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A College Student’s Guide on How to Manage School from Home

Struggling on how to adjust with the current situation, where it is hard to distinguish the difference between home and school, anymore? Don’t worry, you are not alone! Your college buddy got your back.

The COVID-19 pandemic made the year 2020 one of the worst year ever. It puts us on lockdowns, travel restrictions, and halt almost all of our plans and activities, so we can stay home and stop the virus from further spreading. We may have been paused for some time, but after a few months, we figured out how we can continue. Officials introduced the “new normal” standard, which includes how we can attend schools and universities while staying home with the help of technology, of course.

Here are some tips on how to manage your schooling while at home:

1. Know all your school activities that have specific schedule.

The day before your class, ask yourself: Do I have an online meeting with my professor? Or my group mates? Or do I have any scheduled activity or deadline? So you can prepare and work with ease tomorrow. This can help you to allot time for your other activities like your readings, papers, and also with your non-academic ones like working out or watching movies, or even lunch break and nap time. Knowing your school schedule will hep you determine when to study and also when to rest.

2. Treat the day as if you are really going to school.

Yes, you are doing your classes at home, but that does not mean you’re gonna be in your comfy pajamas and laying in bed all day. Even if you are not going out to school, keep your usual routine and have your little “get ready with me” moment. Do your bed, take a shower, dress up a little bit, put some make up on, have some breakfast or a cup of warm coffee, or whatever it is that you usually do in the morning. This will help you shrug off the lazy spirit out of you and will motivate you to have a more productive day.

3. Designate a “SCHOOL ONLY” zone or your own study area at home.

Inside your house, find a place where you can study properly. Choose somewhere that you are comfortable enough but not too comfortable like your bed. As much as possible avoid lying down, go find an area where you can sit properly and still able to read and take notes. This technique helps you condition your mind that you are actually attending school, helps you to focus more and absorb your lessons well, and at the same time, keep the boundaries between where you should only do your school works and where you should rest.

4. Mute your social media while on your online class.

In a face-to-face class, the rule was used to be “keep your phones away” or “turn off your phones” to avoid distractions while having classes but how can we keep it away or turn it off, when we also need it for our online classes? If using mobile phone is unavoidable, you can just simply turn off the notifications on all your social media account once you are in an online class already. It will not just lessen the distractions, it will also lessen the your connection problem and the lagging of your phone.

5. Take advantage of your asynchronous classes.

Asynchronous class means instead of online meeting (synchronous class), the professor/instructor will just leave a task for you online. Asynchronous classes’ activities tend to be the cause of backlogs and cramming, so do these activities exactly within the assigned schedule of your class/subject, so you can finish the task earlier and have more time to rest and chill.

6. Don’t be guilty that you are taking a break.

We all want to finish all our requirements and pass our classes, but hey, we need some break too. Take time to relieve some stress and relax for a while. You need it, everyone needs it. Watch movies, or TV series, do some arts and crafts at home, spend time with your family, or anything that will keep you away from school works. In college, we get bothered or guilty when we are doing this things and label ourselves, like “I’m not doing anything” or that “I’m not productive”. But these are still activities, you're still technically doing something, it’s just, it’s not related to your academics. So, don’t be too hard on yourself. Taking a break is like a slingshot, you need to step back to gain momentum, in order for you to reach farther.

We never know when, but we are all hoping that someday we can finally go back to school, go back to work, and meet people physically, but even if that time comes, it is not gonna go back to the way it was used to be.

Just like Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, survival is not based on how strong or weak you are but it is about how well you adapt to the changes of your environment. Same goes to us, we need to adapt in order to survive. Adapting is a challenge, so I hope this simple tips can help you, and always remember that you’ve always got a buddy in me!