson from experience: BURNOUT SUCKS. 

Burnout is when you’re overworked and stressed and boom, your body can’t take it anymore and you crash. I’ve done this to myself multiple times since coming to Coe, and as a senior I can tell you that it wasn’t worth it. I wish I could tell myself to just drop that event or say no to a request, but I can’t change the past. Though, I can warn you not to make the same mistakes I did. 

Take the time you have now to think about what really matters to you. Put those activities in your schedule, then see how much time you have left. Don’t forget to think about eating, sleeping, or relaxing with friends either. You’ll find that you have less time than you thought you did. 

---

I hope your first full week of classes is going well. Back-to-school season can be pretty hectic, but hopefully the tips mentioned in this post can help you get your bearings. 

Gif Source

Back to School: Getting in the Zoom Zone

Photo Credit

by Arabella Chamberlain

This year has been far from normal. A global pandemic, a "land hurricane" in Iowa, what next?

Things are finally starting to get back to normal though, as we return to classes, masked up and socially distanced. Even then though, a new challenge has approached 2020 - ONLINE CLASSES.

It's hard to find someone not in an online class this semester, even among those who returned to campus, which has brought on a plethora of new challenges as many of us find ourselves expecting Zoom Academy to look like this:

Photo Credit

When in reality, it looks a bit more like this:

Photo Credit

While I can't fix your connection issues, when you are on a video call for class, have you ever really looked around and considered the environment you're in? Back in the olden days of in-person classes, it didn't matter how messy your room was or the room lighting. But nowadays, every single virtual class you attend is a peek into your personal life!

True story, I completely forgot to pay attention to my surroundings last semester on a video call and I had some pretty embarrassing things in the background! Don't make the same mistakes I've made with online classes, follow these helpful tips for a productive, focused (less embarrassing) semester online.

• Set up a space for all your virtual classes. Whether that be at your desk, on your bed, or in the library even, pick a spot to consistently attend your virtual classes in. This will help you stay more focused on a class by being in a familiar environment each time. Just like when you attended in-person, always get settled in for class on-time.
• Wherever you set up, don't forget to remove or limit distractions in the background. If you're in a personal space, is there anything around you that you think will distract others or yourself during class? If so, it's gotta go! Try to have a neutral or uncluttered backdrop for video classes in your dorms. If that's not possible, consider a virtual backdrop! If you're in a public space, make sure you don't have random people who will be walking in camera view the entirety of your class. Try to sit with your back to a wall or in a space away from heavy traffic.



Photo Credit


• Focus on class while in class - not Snapchat! Just because you're attending class on your laptop or phone, doesn't give you a free pass to be on your laptop or phone while in class. Treat this just like a normal class - no Netflix or emails or texting while on a video chat! It's easy for things to get missed, especially when you're not paying any attention.
• Take notes - even if the professor says the slides are on Moodle. By writing down notes while in class, it gives your brain time to process and absorb the information you're learning. Plus, you won't be able to remember every little thing the professor mentions that's not on the PowerPoint, so having a piece of paper and writing utensil handy will help keep you on top of everything.
• Keep up with hygiene and self-care. Resist the urge to go to class in your pajamas or with your camera off. This will help keep you engaged and your professor will definitely appreciate it. You don't want to get distracted since your cameras off or something embarrassing ending up online if you accidentally turn your camera on though. So you don't need anything fancy, just try and remember to put on pants...

These are just a few tips to get you started. I know this year is a little crazy, but we're going to get through it. Let me know in the comments any study tips you have for this Fall!

Other resources:

How To Geek: 12 tips for video-conferencing while you work from home

NY Times: How to Pull Off a Professional Video Call From Home

The Verge: The do’s and don’ts of video conferencing