College Hacks That You Need To Know

College can be a hard time in life, and you need to be able to know how to navigate it. You might not understand how difficult it truly can be to survive college, and as such you might not know how to prepare for this time. Luckily for you, we do know what it’s like to be at college, and we have compiled a list of college hacks that you can use to get yourself through the next four years. So, read carefully, because this is going to be your lifeline when it comes to surviving college.

Get Yourself A Job

 

You need a job. You might not think that you need a job, but trust us, you do. Living is expensive, and we know that sounds odd, but paying bills, buying food, affording clothes etc is all going to add up and you can’t just take from your parents for the next four years. As such, you need to find yourself a job in the place that your college is. Make sure that it is a job you can do, and pays what you need it to. It is no good taking a job that doesn’t even cover buying food for yourself for the month. This is actually something you can look into when you start to visit colleges, as it could make a big difference to your final choice.

Make sure that you have a killer resume, and this is going to make you stand out when you apply for jobs. Ideally to do this you need to have been a part of some clubs while you were in high school and some volunteering work, but if you don’t have this, it doesn’t mean that all hope is lost. Even little jobs that you have done here and there count, so make sure that you are including all of this on your resume. You never know what might stand out to a certain employer.

Saving Is A Good Thing

 

The next thing that you should have been doing since you applied to college is saving. Like we said above, you need money to be able to afford things and jobs aren’t just falling out of the sky. For your own benefit, you need to have some money tucked away for when you are away at college. This is going to be beneficial if you haven’t had much luck finding a job recently, so at least you will know that you do have some money to live on.

As well as this, you should also think about saving some of the money you are earning from your job, if you have some spare. You might think that there is no point in saving this money, and spend it on social activities instead. But, there may come a time where you don’t have a job, and this will give you some money to fall back on in the meantime. There is nothing worse than trying to get by with no money, so if you start planning for your future now, you won’t find yourself in this situation.

It Doesn’t Have To Be Physical

You don’t have to actually go to college if you are someone who doesn’t like social situations. There are always options such as online masters in statistics that you can look into and other online courses. You don’t have to be limited to attending a physical college, you can take these courses online instead and then you won’t have to deal with the stresses that come with college. Well, obviously you will have to do the workload, but we are talking about the more social aspects, if this is something that bothers you.

You Need Highlighters

 

You are going to need to have plenty of highlighters on hand. Highlighting your textbook might not be something that you like to do, but it is something that you will need to do. Sometimes, making notes can be extremely difficult, and you need to come up with a system of the best way to get all the information from the lectures. Missing bits is something that you cannot afford to do, so you should always have your textbook open, with a highlighter nearby for when the information is coming at you so fast, you can’t write anymore.

You also want to make sure that you have a multitude of colors. You can sort out a color-coding scheme for this, so pink is one subject, yellow is another, and blue, green etc. This will aid you in organizing your information, which is going to be crucial when it comes to studying for your exams. You never want to be in the situation where you can’t find the information that you need because your notes are a mess as this is just going to cause you more stress, and this is not what you need.

Good Quality Laptop

A good quality laptop is going to be essential here, and we would recommend either a MacBook or a high-quality windows computer. It doesn’t matter what brand you get really, as long as it can do everything that you need it to. It has to be fast, you need to be able to have multiple tabs open at once, and you need to be able to run word. Most laptops these days do have these capabilities, and you want to be looking for an i5 processor if possible. All this means is that your laptop is likely to run faster than other processors, and you need this when you are at college.

Being able to complete assignments without your laptop crashing every few hours is going to be vital, so if you notice a problem with the one you currently have, you need to get this fixed ASAP.

Set Your Home Screen As Your Schedule

 

When you get your schedule, you need to be able to memorize it. As such, you should take a picture, and make this the lock screen, and the home screen on your phone and laptop. As you use these devices often, you will start to memorize this schedule a lot faster than you would if you did not do this. Being late at college is not something that is looked on very kindly, so making sure that you know your schedule is going to be key to surviving. If you are someone who doesn’t have a great memory, then this is certainly going to be a big help to you.

Caffeine Is Your Friend

Finally, caffeine is going to be your friend and you do not want to take this for granted. Whether this is coffee or energy drinks, this is going to be what gets you through the long nights of assignments, the hours of note-taking, and the long days of lectures. We know that we aren’t making college sound exciting here, but it is. You just need to be able to navigate your way through, without becoming too caught up in all the stress.

But, you do need to be careful here because you don’t want to end up with an addiction. Make sure you are sticking to a healthy amount of caffeine throughout the year, and not loading yourself up. If any of you have seen The UK Inbetweeners, you will know what can happen when you have too much caffeine.

We hope that you have found this article useful, and now know some of the college hacks that you need to survive the next four years. This advice is going to make your life a lot easier, and doing all the things that we have talked about on this list, is also going to make your time at college more enjoyable. We hope that you have the best experience of your life, and don’t forget to fit some partying in around your studies.