Monthly Archives: November 2014

Where Did The Time Go?

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A moving clock and a sign that says "Where did the time go"

By Guest Blogger Vincent Su

“I’ll start after dinner,” you tell yourself as you prepare for an all-nighter.  You’ve barely scratched the surface when you remember that club meeting at 9p.m. So now you’re distracted. Midnight? That’s a good time to grab food at late night. Before you know it, it’s 3 a.m. and you’re not sure what overwhelms you more – the impending feeling of doom or the desire to sleep for all that is holy.

A moving clock asking "where did all the time go?"Ever get this feeling of time disappearing in the blink of an eye? Here’s a strategy for helping you figure out where it’s going and making time for the things you care about most. Take 15 minutes to plan out what an ideal day would be for you.

Make a list of things that are important to you and what you want to accomplish during your time here. Do you want to stay in shape? Interested in prodding the minds of the leading authorities in your favorite subject? Don’t forget to make time to just relax and hang out with friends!

Realistically speaking, put your classes, meals, meetings, etc. first, but look at the spaces in between, and ask yourself, “What do I want to spend my time doing?” If hitting the gym is a big priority, put it on the calendar. Want to soak up some sun on the oval? How about a 15 minute block after lunch? Remember that doing homework is arguably the most critical part of your education, so you should also plan out how long you think your weekly assignments will take. Ideally by scheduling ahead of time, you can break it into manageable chunks instead of an unruly train wreck of late night fright and despair.

The act of thoughtfully creating a schedule for yourself also helps develop the essential skills for good time management. The two most critical are the ability to prioritize and the ability to estimate time. Everyone’s had those moments where you have 3 assignments due the next day and you have no idea how long any of them will take. Half of the time, the uncertainty itself is what prevents you from getting started; trust me, I’ve been there too.

The last part of the strategy involves comparing your ideal schedule with how you’re actually spending your time. Try writing down all the activities you do in the course of a day. Perhaps this is where you find you finish eating lunch in 45 minutes instead of an hour, or that the two hours you scheduled at the library is more like 30 minutes of work with an hour and a half of looking at funny pictures of cats like it’s 2010.Cat reading a book about military strategy

With practice, hopefully these two schedules can start to merge and you find that you have more control over how your time is being spent. Remember that the point is not to squeeze every waking minute you have to work for that extra .01 difference on your GPA; the point is to be purposeful in the activities you choose and help you make time for the things you care about.

Feel free to let us know how it goes!

How to Stay Productive Over Thanksgiving Break

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Charlie Brown's Snoopy serves pumpkin pie at the dinner table

By Guest Blogger, Vivian Lam 

Thanksgiving Break—it’s a time of falling leaves, holiday cheer, and rabid shoppers. A whole week of freedom to stay in bed as long as you please, to catch up with family and friends, to run marathons (on the road or on the couch. Either way, a nice dose of starch and refined sugar awaits to join the party in your bloodstream). And of course, you’ll get started on studying for those eight finals you have, start writing those fifteen papers, catch up on the reading you’ve missed, and finish that grant proposal before the deadline.

Charlie Brown looking stressed and sick…Right?

Perhaps a comparison could be made to the tryptophan-induced drowsy haze that begins post-turkey. Once you get into the relative freedom and lack of structure of the holidays, it can be quite difficult to resist the temptation to just hit the snooze button indefinitely until break is over. By then, you realize you’ve gained 25 pounds (of work) that you need to bear with once you get back to school.

Ideally, at least some work will be done. Usually, nothing is done. But actually, much can be done—without sacrificing your holiday too!

Try to start early—before break, make a list of things to do, just so you are aware of what needs to be done and silence that nagging voice telling you that you have 500 check boxes to fill. Break those items into parts—write a paragraph a day, read 20 pages a day. Try to make it a habit to do something on that list when you start the day, so you can get into a productive mood and be finished before someone insists that you stop working and have some fun. If you can stand any more deadlines, impose some on yourself—but don’t beat yourself up if you don’t meet them. Use them as a guideline for where you’d like to be when you get back from break.

But the bottom line is that you’re on break for a reason. That’s incredibly significant. There’s nothing wrong with “distractions,” especially if they include quality time with those you love and a much deserved break after 9 weeks of constant grind. The key is to compartmentalize: separate your “productive time” from “holiday time.” By being intentional about how and when you’re being “unproductive,” you can prance and frolic in the dead leaves as much as you’d like without feeling guilty about being unproductive.

Charlie Brown's Snoopy serves pumpkin pie at the dinner tableLet me put it like this. It’s O.K. to eat that extra slice of pumpkin pie, because you know you’ll go back to your oh-so-healthy eating habits after the festivities. Set one goal each day of break, and aim to complete it before the main attraction of your 24 hours begins. Relax, enjoy life. Live in the moment. Life’s too short to not be having fun. All work and no play makes for a break-less break. Time you enjoy wasting is not time wasted. I can go on and on and on.

If you haven’t taken the time to think about all that you’re grateful for this year, now’s the time. If all turns out well, you can be grateful that you were able to fully enjoy your break and get ready for a great few weeks before winter quarter.

Happy Thanksgiving—I wish your gut well!

Multiple Choice Test Strategies

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By Jessica Anderson & Adina Glickman

By now, you have probably had at least one midterm experience while at Stanford. If not, you have managed to escape the beast.

Often exams will include what some like to call “Multiple Choice Questions” or what I refer to as, Neo’s curse. When presented with an open ended question, you rely on what you know to fill in the blanks. But when someone offers you a red pill and a blue pill, the presence of an additional option can alter everything you thought you knew. All of a sudden you are second guessing everything, including whether or not you are caught up in some alternate reality. So what do you do to select an answer…and actually pick the right one?

The Red Pill and Blue Pill are presented to Neo in a scene from The Matrix.

Multiple choice questions

  • Spend LOTS of time understanding the question. Really digging into the problem will yield amazing insight into how to solve it. Expert problem solvers spend 90% of their time looking at the question.
  • If it’s a complex question, break it down and make sure you understand each piece of it.
  • Diagram the question.

Multiple choice answers

Rather than drowning in a sea of seemingly random words, be systematic and go through EACH answer choice and determine whether it makes sense. If anything in the answer is false, then the entire choice is false.

Britney Britney Spears adamantly says "that is false"

If the question is looking for a true statement, that choice won’t be in the running. For example:

Q: What is the best day to eat out at a restaurant?

A) Sleepday
Ask yourself: is this for real? Sleepday is not even a real day of the week, so no matter what the question, this will be a “False” answer.

B) Tuesday and Sleepday
Ask yourself: is all of this statement true? Well sure, the sun is round, but the moon is not flat. So this answer is a “False” answer.

C) Not Sunday, since all the food is almost a week old
Ask yourself, is this true?

D) Tuesday, when food deliveries are made

E) Friday, when it’s the busiest and the wait staff is most attentive

I know the task of making a selection can be overwhelming, but it is better to make a selection than to leave the question unanswered. By making a choice, you have already increased the likelihood of marking the correct answer. Think about it this way, if Neo hadn’t chosen either pill, we might all be trapped inside the matrix.

P.S. If the test was in your Psych course, the right answer would be E, but if it was in an Epidemiology class, it would be D.

The Power of Habit

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A Meme that says "One Does Not Simply Hit the Snooze Button once"

By Guest Blogger, Vincent Su

If you feel that actions speak louder than words, then perhaps this quote from Aristotle will resonate with you:

“We are what we repeatedly do, Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit”

A Meme that says "One Does Not Simply Hit the Snooze Button once"Think back to the last time that you thought about how you were going to get to class or where you were going to get lunch on Tuesdays. There are tons of decisions that we make on a daily basis without even thinking. Why is it hard for some people to resist hitting the snooze button, yet natural for others to get up early enough to exercise in the morning? These are all a matter of habit. If you want to begin improving yourself, there are two main categories of habits.

  • Good habits you want to build
  • Bad habits you want to break

Building Good Habits

So you’ve made your week 1 resolutions, and you’re ready to see how long this quarter’s streak will last, what should you know? Well, according to Charles Duhigg, author of “The Power of Habit”, our brains process habits as a single unit comprised of multiple automated actions. The key part of this discovery is that to make these neural connections last, we need two critical components surrounding the habit – a trigger and a reward.

Cookie Monster is eating a cookie with enthusiasm

Let’s say your goal is to start running on a daily basis. Chances are, you’ll be pretty busy with all the other things in your schedule that you’re unlikely to just go running whenever you feel like it. Instead, it will be easier to get your mind into running mode if you have some sort of cue to go running, whether it’s going right before dinner or during those awkward 30 minute periods between classes. The second element you’ll need is a

reward, something that will encourage you to repeat the action. Again for the example of running, you could get a runner’s high, or perhaps treat yourself to a little extra dessert.

Breaking Bad Habits

While it seems that breaking bad habits is harder than forging new ones, there’s more similarity between the two than you might think. In the way that creating triggers and rewards are critical to forming new habits, identifying the triggers and rewards of your bad habits is the first step to overcoming them. If you bite your nails, ask yourself why you do it. Is it because you’re bored? Are you stressed? Do you like constantly chewing? Identifying these types of questions is what will help you discover alternatives like talking with a friend, going for a walk, or maybe just carrying around a pack of gum.

Even with the most willpower in the world, habits aren’t formed overnight. If you set your alarm for two hours earlier, you will most likely oversleep the next day. But if you set it for 10 minutes earlier every day for two weeks, then you might have a better shot.

What do you wish you could change?