College life tips - North Central

10 tips to kick off your school year well

As summer comes to a close, it can be hard to transition back to a busy school schedule. The demands of the coming academic year can feel daunting, and your time away from slogging through studies probably feels too short.

While it might seem too soon to make a time management plan or look at your semester schedule, your school year will be better off if you are more prepared. Ready or not, the school year will be starting before you know it. Taking time to think through how to start your semester out strong will lay the foundation for a successful year.

Here are some tips to wrap up your summer well, and to kick off your school year strong.

Leave a good impression at your summer job

If your summer days were occupied by an internship, a full-time job, or volunteer work, it is important to finish your responsibilities with a dedicated work ethic and focused time on the job. It can be easy to let obligations slide as summer comes to a close, but staying committed will put you in the right frame of mind for your school work. This will give you momentum as you head into your classes and start on projects, homework, and other duties at school.

Also remember that every summer job or internship will be an opportunity to build connections for networking in your future career pursuits. Staying committed to the end of your summer upholds great working relationships.

Create goals for your semester

Do you hope to have a higher GPA this semester than you did last semester? Are you anticipating starting a new on-campus job, and you’d like to work at least 10 hours each week? Perhaps you’re taking several biblical Christian courses and you have a book of the Bible you’d love to study with your classmates, or make a time management plan to ensure you have intentional Jesus time. Whatever your goals are for the semester, it can be extremely helpful to think about them ahead of time in order to stick to them.

Here are some helpful guidelines to help you create and stick to your goals for the semester.

Creating goals will help you have an outlook and general vision for your semester. Your goals are not intended to restrict you or lock you into a rigid schedule, instead, they’re meant to motivate you and help keep you accountable for where you’d like to see yourself at the end of the semester.

  • Consider telling your roommate about some of the goals you have, so that they can follow up with you throughout your semester and see how you are doing with each hope you have for your semester.
  • Write down your goals and keep them somewhere that you can reference throughout the semester.
  • Make a plan as to how you will achieve your goals, whether it be a time management plan or other action plan to make time for your goals.
  • Review your goals at the end of the semester and see if you achieved them.
  • Use cool goal-setting tools online to help create goals and track your progress.

Communicate with your roommate(s)

One of the best ways to kick off your school year well is by having a solid foundation of communication with your roommate(s). Since you will be living with the same few people for your entire school year, starting with similar expectations helps make the dorm room a safe space to relax during the semester. Not to mention, you and your roommates can create amazing memories together throughout your semester.

Download our free viewbook to learn more about North Central

Subscribe and stay informed

Sign up to receive email notifications when we post the latest blog.