Happy Monday, Readers! Welcome back to talking about topics that seniors struggle with especially during these last few months before graduation. This week’s topic: being prepared.
Whether its being prepared for class by having your homework done, being prepared for the days you don’t get home until after 12 hours, or being prepared for what comes after college, I’ve noticed that being prepared is something that every senior is worried about. For myself, I know that if on Sunday nights I haven’t done my homework up until Wednesday and picked out my blog post theme, I am not prepared for the week and am left picking up the pieces throughout the week. I feel like that’s the case for many people, and if you add looking for a job for after graduation (so that you can be prepared for after college), all the looking ahead and preparedness is overwhelming.
One way to curb this overwhelming feeling is what I like to call “spreading out and staying on top.” Many of you probably know this tactic, but I wanted to reiterate it now because this semester, I’ve benefited from sticking to it greatly. The way to master this technique is to list everything you have to do for the week. Write it down. It physically helps to see what you have to do when it’s written down. Once you see what you have to do, make a game plan and break those tasks down into maybe five chunks. All those tasks at once and in whole chunks are overwhelming, but if you divide them up and spread them out throughout your week it makes you feel more accomplished. Another thing that helps is, if you’ve finished all of your tasks for one day, continuing to work ahead so that you can take some of the pressure off other days. I used to think, “now that I’m done with today’s tasks, I can relax!” While that might be a good way for some people to function, what helps take my stress away is working ahead.
On a bigger scale, another way to become prepared for life after college is to be prepared when it comes to looking for and securing jobs. The biggest time to feel unprepared is during a job interview, but if you can master your answers for most questions beforehand, you’ll feel better prepared and less nervous. A resource students can use to help prepare them for job interviews is setting up a mock interview at the Career Development Center. In doing this, students will be asked questions normally asked at job interviews and will be given feedback on their answers. This will help students be less nervous going into an interview and to help them know what’s coming.
Being prepared is something everyone needs to learn to do. Hopefully these points have helped to alleviate some stress about it!
Until next time!
