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Welcome back from winter break, everyone! I hope your time off was full of quality time with family and friends, delicious food, and lovely memories made. If you’re anything like me, coming back to campus after New Year’s probably feels a bit like crashing back down to Earth. Well, buckle in, space rangers—it’s time to kick it into gear for the spring semester. Whether you’re graduating this May or just trying to finish the year strong, here are some things that you can do to help keep you on track.
Make note of important upcoming dates.
Spring semester is chock-full of important events, and it’s important that you have a grasp on them. The last thing that you need is to realize that the class you picked up for lab credit is actually for pre-med students and way more intense than you bargained for—and it’s past the drop date. If you’ve been meaning to check out study abroad options, informational meetings and fairs often happen early in the spring semester. Career fairs are also typically held in the spring. So, go through your school’s calendar and make a note of any dates that you’ll need to keep track of. Put them in your phone or on sticky notes where you’ll see them.
Book an appointment with Career Services.
Speaking of career fairs, now is the perfect time to book an appointment with your school’s career services office. Particularly if you’re graduating soon, but also if you’re still looking for an internship or job for the summer. Most internships recruit in the fall, but many smaller companies wait for the spring semester to fill their needs. Your career services offices can help you polish up your resume, practice interviewing skills, and explore pathways to continuing education, like grad school.
Try some new planning and productivity tools.
Every year, I try my hand at keeping a planner. One of these years, it’ll stick. But even without the ability to follow through for the rest of the year, I still find that trying out new planning and productivity tools helps me get in the right mindset. Ask anyone who likes organization and stationery, and they’ll tell you that the Hobonichi Techo is the GOAT, though some prefer the more compact Cousin. If you’re not into the analog sphere or just worry about losing a physical item (same), then there are plenty of great digital tools available, too. Notion is one of the most versatile (and free for students with a .edu email)—you can set up lists and calendars for classes, work, club activities, whatever you like. And if you prefer to sacrifice a little customizability for convenience, Etsy creators offer thousands of digital planners, assignment trackers, and the like, usually for pretty cheap.
Declutter, especially digitally.
A new semester means new classes, which means new syllabi and new assignments. Take the time now to toss or file away papers from the fall semester, archive emails from professors whose classes you are no longer in, and sort the files that I know are taking over your Downloads folder into their appropriate places. Ensure that your documents are backed up someplace (the cloud, an external hard drive, whatever floats your boat). Let your laptop make that update it’s been asking you for every three hours since October. And just for fun, if you’re a PC user, give your hard drive a defrag to optimize performance. The key to “digital hygiene” isn’t running a super-tight ship, exactly—it’s just making sure that you do some basic maintenance sometimes. At the top of each semester is perfect timing.
Spring semester will go by in the blink of an eye—be sure to take a moment this January to take a breath, reset, and prepare to crush the next few months. Best of luck!
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