Frequently, around the middle of the semester, many new college students begin to feel overwhelmed by everything they need to get done. Faculty, moreover, tell students to study more. Studying more, however, does not necessarily mean clocking more study hours--it also means studying smarter. A few tips:

• Add structure to your life. Your life in high school was more structured than your life in college since at college no one monitors your time. No one tells you when to study, when to eat, or when to sleep. Think about setting aside chunks of the day as time to be a professional student. These are times you use to go to class or study. You do not socialize, eat, workout, or relax during these times. Try setting aside the same times every day.

• Don't avoid the hard stuff by studying the stuff you already know. Study difficult subjects first.

• Try studying before the Dining Halls open for dinner. If you're not in class, try going to the library even if you don't have any tasks for tomorrow. You can always get ahead on your assignments.

• Allow yourself time for relaxation and socializing. While relaxing and socializing, make sure you're having a good time. If you're thinking about all the classwork you need to get done, you're probably not relaxing.

• When you catch yourself procrastinating, ask yourself, "What am I avoiding?"

• Find a good place to study with as few distractions as possible. Hence, your room or residence hall might not be the best place to study.

• Learn to say no. You don't have to do everything. Your friends will understand if you tell them that you'll join them another time.

• Get proper sleep. Many college students find the time to do everything by shortchanging sleep. When they need a few extra hours for studying or socializing, they cut back on sleep. As a long-term strategy, however, shortchanging sleep doesn't save time.

There are lots of good websites with time management tips. For example, check out the following for more ideas:

You can also talk with your academic advisor about study skills and time management.

Results of the National College Health Survey completed by over 1,100 randomly-selected Truman students last spring indicated that over 30% of the survey participants reported having sleep difficulties severe enough to interfere with their academic performance. Sixty percent reported getting enough sleep to feel rested on only 3 or fewer days of the week. Sleep experts recommend 8 to 9 hours of sleep per night. Not getting enough sleep night after night can dull your thinking or make you grumpy and more prone to injuries. One in ten fatal car crashes is the result of sleep deprivation.

Some tips for getting better sleep: establish a regular bedtime and stick to it; partake in relaxing activities such as massage, soft music, drinking warm milk or herbal tea before bed; and avoid naps.

Should you nap? According to the Mayo Clinic Guide to Self-Care,

"The urge for a midday snooze is built into your body's biological clock. This typically occurs between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m., as indicated by a slight dip in your body temperature."

"Napping isn't a substitute for a full night's sleep. Don't nap if sleeping at night is a problem. If you find a nap refreshes you and doesn't interfere with nighttime sleep, try these ideas: Keep it short. A half-hour nap is ideal. Naps longer than an hour or two are more likely to interfere with your nighttime sleep. Take a mid-afternoon nap. Naps at this time produce a physically invigorating slumber. If you can't nap, just rest. Lie down and keep your mind on something else."

If you do decide to nap, don't forget to set your alarm clock. Many students lie down for a short nap and end up sleeping through class.

The Student Health Center and University Counseling Services are available to consult with students having sleep difficulties.

Effective communication is your key to success! Speech and hearing disorders: build frustration; shatter confidence; increase shame and humiliation; cause embarrassment; create anxiety; and inhibit communication. Is this you or someone you know? The Truman State University Speech and Hearing Clinic may be able to help. The Clinic provides comprehensive speech-language-hearing diagnostic and therapeutic interventions to people of all ages. The Clinic is open year round from 8:30 to 11:30 am and 1:30 to 5 pm Monday through Thursday. The Clinic is located in Barnett Hall 121. Services are provided at no cost to you! If you or someone you know is is need of the Clinic's services, call 785-7414.

Quote of the Week

"Students' overriding concern should be how to develop as fully as possible their basic human birthright: their powers of imagination, aesthetic responsiveness, introspection, language, rationality, moral and ethical reasoning, physical capacities, and so on. Those are the powers that students must cultivate if they wish to strive for excellence. Moreover, those are the powers that higher education is especially suited to help students hone. ...

"Liberal education should not be about going along to get along. It's not about a genteel frosting of humane learning -- like knowing that Bizet, despite composing Carmen, was French, not Spanish. It's not merely about being well rounded, whatever that cliche means, nor is it about being able to discuss a variety of entertaining topics at cocktail parties. Conmen can be well rounded, and fools can be entertaining.

"Liberal education is the pursuit of human excellence, not the pursuit of excellent salaries and excellent forms of polish and sophistication. Liberal education is not even about excellent intellectual achievements. Its goal is more ethical than intellectual: It focuses on the development of individuals as moral agents, and it teaches students how to reflect both analytically and evaluatively on the fact that the choices we make turn us into the persons we become.

"If the enterprise I have just described is a luxury, then I cannot begin to define a necessity. What could be more necessary for any human being than learning how to claim, develop, enjoy, and put to public use the distinctive advantages of our nature -- to be able, first, to choose the kind of person that we turn out to be and, second, to influence the kinds of persons that others turn out to be? If liberal education is a luxury, then so is truth in a courtroom, love in marriage, or kindness in response to suffering."

--Marshall Gregory from "A Liberal Education Is Not a Luxury"

(Chronicle of Higher Education, September 12, 2003).