FIND A WAY TO RELAX!!!

       It is no surprise that college can become very stressful at times.  Whether it is stress from an overbearing homework assignment, frantically cramming for an 8a.m. final, or fighting with your current girlfriend/boyfriend it inevitably happens to everyone.  The key to dealing with that stress is finding a place "your special place" to unwind and let your hair down.  When I was going to TTU there were 2-3 places I could always go to unwind.  One of those spots was the gym of course!  Exercise always helped me relieve stress and get my mind back on track.  There have been numerous research studies that have proven this to be a successful way to relax and reduce stress.  Another favorite spot of mine was almost anywhere I could hang my hammock.  TTU had a great spot for this on their 300+ acre research farm, it was a small picnic area at the entrance to the facility with beautiful tall oak trees, and cattle in the background.  My all time favorite spot though was a  hill on the back of that farm where you could look down across the fields and see cattle grazing at sunset, or see the rows of field corn waving in a slight wind.  This was "MY SPOT"  and it never let me down, when something was troubling me, or when I was arguing with a current girlfriend I would hop on the "Gator" (a utility type ATV that we had on the farm) travel across the pastures and perch myself up on top of that hill to watch the sunset for the evening and clear my mind.  After watching the sun paint a beautiful picture across the sky as it was settling in for the night I would say a little prayer and almost instantly I would begin to feel better and whatever was ruffling my feathers at the time would drift away.
      A relaxing spot can literally be almost anywhere, as long as it helps you relax.  The spot could be a quiet corner on the third floor of the library where you put your headphones in and forget about the day.  It could be a blanket laying in the soft grass of the quad courtyard as you read a favorite book or watch the squirrels run from tree to tree.   It does not matter where it is as long as it is YOUR spot and it helps you unwind.  College is to short to sit there and let the stress carryover day to day and make you miserable!  Most people only get one chance to make the most of their time at school so why waste it by overly stressing, find your spot, relax, and then move on to more enjoyable things with your new state of mind.  I hope this small piece of advice helps one of you out there like the many times it has helped me.

The Power of a Mentor

One of the most crucial tools to have while pushing through your college career is a good mentor to turn to when times are tough or when you need a question answered.  This mentor could be almost anyone from friends, classmates, siblings, professors, or even co-workers.  Your mentor needs to be someone you can trust and also someone who has been in your position before.  My personal mentor was actually my manager, which some might find unusual. His name was Rusty and I could turn to him for help with ANYTHING, and consulted with him for help several times while in college.  Rusty was my manager at work, an early 30’s, open minded fun loving man who would help anyone if at all possible at any time.  Rusty was the manager of Hyder Burks Agricultural Pavilion and was a Tennessee Tech School of Agriculture Alumni so he had been in my shoes, he actually had held the same job as I and lived in the same exact apartment.  Rusty had this confidence and charisma about himself that was hard not to like.  At one point in my college career I was double majoring in Agricultural Engineering Technology and Mechanical Engineering and had registered for a very tough semester of Mechanical Engineering classes.  After three days in these classes I quickly came to realize that M.E. was not for me, ha ha like what I did there.  So what do you do when you are three days into a semester and realize that you completely messed up your class schedule and want to completely drop a major?  You freak out, or at least that was the case for me.  By the end of the third day I was sweating bullets and immediately turned to Rusty for help. He calmed me down and told me that we could get the situation worked out, he made a phone call to my advisor Dr. Baier and we were able to get all of my classes changed and drop my major.  I also turned to Rusty for more than just school related topics, I frequently asked him for advice on relationships throughout school, which can be a difficult topic for almost anyone.  From asking him about his thoughts on a new girlfriend to heartaches and breakups he was there for me day and night and had a solution for anything I could throw at him.  The lesson from this is find that one special person you can trust and turn to for advice or when you are in a difficult situation.  Find that person for you and never be scared to ask them for help, it is always easier for two people to figure out a problem than one.  The old phrase “two heads are better than one” comes to mind, if you can find this person you will have one of the most valuable tools of your college career. 

Smiling is Contagious!

Put a smile on your face!  You are young, in college, surrounded by tons of possible new friends, and have the opportunity to follow any dream that you can conceive. Yet, we see so many people walking around on campus with their head buried in a cell phone, staring at the ground as they walk by, or better yet pass you with a blank gaze as you cross paths.  I saw these blank stares and buried heads far too many times on campus and made it a point early on in school to not be this type of person.  College is a fun and happy time, although it can get stressful around finals week, but none the less students during those four years are at the best time in their lives so why not smile about it.  I read an article my sophomore year that talked about the power of a positive attitude and how smiling at people as you pass by can have a wonderful effect on your attitude and the others you come in contact with.  I was skeptical at first about how beneficial this hypothesis was until I tried it for myself.  Normally when walking around campus I would have my head stuck in my phone looking at the latest post on Facebook or texting the girlfriend at the time and paid little attention to the people passing by.  After reading the article I decided to give the smiling hypothesis a try, and man did it work!  I began to smile at everyone that walked by from students and professors to administration and custodians and was amazed at the way my attitude was changed for the day.  It was truly contagious.  Almost everyone that saw me coming would smile back and you could tell that it brightened their day as well as mine.  Smiling at new people every day always seemed to put me in a better mood for the day and even made me several new friends.  You never know what kind of day other people are having.  Someone might have just gotten out of a brutal three-hour night lecture on top of having an already bad day, and seeing your smile as you walk by could be the one thing that turns their day from bad to good, and who knows you could possibly even get a date from that one simple gesture. If you do not believe me, then please try it for yourself after reading this, and see how it positively affects your attitude.  Smiling could even strike up a conversation with the girl or guy you like in class that otherwise you would have missed with your head buried in the phone. 

The Power of Notecards

To some a notecard is just a standard three-inch by five-inch blank space to write down a quick number, or to leave yourself a memo for tomorrow, but as for me they were a life saver!  These little blank sheets of card stock saved my butt more times than I can count, from studying molecular structures in a general chemistry class, plotting out the flow of money in micro-economics class, to memorizing the vast amounts of Kingdom and Phyla names in zoology.  They were worth their weight in gold to me and I easily went through several thousands of them throughout my college career.  To give you some examples of how I structured the cards we’ll look at general chemistry.  When it was time to cram for a chemistry exam, which I never recommend, I would whip out the notecards and first tackle all of the terms in the chapters that are being tested.  What I found to work best was writing the term on one side and the definition on the other, this is pretty standard among most people, but when I would read through the cards I would make a stack of all cards that I had gotten correct and another stack for the incorrect.  After going through the entire stack first, I would then go through the stack of incorrect cards.  When going through these I would add the correctly answered cards to the “correct” stack and continue refining the incorrect stack until I had gotten them all correct.  Once I had gotten them all correct I would always go through the entire stack 1-2 more times to really commit everything to memory.  I used this same principle for all classes, even in calculus when having to memorize all of the degree and radian measurements of a 360-degree circle.  One class that notecards definitely saved my life in was zoology, but it did not come without a lot of hard work.  When it came to memorizing all of the classification names of animals these cards were a must!  The best advice I could give to you is to prepare the notecards as you go through chapters in the textbook.  Whenever you finish a chapter in the book immediately that night make yourself sit down and prepare the cards for that chapter.  If you wait till one or two nights before the test you will find yourself scrambling to get the notecards made with little time to sit down and study them.  I made this very mistake early in my college career and eventually corrected the mistake and immediately noticed a different in test grades and information retention.  Everyone learns differently but this is a tried and true method to memorize as much information as quickly and efficiently as possible, but remember it is much easier to do this as you go through chapters instead of cramming it all in right before test day.