If you’re a chump like me (that was a typo . . . I meant “champ,” of course) and took summer classes, then stop reading right now. You’re not going back to school, because you never left its hallowed halls.
Everyone else: you had a great summer, didn’t you? You soaked up the sun on the beach, maybe did some travelling, or you just relaxed and partied it up. Now it’s time to come back to school, back to lectures and over-priced textbooks, back to all-nighters (and not the rowdy kind) and bumpy, rainy bus trips up the mountain. I bet you have the back-to-school blues. At any rate, if you didn’t before, now you do. You’re welcome.
There are just some things that people like to complain about when it comes to going back to school, especially in the fall. Fear not: I may be the bearer of bad news, but I am also bringing you solutions to all your common qualms about the new semester.
“There’s no sun, it’s rainy, and I’m getting depressed.”
Sure, frolicking in the sun certainly puts you in a better mood than trudging through the rain, but what you’re missing from the sun is Vitamin D. The bad news is that vitamin D is found in very few foods, so you can’t use the “but I’m getting my calcium!” type of excuse that I use when I stuff my face with ice cream. Unless your idea of comfort food is cod liver oil, in which case you’ll be happy as a clam despite the lack of sun. Vitamin D can be found in several types of fish, including salmon, as well as in eggs, some dairy products, and bacon. This is, of course, a selective list based on personal taste. For everyone else out there, some studies have found that certain beers contain vitamin D. Usually, I would be critical of this kind of vague statement about “empirical” findings, but when a study is telling me that hitting the pub will give me my daily vitamin D intake, I’m not going to wonder where these findings are coming from. If nothing else, you’ll remember this factoid next time you’re drinking a pint, and you’ll laugh at how absurd my advice is. At least you’re not moping about the rain, so I think my job here is done.
“I don’t want to drag around three or four textbooks all day.”
You have several options here: First, you can hire someone to follow you around and carry them for you. There may be a couple of problems here, however. How many of us can afford that? And I’m not sure what labor laws say about this kind of thing. You could just not get textbooks. You can’t haul around what you don’t have. You’ll probably pass anyways, depending on the class. Or you could get one of those wheelie suitcases to take between classes. For bonus fun, you can pretend you’re at the airport, about to jet off to an exotic location, far, far away from Burnaby Mountain. Just kidding. This isn’t a real option for most socially competent people. Finally, the option that nobody wants to hear, but is realistically the best one: organize your time so that you finish all assignments and readings that require a textbook at home, so you don’t need to bring it with you. Really, most classes don’t require you to bring your textbook every week, and even if you happen to have one that does, there’s really no reason to be carrying all of your textbooks all the time.
“But what about my social life?”
Grades, sleep, and social life: choose two. We’ve all heard this thousands of times before, but that’s because it’s true. I’m sure you had a rockin’ social life over the summer, but now it’s time to prioritize. If an active social life is your priority, that’s fine, but it’s likely that other aspects of your life will have to suffer. There is, however, always the option of re-defining “social life.” Why not combine the two? The more responsible approach is obviously to make study groups, or to have study sessions with friends. You can get snacks, fun non-alcoholic beverages, and put on some Bach. Of course you shouldn’t speak to one another about non-academic related topics, because otherwise, you’ll never get anything done and you’ll be right back where you started. That being said, you can take study breaks, and just go wild on the gossip for about ten minutes. The more fun approach to combining studies and a social life — albeit the less productive one — is to do whatever it is you normally do with your social life, but accommodate it so that some academics can occur. If you normally lounge on the couch and eat chips with friends, then this is easy: just add a textbook to the mix. If you’re more of a party animal, this might be slightly more difficult, but not impossible. History drinking games? Literary analysis with cocktails? It can work, I’m sure. Note: no advice I could ever give will apply to the rare breed that do extreme sports as a hobby.
“But I don’t want to write papers!”
If you major in something that requires a lot of paper-writing, but you hate the process, then you went wrong somewhere along the road. That issue is so much bigger than me. If you’d just rather not, well, suck it up. Short of plagiarism (which isn’t worth it), there’s not much you can do to avoid this.
This comprehensive guide to back-to-school should make your return to the academic world as painless as ripping off a band-aid: it’ll hurt at first, but over time you’ll forget what a bad idea it is, and just keep on doing it.
