{"id":51,"date":"2018-10-15T07:58:50","date_gmt":"2018-10-15T12:58:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/quinn\/?p=51"},"modified":"2018-10-15T07:58:50","modified_gmt":"2018-10-15T12:58:50","slug":"adapting-to-college-life-surviving-and-thriving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/quinn\/2018\/10\/adapting-to-college-life-surviving-and-thriving\/","title":{"rendered":"Adapting to College Life- Surviving AND Thriving"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000;font-family: Calibri\">Hey everyone, thanks for joining me again. My name is Quinn O\u2019Brien, and this is the 3<sup>rd<\/sup> entry in my blog!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;font-family: Calibri\">Last blog, I talked about defining your passion, managing stress, and really building your life around that passion rather than trying to fit it into the various other aspects of your life like school, work, and even relationships.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;font-family: Calibri\">One of the most important points I made is that passions are built off our core values, a passion isn\u2019t something that you pursue because you deemed it your favorite, it\u2019s actually part of you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;font-family: Calibri\">I\u2019m summing up my last post because it\u2019s important to this week\u2019s topic, which is a message about <strong>adapting<\/strong>. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Adapting to College Life - Vlog #2\" width=\"660\" height=\"371\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/MbgCKfUiG6Q?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;font-family: Calibri\">So what are we <strong>adapting<\/strong> to? Well, college life, obviously, but moreso, we\u2019re trying to figure out how to thrive, not just survive in our first few weeks living as adults and managing the responsibilities that come along with that. Don\u2019t get me wrong, though, the first few weeks of college, at least for me, were just a matter of keeping my head above the water. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;font-family: Calibri\">I had assignments come due that I didn&#8217;t even know existed, <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;font-family: Calibri\">I procrastinated a lot of my first projects just because I didn\u2019t exactly know how to get started, and <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;font-family: Calibri\">frankly, I was just trying to get through each day. Attending lectures, figuring out where they were on campus, and then trying to balance student organizations and establishing a social life on top of it all was more than enough of a challenge.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;font-family: Calibri\">Now, all that can be stressful, but like I talked about last week, <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/quinn\/2018\/09\/managing-the-stress-of-college-life-and-life-in-general\/\">managing stress<\/a> is mostly managing your perspective. But <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/quinn\/2018\/09\/managing-the-stress-of-college-life-and-life-in-general\/\">stress<\/a> aside, we still have to DO things to be successful, or at least to accomplish our goals. If you aren&#8217;t stressed about the upcoming exam, great! But you still need to do studying to actually get through the class so you&#8217;re making progress towards whatever your career goal may be.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;font-family: Calibri\">That brings us back to the idea of thriving versus surviving; thriving is another subjective term, but let\u2019s define it broadly as: <\/span><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><span style=\"color: #b00000;font-family: Calibri\">Doing well at your occupation (a college student), <\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #007600;font-family: Calibri\">Being actively involved in whatever student orgs\/activities you\u2019re a part of <\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #007670;font-family: Calibri\">And maintaining your social life.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;font-family: Calibri\">Part of the reason this concept is so hard to talk about is because the process of thriving is different for everyone, but luckily, the end result looks similar. For example, think of the different ways people study or prepare for a test! I\u2019m the kind of person who likes to go to lecture, be 100% focused the entire time, and take all my notes during that time and then I do minimal studying outside of class. There are other people who instead might go to lecture, they sleep whole time, but hearing the professor-even in their sleep I guess- and then going home and copying notes off a power point works fine for them and they do just as well on the test as someone like me does if not better because they are dedicating twice the time to class.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;font-family: Calibri\">So since we\u2019ve got a general idea of what thriving is, now let\u2019s talk about some of the different ways we can get to that point.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;font-family: Calibri\">To experience the feeling of thriving, some people spend a lot of time during the day in their notebooks studying or rewriting things, and then they go to bed at a reasonable hour. Other people (me) go to class like I said, take notes there, spend the rest of the night hanging out with friends or doing something fun, THEN we stay up until midnight cramming a bunch of work that\u2019s due in a few days, and then we realize we forgot to eat, so we go to Pancheros, Bdubs, or Hurts Donuts and hang out with friends to detox.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;font-family: Calibri\">As we can see, the process of thriving is very vague. We know the end result looks like, but it\u2019s kind of hard to visualize a universal process that works for everyone. SO, I\u2019m going to take a step back and refer again to the concept of <strong>adapting<\/strong>. In other words, making changes. Now some of you who are like my girlfriend who feel most comfortable to being prepared and having every part of the day planned and accounted for aren\u2019t going to like what I\u2019m about to say. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;font-family: Calibri\">Stop planning! Stop overpreparing for everything, experiment, try to see where you can cut corners, and then <strong>ADAPT<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;font-family: Calibri\">You\u2019re probably doing well in class if you\u2019re one of the planners, but if you\u2019re still not, you need to understand that it\u2019s probably other factors causing you to struggle in class, such as mental health or <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/quinn\/2018\/09\/managing-the-stress-of-college-life-and-life-in-general\/\">stress<\/a>. Now the problem is these corners you can cut aren\u2019t always obvious, and you\u2019re just going to have to experiment and make some changes, whether that\u2019s waiting till lecture to take notes instead of taking them beforehand to make time for, Netflix, food, or working out. Just try something different!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;font-family: Calibri\">I\u2019m not just saying the planners have it wrong, though, because procrastinators and \u201cgo with the flow\u201d students like myself also need to make changes. We can continue to look at ourselves and say, \u201coh, we\u2019re ahead of the curve, we\u2019ve already got a good perspective and <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/quinn\/2018\/09\/managing-the-stress-of-college-life-and-life-in-general\/\">stress<\/a> isn\u2019t an issue, I\u2019m comfortable.\u201d What that means to me, though, is that we need to make some changes, we need to get uncomfortable. Discomfort is where the greatest growth occurs. Don\u2019t worry though, whenever you feel uncomfortable, that feeling isn\u2019t going to be constantly hanging over you wherever you go. You\u2019re still in control and can ease into the process and cope however necessary, whether that\u2019s hanging out with friends a little more or just having an extra helping of ice cream in the cafeteria.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;font-family: Calibri\">So basically, what I\u2019m trying to say is that the picture of thriving we&#8217;ve painted in society where comfort is success isn\u2019t all it seems. The most fulfilled people, statistically speaking, are the ones who feel engaged, stretched, and in touch with their social life and relationships. Therefore, thriving really exists primarily in change and resulting growth, and that requires that we make ourselves uncomfortable.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;font-family: Calibri\">So try some of that out this week! If you\u2019re normally a micromanaging school-a-holic, try waiting till class to take notes and spend a little extra time with friends or doing something you enjoy. And if you\u2019re not doing enough studying, don\u2019t be afraid to dedicate more time to schoolwork than you have in the past and see how it helps.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;font-family: Calibri\">No matter where you\u2019re at in life, get a little uncomfortable, and experience a little growth. I promise, thriving is a worthwhile goal.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hey everyone, thanks for joining me again. My name is Quinn O\u2019Brien, and this is the 3rd entry in my blog! Last blog, I talked about defining your passion, managing stress, and really building your life around that passion rather than trying to fit it into the various other aspects of your life like school, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/quinn\/2018\/10\/adapting-to-college-life-surviving-and-thriving\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Adapting to College Life- Surviving AND Thriving<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":102,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/quinn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/quinn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/quinn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/quinn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/102"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/quinn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/quinn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59,"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/quinn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions\/59"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/quinn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/quinn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/quinn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}