This past week for the Rose Cafe Series, we had Sarah Rubenstein-Gills and Andrea Gerding talk about mindfulness and stress, and how we can incorporate different activities into our lives to deal with stress at the right time of the semester as everything gets more hectic. They gave us pro-tips and how to handle procrastination.

They discussed the importance of having breaks here and there and chunking your work. Chunking is when you break your work into portions that you can complete in a certain time period or just smaller portions rather than the entire thing. This helps you to focus on the one task at hand and better manage your time. I remember learning about this during AP Psychology as it was more helpful than cramming because of how we record memories. Even though I learned it, I never really practiced it. However, given the 24 credits I’min, this seems like a useful method to keep practicing.

They also suggested that we have a pre-work routine to tell your brain to get ready to do homework. This could include clearing your desk off, making tea, going for a run or any other ritual you would do before doing homework. Getting into some kind of routine would prepare you for what’s next; studying. I agree with this, and I think my routine is the fact that I’ll watch a short clip of Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight show to get me pumped, even though I’ll be doing homework. 

The end of the talk concluded with a meditation exercise, which admittedly, i’m bad at. It’s hard for me to fully concentrate on any one thing, especially nothing, and not the work I could be doing. That being said, overall, I thought it was a useful and rightly-timed talk!