Rise and Grind: How Studying Before Class Helped Me Academically By Nikki, a Peer Tutor – As I’m sure many UNC students relate to, I feel like there is almost never enough time in the day to get everything done. Between juggling extracurriculars, managing part time jobs, and taking a full academic course load, it can feel overwhelming trying to do it all. What I ended up realizing, though, is maybe I don’t need to reprioritize the things but rather try restructuring the times at which I did things to maximize my efficiency. 

I still remember the first time I got a “B” on a paper in college. My entire face heated up like I was sitting under a grow light, and I didn’t take in a single word from the lecture that day in PoliSci. After class, I called my mother to cry about it, but having watched me melt down every time I lost a soccer game throughout high school, she tried to remind me it wasn’t a big deal. Afterwards, I spent days convinced I was going to lose my scholarship. In the end, my mother was right. It’s fourteen years later, and I am here to report that the only reason I remember that grade is because it taught me how to use failure rather than dread it.

The ground is burning, the air smoky, and chaos around. You are in the middle of this battlefield, the weight of a heavy backpack of assignments weighing on your mind and the chain of job expectations tied to your leg, preventing you from moving forward. The battle between studying for your classes versus pleasing your supervisor in your part-time job is never ending, and so I wanted to share my own experiences with you, my fellow comrades in pain.

Introducing…“Ask a Coach!” In this new blog series, our Writing and Learning Center coaches answer our UNC-CH undergrads’ burning questions! Check back every month to see what our coaches have to say about everything from taking breaks to utilizing office hours! Todays Question: What are some short, restful breaks that don’t involve scrolling through Instagram in the library? 

As a double major in Biostatistics and Linguistics who is minoring in math, I am constantly thinking about the best ways to learn. Sometimes this means looking at the overlapping concepts between these three subjects or figuring out strategies that work for a certain class but not for another. And unfortunately, these thoughts are often made in the context of school.

In the Spring 2020 semester, two weeks of online school sounded incomprehensible, and now I have completed over a year of online classes. I had my fair share of positive and negative experiences that came along with online class. But, as I look forward to the prospective in-person classes next year, here are some of the lessons I’ll be taking with me into the future.

The one year mark of the pandemic has come and gone, and I’m not sure exactly when or if things will go back to “normal.” However, I do know that I have adapted somewhat to remote school and work. Even though technology governs much of our lives right now, I have found ways I can still use it for good – especially when it comes to physical activity.

Throughout this past year, I have found that my optimism and overall motivation has decreased significantly, as school seems trivial compared to the profound challenges currently facing the world. My future seems bleak amidst the labor crisis surrounding employment opportunities as well as my inability to connect with others. I first noticed this shift in my mental health and mindset when completing a paper for a policy class. I found myself asking questions like, “Why is this little assignment even important when the world is facing such great challenges and hurting so much?” or “Will this paper even mean anything?” These largely negative existential questions made it difficult to write, but as I worked, I developed tactics to address these questions and the feelings behind them.

I remember reading my professor’s comments on a paper I’d written in one of my first graduate seminars at Carolina. The paper excited me because it was a topic that interested me, and I believed that my excitement would also factor into producing a well-written, deeply riveting original argument. I was wrong. When I read my professor’s comments, which were few, the words that stood out most were on the last page. Scribbled around some other notes that mentioned the promise of my idea, the professor had written, “This is almost unintelligible.” Reading this comment took a heavy toll on me even though I thought I could shake off the unhelpful criticism.

This pandemic has no doubt made learning a huge challenge—but if anything positive has come out of my learning experience, it’s that I am constantly pushed to think critically about the world every time I put pen to paper.