Keeping New Years Resolutions

By Madison Bowden, Toppel Peer Advisor

It is about that time in the year now where everything starts picking up, classes become harder, and all your activities on and off campus begin to come at you full blast. However, not so long ago we made New Years resolutions. Except now they seem so unrealistic and hard to obtain with exams, clubs, or Greek life. It is important now more than ever that we remember those resolutions to reinvigorate our motivation before the semester takes a heavy toll on us students. 

I myself have found five ways that can improve my chances of keeping those New Years Resolutions of straight A’s, staying active in campus activities, and exercising daily. Here are some tips I recommend:

1. Log the activities you want to accomplish a day in advance in either a journal or agenda
2. Keep a Journal of your Daily Activities to show your progress
3. Have a motivator- Mom, Dad, Friends, etc. 
4. Follow a blog, social media page, or download an app that can motivate you daily
5. Most importantly, if you fall behind a day don’t give up just start fresh the next day 

Remember, it is not about necessarily achieving all your resolutions but keeping the motivation you set for yourself in the beginning of year. So don’t beat yourself up for missing a few days or even a week on your goals just stay motivated and don’t save those New Years Resolutions for next year.

Be SMART, Avoid Feeling Overwhelmed

By Marian Li, Toppel Peer Advisor

Brand new school, brand new you. College is the time to make the saying “to each your own” come true. But new experiences can be a black hole filled with the unknown that snowballs to reduce even the most confident individual into an emotional basket case. Even if it’s not your first time, returning students can get caught up in the hubbub of campus life, forgetting the main reason we came to college in the first place. Students are here to continue their education and grow into mature adults, ready to take on the big world of work in whichever field of interest; we can’t very well prepare properly if we lose the goal in mind. So how can we circumvent the annual meltdown and stay sane?

Toppel’s been teaching students about time management efficiently to maximize the 24 hours allotted in the day. Succumbing to the overwhelming pressure is counterproductive. Students are tired of hearing this but prioritizing is a must! Achieving a system that works is difficult, but if you’re SMART about the goals you create, you will go into new responsibilities with the end in mind.

Specific – A specific goal has a much greater chance of being accomplished than a general goal. Spelling out the details removes any room for confusion or time wasted worrying about details along the way. To be specific, consider the six “W” questions (who, what, when, where, why, which).

Measurable – Establish concrete criteria for measuring progress toward the attainment of each goal you set. When you measure progress, you stay on track, reach your target dates, and experience the exhilaration of achievement that boosts you motivation to reach your goal. Quantify your goals, ask “How much?” and “How many?” and the most important “How will I know when it is accomplished?”

Attainable – When you identify goals that are most important to you, you begin to figure out ways to make them true. You develop the mindset, skills, and financial capacity to reach them. You begin seeing previously overlooked opportunities to bring yourself closer to the achievement of your goals. 

Realistic – To be realistic, a goal must represent an objective toward which you are both willing and able to work. A goal can be both high and realistic; you are the only one who can decide just how high to aim your goals. But just be sure that every goal represents substantial progress.

Timely/Tangible – A goal should be grounded within a time frame. With no time frame tied to it, there’s no sense of urgency. If you truly believe it can be accomplished, then your goal is realistic.

Take a moment to BREATH and enjoy the autonomy college gives you!

Time Management

by Oleg Ignatenko 

        Our life revolves around time.  Each day we are given twenty-four hours to accomplish small tasks and duties that will enable us to achieve our life goals and in the process meet new people and discover more about ourselves.  Twenty-four hours may seem like a lot but for people who have a hard time managing their schedule, it may seem like they never have enough time for anything.  It is especially difficult for college students who sometimes have to juggle many things at once, such as school projects, activities, different organizations, work, and in some cases kids and families.  We all wish we had more time during the day to accomplish what we set out to do.  But how?  Hopefully this blog will answer this question and help you determine a way to prioritize your schedule. 

HOW BAD TIME MANAGEMENT COULD AFFECT YOUR DAY 

Here are 3 of the biggest mistakes that can occur when trying to accomplish daily tasks 

• Targeting too many areas at once  
  
  When trying to develop a schedule, the first thing you want to do is determine a specific task that you will want to finish by the end of that day.  This should be your primary objective for the day and the task that should come before every other one.  Try to focus on this task and feel free to take time  away from your other interests in order to accomplish it.  That way, as long as you achieve this particular goal, you will not feel like your day went to waste.   By keeping yourself on track and finishing the important aspects of your daily schedule, you will be able to accomplish so much more with your time as well as maintain a sense of purpose and fulfillment. 

• Being busy just to be busy  
  
  This is usually referred to as busy work.  Busy work is something that keeps you occupied without being constructive or productive.  A good example of busy work is assignments you had to complete that were given to you in high school or middle school when you had a substitute teacher whose sole purpose was to make sure you were working on something/anything.  Other examples of busy work are completing a project with no clear purpose, word searches   which do not actually reinforce vocabulary and anything that is there just for the purpose of keeping someone busy with no prominent objective.  This type of work can cause students or employees much frustration because even though they remain busy for the moment, later on they feel a complete sense of lack of accomplishment  as well as no purposeful progress. 

• Allowing yourself to get distracted
  
  First of, lets be honest with ourselves.  We live in Miami where the sun is always bright, the ocean is always inviting and there are an unlimited amount of activities to do for fun.  But instead of looking at those things as distractions, lets view them as incentives or as rewards that you can present yourself with after finishing the things that should come first.  There are of course other distractions, such as the ones that are present during your study hours.  Nowadays the majority of students use a computer when working on their homework or conducting research.  That gives us the opportunity to consistently disrupt our concentration by allowing ourselves to wander to other sites such as Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube where you might start of watching a video on math tutorials and two hours later you are somehow watching videos of cats doing backflips.  A great way to avoid this is to download a program called FocalFilter.  This program is designed to allow you to block certain websites and the length of time that they will remain blocked for, resulting in keeping you more focused at the task at hand and allowing you to get more work done. 

THE EISNEHOWER METHOD  OF TIME MANAGEMENT 

The Eisenhower Method of Time Management was proposed by Dwight D. Eisenhower.  For those of you who do not know who he is, here is a quick history lesson.  He is not the guy from "The Office".  Dwight David Eisenhower was the thirty-fourth President of the United States who priorly served in WWII as the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe and held the responsibility for planning and supervising the invasion of France and Germany.   Now that I'm sure you guys are very accepting of this man, lets get to his method.  The Eisenhower Method of Time Management is based on the prioritization matrix which consists of areas of importance and areas of urgency. 

There are 4 priority blocks and they are: 

1. Urgent and Important 

2. Important yet not Urgent 

3. Urgent yet not Important 

4. Not Important as well as Not Urgent 

Whether reacting to or creating  our environment, Dwight D. Eisenhower's Method of Time Management makes a lot of sense.  If our work is dependent, this method prioritizes our work tasks. 

By applying these simple time management methods to your life, it can help you become more effective as a professional as well as bringing yourself into greater awareness of time.  Increasing your own consciousness of a thing is the basis of improvement. 

TIME MANAGEMENT TIPS FOR STUDENTS 

• Have an organized workplace 
• Create an appointment calendar and follow it as best as you can 
• Take short breaks during study and work periods  
• Learn to say "no" to other activities when important deadlines are coming up 
• Try to be punctual and prepared for your classes 
• Know who to ask for help incase you might need it 
• At last, Have a positive attitude! 

Remember, we live in a very complex world and should not take the time to gather all the information when we frequently use our own intuition.  Ultimately, we need to give equal priority to our family and friends, leisure or pleasure as we do toward work.  An important thing to remember is that even when spending the majority of time thinking strategically and planning things out, we can still get overwhelmed with our day to day lives.  A great way to avoid some of the daily stress is to take a step back, take a break and allow your mind to clear.  Even though it may seem like you are wasting time, in reality, you are giving yourself a chance to think clearly and more distinctively about the important aspects in your life. 


For extra help feel free to visit or contact the Camner Academic Resource Center (ARC) which offers a multitude of resources for every constituent of the University of Miami community.  Currently the ARC houses 7 primary services: Tutoring Services, Office of Disability Services, Learning Specialist, UMX, Academic Workshops, Faculty Support and Independent Learning Initiative.


The ARC is located at the Whitten University Center, Suite N-201; 2nd floor, by the elevator 
Phone (305) 284-2800 
Email: tutoring.arc@miami.edu

Making a New Year’s Resolution and Sticking to It

Written by Oleg Ignatenko


Every year we are presented with a chance to make a Resolution. For some, it may be to stop smoking, lose weight or start a family. Let’s take an educational approach here and set resolutions such as to get an internship for the summer, to raise the GPA to above 3.5 or depending on the Graduation date, to get hired by an employer in your field of study. But the question remains, “When to start the process of realizing and accomplishing this resolution?” The best answer is “Now!” The majority of people tend to wait before starting something new such as a project or some sort of commitment just because we are natural procrastinators. But that doesn’t have to be the way. Telling yourself that you will begin next week is just an excuse to push that responsibility off of yourself and delay it further. Instead, surprise yourself and begin today, now, at this very moment. If it is something that you have your mind set on and you know that eventually it is something that has to be done, then, there is no reason to wait any longer.

Depending on what type of a resolution you have set out to accomplish, most of all you will need to develop a plan, a sense of patience and the will to persevere. As quoted by Winston Churchill “He who fails to plan is planning to fail.” By not having a plan, you are setting yourself up for disaster. Just as a football team trains and prepares themselves for a specific opponent or a business employee who readies to present a PowerPoint presentation to their company, both need to develop a plan, a strategy that will allow them to succeed in their trials. “Patience is the greatest of all virtues” – Cato the Elder (234 BC – 149 BC). Patience is something that a lot of people lack and need practice to control. Lack of patience might be the single greatest reason that many get frustrated and give up their ambitions and dreams. We all know that spending an entire day at the gym is not going to instantly make you lose 20 pounds. Realistically speaking, to accomplish something great and worthy of being proud of takes time and hard work. “Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another” – Walter Elliot. Hard work and perseverance go hand in hand. The will to finish something, to not leave it incomplete, to refrain from giving up is what hard work and perseverance are all about. It is this type of mindset from which ordinary people achieve extraordinary results.

The best way to plan out your strategy for accomplishing your resolution is to make short term plans. When walking down a stairway, you don’t jump the entire thing; otherwise you’ll probably break a hip or a leg. Instead you take one step at a time. This is a similar scenario. Begin by making weekly goals and monthly goals. The weekly goals will allow you to make small but significant strides in your progress and the monthly goals will summarize what you had to accomplish in those past four weeks. The monthly goals will act as a check-up system, which will make sure that you remain on track and do not fall behind with completing your weekly goals.

Patience is also something that takes time to accomplish and needs to be practiced by steps. The biggest problem with Resolutions is that you don’t see the result for a while (depending on your resolution). What you do see is progress and it is very crucial that you remind yourself of your goal and how it will affect your life in a positive way after you will accomplish it. These self-encouragements will allow you to continue your hard work and eventually persevere.

The main thing to remember is that you have everything to gain and nothing to lose from this. By accomplishing your resolution, you will prove to people and most importantly yourself that you are capable of achieving any goals that you set out in front of yourself. You will know that you possess the qualities of planning, patience and the will to persevere. There is nothing more satisfying than accomplishing a goal that you have set out for yourself. You will feel a great sense of pride, achievement and dignity. At the end of the year you can look back at what you have achieved and rejoice. With this accomplishment you can now feel confident to set out other goals and know that you have the necessary qualities to accomplish anything.


“It is time for us to stand and cheer for the doer, the achiever, the one who recognizes the challenge and does something about it” – Vince Lombardi.