Student Blog: Anybody Have a Map to Routinemaxxing?

I was just beginning to get re-accustomed to home life: a warm bed, three meals a day that don’t come after an excruciatingly long wait in a dining hall line, doing laundry and not having to pay a dollar each time– think of the SNL skit “Back Home Ballers,” adjust it so that they’ve been home for three months, and you’ll have a perfect picture of me. And then all of a sudden I had to move again, even though it felt like just yesterday that I had packed up my Beetlejuice poster and my mattress cover, and gone home. 

Now I have at least two assignments due in all of my classes, am working on four independent projects, and I still have to find time in all of that to remember to cook and clean and do my laundry. 

The big glaring red flag that basically shocked me out of my “tumble out of bed, hope I have cereal, and vaguely remember what class I have” routine was last week when I walked into one of my last classes of the week, ecstatic to have made it that far, and then suddenly realized I’d forgotten to do the assignment. In high school that was never me. If anything, I was a pre-crastinator in the way I finished all my work with days in advance. Sitting in class that day, listening to the discussion and not being able to contribute absolutely anything, felt quite humiliating. 

So I went home and downloaded an organization app that basically made spreadsheets with what I input as my assignments, listed them by their due dates, and color-coded them based on how much I had accomplished of them– that lasted about five minutes. Every other one I tried similarly lasted an embarrassingly short amount of time. And that’s probably a me thing – I know that digital organization works quite well for many people. But for me, I need to write things down by hand. When I was in elementary school they gave us all planners and made us write down our homework and I guess I never grew out of the habit. Even now, when I’m writing a script my first draft is always done on pen and paper. 

I can’t quite say that there is one right way to do “routinemaxxing.” For one of my friends, getting back to routine meant remembering that you can’t just overwork yourself until everything is done and hope that at the end of that you still have energy to do things for yourself. She is now working on the balance between getting through three-digit page long readings, and taking personal time in bed to catch up on the new season of Ted Lasso. For me, I’m planning on buying a journal and using it as a homework planner, so that I can make a beautifully decorated checklist and cross assignments off as they come the way Rafe crosses off rules he breaks in “Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life.” I also took a page out of my friend’s book the other night and rewatched that because sometimes, all you need to find the energy to get back into your routine is the childish wonder kids’ movies give you. 

I am positive that I will get overwhelmed again. Assignments get longer, projects come up, and people (me) get distracted. But I guess that's adulthood for you. Waking up, realizing you have way too much to do and not enough hours to do it, and hoping somehow you figure it out because maybe, eventually, you will. 

Khalas.