Social and Study: You Can Have Both!

By: Olivia Vadnais

One thing I was constantly worried about when it came to college was being able to balance my studies with my social life and making friends. I wanted to perform well in school but I also wanted to be able to reach out and make friends in a fun and exciting new environment. Comparing my first semester to now (with only four weeks left in my freshman year), I can see how my habits have changed and shifted for the better.

A part of my study habits that have helped me tremendously this semester versus last is the ability to develop a routine for my days in order to complete work. Last semester I felt uncomfortable being alone and trying to find a perfect place to study/work between classes so I would always waste time by going back to my room. However, I have found that I am comfortable alone and work better in a different place than my room, which can tempt me to lie in bed or succumb to some other distraction. Now each day I have a routine between classes that I enjoy. Whether it be with friends or alone, I am able to be productive throughout the day.

Socially, I think this semester has allowed me to take a step back and focus on myself rather than other people. Arriving at UMass in the fall, I didn’t have a set group of friends, nor did I know many people prior to attending like I always had at home. I was so focused on putting myself out there and making friends that I would avoid studying or completing work because I said yes to any opportunity to make a friend. While that wasn’t inherently a bad thing and I did end up making some good friends, it definitely took away my productivity and added a lot of stress to my life. While I still enjoy spending time with my friends, I don’t mind taking a night off from going out or staying in and completing an assignment when everyone else wants to hang out. 

Putting both these aspects together, it may seem difficult to find a balance between the two. However, I have learned that it is not as hard as it sounds. I don’t feel the need to go out every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. If I have an assignment to complete or just need to catch up on sleep, I’m okay with staying in and I can do so without FOMO or feeling like I’m being left out of a group. I have found that the ‘Sunday Scaries’ aren’t that bad when you’ve completed almost everything by a Friday night. Of course, this isn’t always the case. Occasionally I’ll put off the essay until the last few days because I’d rather have a Harry Potter marathon and order pizza with my friends. But I think that’s the point: it’s all about balance. The memories I get to make and enjoy with those I love and appreciate sometimes outweigh getting a head start on an assignment. I think that as my college career goes on, I’ll hopefully be able to balance this even better and become an even more responsible and productive student and person.

The Best Ways to Set Goals (And Keep Them)

By: Anna Martin

As the semester is drawing to an end, I'm sure many of us have set goals for ourselves. Whether that be doing really well in your classes, wanting to get into a new habit, or simply just wanting to have a really enjoyable summer. Whatever the reason, it’s so important to not get distracted and lose sight of what you're aiming towards. Here are some tips for staying on track with your goals:

Make a Specific Plan
Although it seems like the most obvious, it’s also the most important. Studies have shown you’re 2x to 3x more likely to stick to your goals if you draw out a plan for them. Instead of saying “I want to start cooking at home more,” try saying “I will try to make myself a homemade meal 3x a week for a month.” Not only does this help motivate you, but this gives you a more realistic approach. It's also really helpful to make goals that you can incorporate into your daily life, like drinking a glass of water after eating breakfast.

Get a Better Focus
I’m sure many of us have goals that we want to accomplish simultaneously. However, trying to juggle more than one at the same time can hurt you more than helping you, and you might end up losing the motivation to complete your goals. This is known as “goal competition” where your goals are essentially trying to compete with one another for your time and attention. One way to handle this is to eliminate the smaller goals so that you can really focus on your bigger goals without having more distractions. Another way is to reorganize your goals, prioritizing the ones more important to you, then focusing on them one at a time. Just remember to give yourself some space so that your other goals can fully blossom.

Set an Upper Bound
Whenever we make plans for ourselves, we are so used to saying, “I will do at least…..” But why limit ourselves to doing the minimum when we can do more? By implementing an upper bound, you might be surprised to see how much more you can do. Instead, try saying “I want to do at least…… but not more than……” You want to be able to see progress and continue to show up for yourself. And if you keep showing up for yourself, you’ll get closer and closer to reaching your goals.

Overall, setting goals for yourself can be really helpful if you need some extra motivation. Whether you’re a big dreamer or someone who likes to set smaller, more approachable goals, I hope you’ll find these tips useful. Just keep doing you because you got this girl!

Sources:

https://jamesclear.com/goal-setting

Benefits of Taking Summer Classes

By: Riley Bailey

With the spring semester coming to a close, I bet you are SO excited for a break. I mean, I know I am. However, have you ever thought about the benefits of taking classes over the summer sessions? It’s something I’ve been doing ever since I was a freshman and I seriously do not regret it!

If you’re interested but need a break, I have a solution for you. There are two sessions. On Spire they’re called “UWW Summer Session 1” and “UWW Summer Session 2.” Summer Session 1 this year starts on May 19, 2022 and goes until July 1, 2022. Therefore, if you’re interested but don’t want the summer classes to fill up your entire break, you can just do the first session and have the second half of summer all to yourself. Another option is to take the 2nd session which is from July 11, 2022 and goes until August 19, 2022. You would have the entire first half of the summer off if you were to decide to take that route. Or if you’re interested in doing both sessions, you can do that too!

Some benefits to taking summer classes are that you can get ahead on credits, catch up on credits, or even get some gen eds done so you can focus primarily on your major for the rest of your college career. You realistically can take any class you want over the summer sessions so whatever class you need, and if they’re offering it, you can get it done! I am graduating an entire year early thanks to taking advantage of the summer and winter courses offered during our breaks. Another advantage is that you basically take the class at your own pace. Yes, your professors will assign due dates but everything else is primarily up to you to get done on your own time. There are no zoom meetings or face-to-face interactions so you will most definitely be learning the course material on your own. However, professors are extremely helpful and are always available to chat if you don’t understand a concept.

Have I convinced you yet? If so, summer classes are extremely easy to sign up for. You can go right onto Spire and in the left-hand corner, press on “Main Menu.” From there you will scroll down to “Enrollment” and you will see an option that says “Summer/Wtr/Non-deg Enroll Appt.” If you just click on that, Spire will prompt you to sign up for an enrollment appointment. Right from there, you will automatically be able to enroll in the classes just as you would from the enrollment shopping cart in a normal semester. 

Overall, I highly recommend taking advantage of the summer courses offered through University Without Walls here at UMass. It has helped me a ton throughout my college career and I’m extremely grateful to have been taking them. It keeps you thinking throughout the summer and has helped with the transition from summer break into the fall semester. I hope you will consider taking some classes over the summer and if you end up doing it, then good luck! 

Exploring Women’s History Month through Business

By: Ayesha Devani

With the month of March coming to an end, it is important to bring emphasis to one of the most highlighted events of the month. Despite being established to promote both feminism and job creation, it is inevitable to acknowledge its purpose with relevance to the fight for women to vote. However, the movement, its purpose and its relevance have and are evolving over the years. The business industry has stereotypically been male-driven, and this has consistently made women in business the outliers. Entrepreneurs like Oprah, Arianna Huffington, and Elizabeth Arden, amongst many, are some of the most talked-about female entrepreneurs. However, women in small businesses continue to struggle in order to climb the patriarchal ladder and create their mark in the industry. This piece aims to explore a few of these women, their journeys, struggles, and successes in order to recognize and hence, promote women in small businesses. 

Funding and support are two key aspects of a business. Due to the multiple gender-based stereotypes established, it is proven that women in business are statistically less likely to gain funding. By restricting a women’s ability to practice business, society limits the opportunities women receive and hence, prevents success. These stereotypes additionally limit the support women receive and hence take a toll on confidence doing the exact opposite of what Women’s History Month stands for. These traditional norms have continued to create an unfavorable business environment limiting the probability of success. 

Through all the challenges female entrepreneurs face, many have emerged to be successful. However, this success is often neglected by society. Lorna Rutto, Claudia Mirza, and Anita Gupta are some of the many entrepreneurs who have truly reshaped their industries. These names are amongst the many unheard and unrecognizable ones despite their bold and unique approaches in their place of work. Lorna Rutto gave the idea of sustainability a new perspective in Kenya. Despite facing systematic discrimination and being deprived of the resources to grow her business, she converted plastic waste into sustainable products. Lorna, just like many other women, used her success to encourage employment and promote many women like her truly displaying what women empowerment stands for. Claudia Mirza created a visionary business that provides multilingual business services. Her history as an immigrant in the United States fuelled her passion and led her to create a business to help many like her. Anita Gupta faced the harsh reality of the patriarchal system in her home country India. Anita has now founded an organization that financially supports 20,000 and more women around the country. With the intention of spreading awareness and ensuring her struggles are not the struggles of many other women, she revolutionized business for women in India.

Post-reading the many ways through which these women have reshaped the industry, we should truly wonder why we don’t hear their names more often. Poverty, the patriarchal system, discrimination, cultural barriers, and a lack of resources are a few of the struggles these women faced. Instead of focusing solely on the monetary success of their businesses, these women worked to ensure that other women like them are not faced with the same difficulties they were faced with. Women’s History Month is the perfect opportunity for us to not only recognize these women but recognize the numerous barriers women face in business. No matter how big or small, a business is a business. As individuals, not only should we encourage and promote these businesses, but we should also encourage and promote the women behind the businesses.

Sources:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/margueritacheng/2018/10/31/8-major-challenges-women-face-in-business/?sh=4b2379d36461

https://ayeshadevani.wixsite.com/womeninbusiness

April First: Some April Fools Tools for School

By: Victoria Lauria

Picture this. It’s the first of the month and you’re in the middle school cafeteria. You open up your lunch box, and you see Oreos. You don’t question the fact that your mother never buys Oreos because you are too excited to have a tasty treat during your long day as a moody tween. You take your first bite and a minty aroma catches your attention. You are immediately grumpy again because, in your opinion, mint and chocolate are a terrible combination of flavors. By the time you swallow, it’s too late - everything is coming back up onto the table in front of your friends. You realize it’s not just any first of any month of the year, but it’s the fourth month. It’s April Fools Day: the national holiday that makes it acceptable for your mother to replace the delicious filling of the Oreo cookie with mint toothpaste. Yup, that was me. Mortified, but laughing it off and blaming my mom for being a trickster, I tried not to think of how humiliating it was that I just spat up in front of the entire 7th grade. 

Luckily, I’m at college making my own lunches now so I won’t be getting any suspiciously strong-smelling “mint” Oreos in my lunchbox. But not having my mom around to prank me also means she isn’t around to welcome me home from school, do my laundry and dishes, or tell me what to do. She definitely isn’t here to tell me when to go to bed, wake me up when I sleep through an alarm or drive me to school when I miss the bus because I slept in. Yup - this is college, the independence we have been searching for our entire lives. 

No more moms and dads - freedom. Literally, nobody tells us what to do nowadays besides those heinous assignments professors give us on the first day of classes, when you get lost in the neverending sea of syllabi. But even professors don’t tell us that we have to do anything, they say something along the lines of: “You guys are paying for this, so try to make the most of it.” And for the rest of the semester, it is up to us to make our own decisions. While I don’t miss unknowingly consuming toothpaste between chocolatey crackers, I do kind of miss the instruction that comes with living under the roof of my parents. Along with the growing pile of assignments comes the social pressures of being a college student at a big party school like Umass. Some of us feel like we are floating, lost far beyond the syllabi. A lot of us just float away in an ocean of students, rafting with others because being strong and swimming to shore on your own would, well, make you stand out from everybody else… and that’s… 

…embarrassing?

NO! It’s not embarrassing. At least, it shouldn’t have to be. Believe me, I’m the first one to turn red and start sweating when it comes to presenting a project on my own, being singled out in front of a classroom, or meeting somebody new. But standing out isn’t an embarrassing thing if you are being your natural self, if you are striving towards your goals. It’s a good thing to be comfortable existing, speaking, and breathing in your own skin. It’s an amazing thing to be able to recognize when you are simply following the crowd. Maybe you don’t want to go out and party on a Friday night, even though it seems like EVERYBODY will be going and having a good time. If your social battery is running low, it’s not embarrassing to be the only one of your friends that stays in for a night to do some self-care. It is important to recharge your energy so that you can not only feel yourself, but be yourself. Maybe you just want to chill and watch some Netflix with your roommates. This past Friday night, I watched a competitive baking show called Is It Cake? with my housemates, and it was a great time. The ultimate winner of the competition (spoiler alert, sorry), Andrew Fuller, is one funky dude, elaborated by his thick beaded glasses, green mohawk, and colorful style. He had some inspiring words about the importance of being your true, authentic self, even if that means being different: 

“I’ve never come this far in something. And I feel like I’m finally stepping into the person I’m supposed to be, and it’s just a cake show but this is huge for me… I just feel so humbled by this experience, and I feel like I’ve kind of proven that I don’t have to fit in with everybody else. You can still reach for whatever weird, wild, totally ridiculous dream you have, and you can achieve that. This has been the ride of my life.” 

So it’s April Fools Day again. I don’t mind if I get tricked this year, as long as I’m not fooling myself. It’s a good checkpoint as it has been 3 months since we made our New Year's Resolutions, and we are about to blossom into the beautiful spring and summer months. 

Are you still working towards your goals? Are you doing what makes you happy? Are you taking care of yourself, and recharging when you need it? Are you being yourself, even if that means being different? 

If you answered “Yes” to these questions, you should be very proud, keep going! 

If you answered “No,” I’m afraid you’re playing games with yourself. Or maybe society has tricked you into blending in, so that you don’t separate away to reach your ultimate individuality. Unfortunately, you can’t fool your way to self-actualization. Don’t be a fool, be yourself. 

In the wise words of Mr. T in Rocky 3…

“I pity the fool.” 

So, get to work. Your future self can’t wait to meet and talk about how far you’ve come.