Student Blog: Fall Semester Routine: From 0 to 100 REAL Quick

Let me paint you a picture (based on true events): it's a cool Sunday evening and you've retired to your quarters after a definitely high-quality dining hall meal. You're relaxed in bed watching the Dancing With the Stars episode you missed last Tuesday, and then BOOM. You've forgotten to do your laundry! Oh well, that's okay. You can do it tomorrow! Tomorrow being Monday... Monday when you have class until 5:05 for some reason, and then a rehearsal an hour and a half later. So you pause Dancing With the Stars to fabricate your game plan. Obviously, you need to eat, and your Monday schedule doesn't allow time for more than a couple meals, so when are you to take care of your ever expanding heap of laundry? The only option now is after rehearsal at 10:30 -- 10:15 if we're being generous. That's fine, you'll probably get up on time for your 8:30 the next morning.

This is the type of thing you can expect to experience every other day during at least the first couple months. Each semester is a new puzzle to solve. It's quite the task to figure out when you can eat, and when you can be productive, and what order to complete everything in. Not to mention that, even though you can create your own schedule, it's very hard to figure out how to go about your days until you actually start going through them. Right now, I am done with all my classes generally around 1:00pm, with the exception of a 3:50-5:05 class on Mondays and Wednesdays. So I figured I'd have plenty of time to get work done in the afternoons/evenings, even factoring in the rehearsals I knew I'd need to attend every day.

This is not what happened.

This biggest issue was food. On Wednesdays I have no time to go and get food until 2:30 at the earliest; my breaks between classes are just barely not enough to go to a different building and wait in line for food. To remedy this I figured I'd start meal prepping so that I can have quick and easy access to food during the little breaks I get. That requires blocking out time to buy ingredients and make the food. There isn't much time left in my days that isn't being taken up by schoolwork and rehearsal, so it's consistently difficult to figure out how I'm going to fit in the process of walking to my car, going to Walmart, walking back from my car, and preparing food. When it comes to solving issues like this, here's my thought process: get done first the things that you know how long they're going to take. I know that going to Walmart and back won't take longer than an hour and a half unless the entire population of Cortland has decided congretate in the Walmart. Honestly, probably not as unlikely as you might think. I also know how long it will take me to cook a meal thanks to the recipe's estimated prep time. What I do not know is how long it will take me to write my next 2500-word assignment for Theater History class as well as all the other writing assignments that happen to all be due in the same 24-hour frame because everything is streamlined. So: get everything with a known time frame out of the way first, then the rest of the time is left for everything else. It's a solid system for me. Knowing I have the rest of the week (however long that may be) to get work done gives me peace of mind -- to a certain degree.

Routine is hard, and there's no perfect method. It's about forgetting to do something, and then remembering it next time, and then repeating that process until it becomes muscle memory. But it's rewarding to find your flow so that you can start to enjoy things instead of worrying about how and when to do them. Believe it or not, having your life together feels good! It's normal to have a nervous breakdown here or a late assignment there. Don't get hung up on all the little mistakes; stop and consider for a second that you're still doing your best, and you're doing well. Every current and former college student has experienced the same struggle for routine, and they all figure out their flow down to a science. You'll get there, don't sweat it.