Sarah

Hey Hawkeyes!

I hope everyone is enjoying the warmer temperatures! It’s been a crazy spring semester. I haven’t felt much like writing when I’ve been turning in at least one lab report every week. I have learned that taking three lab classes at once was not a good idea, especially when two of them require 40 page lab reports. I’m so glad we’re almost done with the semester. I have 9 lab reports until I’m done so the countdown has started!

So a few quick things about my semester so far:

1. 1. At the beginning of the semester, I began working in a research lab in the pharmacy department where they study droplet spreading behavior. I really like what I’m doing and the cool shapes make it fun. The one below is a yellow solution that fluoresces green under a blue light. The solution we’ve moved onto is purple (which I absolutely love), and fluoresces red under green light. I’ve really enjoyed getting to learn some new techniques and be involved with the project.

   

   Droplet Spreading

2. I got an internship! I had actually interviewed for the position last year, but they were looking for someone a little more long term than just the summer. This year, the company decided to start a project-based internship program and offered me a position over the summer based on my interview last year. I’m really excited to get some industry experiences and learn more about the polymer process. I will also be in Minnesota for the summer and get to explore a new area. This will be my first time living away from home and not at college as well as having to make an entirely new group of friends.
3. I am on Orange Squad this year! I interviewed for On Iowa! Leader again and was placed on Orange Squad. The spring leader training days are basically just a time for the squads to get to know each other. My cast is the Flaming Not Cheetos and the other Orange cast is the Goldfish. One of the first-year students on my dorm floor is in my cast and I’m super excited to watch her experience all the awesome parts of On Iowa! from a leader’s perspective. Being an On Iowa! leader has really improved my leadership skills. I’ve started noticing how much more conscious I am about what I say and how I respond to questions.

I think those are the main updates of the semester; hopefully I can blog some more over the next few weeks as the lab reports wind down. I really miss writing for fun; it’s been a while since I’ve had the time for that. Talk to you again soon!

Hey Hawkeyes,

I made it through the first week, sometimes known as syllabus week since most professors go over the syllabus and maybe on the second day of class they will begin covering lecture material. The main highlight of this first week is that there isn’t typically homework yet, well, at least no homework due. In my experience the professors usually assign homework on the second, if not the first, day of class. If you have a lab class you have a 50/50 chance of having lab cancelled the first day. Some professors want to have lecture before students begin in the lab, but some decide to just throw you into the lab. I really like having the first day of lab cancelled, mainly because it gives me a little more time to adjust (or sleep, if it’s an early lab) during the first week. Sadly, one of my three lab classes this semester decided to have lab on the first day, but then I met my TA’s (teaching assistants) and decided that it was ok. My TA’s seem really cool and fun. When you have to be in a room with someone, ask questions, and get help from the TA’s for six hours every week of the semester, it can make a huge difference. I’m a little nervous about my course load, but I’m going to try to be on top of everything and be super organized and efficient. I’m also going to try to have fun this semester, which was well-demonstrated this past weekend.

I have always loved watching the figure skating during the Olympics and I thought this semester would be a great chance to start learning. I signed up for lessons out at the mall in Coralville. These lessons are keeping me active as well as gives me at least one thing to look forward to each week. After my lesson I went shopping in the mall with a friend (might as well since I was already there, you know). Then my friends and I decided we should go to the Swing Dance Club’s kick-off dance. It was a Great Gatsby themed dance and they had a lesson before the dance. They even had a live band as well as a set-list with all the songs and what dance styles you could practice for each song. It was a lot of fun to get dressed up and go dance. Between that and my skating lesson my legs got a great work out. After the dance I asked a friend if she would go see a movie with me. An organization on campus called Campus Activity Board (CAB) gets movies that are just leaving theaters and plays them at the Iowa Memorial Union for $3 admission. They usually have two movies that play Thursday through Sunday. It’s a nice chance to go see a recent movie on a big screen for a cheaper price than other theaters. Even though it was kind of late at night, it was still fun and was a great end to my Saturday.

I decided to take Saturday off and just have fun, which means that Sunday needs to be spent doing lots of homework. I want to get a head start on this week so I can hopefully stay ahead of the stress this semester.

I’ll try to post halfway through the week to talk more about the lab schedules and how some of the advanced labs work. Talk to later!

Hey Hawkeyes!

I’m so sorry for my some-what dead blog last semester! It got crazy busy and I didn’t get to do as much as I wanted. Hopefully this semester I’ll have more time for writing short posts. I also want to try to post one picture a week.

Today was the first day of class here at University of Iowa and I had it pretty easy. My first class (at 8:30am) was cancelled so I technically didn’t have class today. I did however start working in a research lab (more on that later). Tomorrow, which is my busiest day, will be hectic and a bit crazy, but I think it should go well. I color-coded my assignment notebook and planned my notebooks so I should be ready to conquer the craziness. Last semester was spent doing homework the majority of the time and when I had free time I just didn’t have the energy to do anything. This semester, my friends and I have decided that we are going to make a point of attending more campus activities and having fun. I think this semester will be a great one!

I’ll update at the end of the week and let you know how my first week went!

Hey Hawkeyes!

I hope everyone is having a great school year so far. My level of busy-ness is what my math professor would call a beautiful exponential function. I thought that after the first week of school my schedule would balance out and I would fall into a routine. Yes, I know, I’m a junior now and I should know better. My activities are starting to get more active with volunteering, professional meetings, and workshops. On top of that, as the main reason that I’m here, my classes are really picking up as well. Going into this year, I was a bit nervous about all my classes and was considering dropping one of my classes. But then I went to the first day and decided I really liked the class and wouldn’t drop it. I’m still not sure if that was the right decision or not, but I still really like the class. The past couple of weeks have been pretty busy because of my class and homework schedule. So in summary of my last couple weeks:

It was so good to see Code Red again! We’re planning a Code Red dinner soon and I can’t wait to see them!

Lab Equipment

On Tuesdays and Thursdays I have a 3-hour lab where we rotate through different experiments and then write a lab report about the experiment. The contraption above is from the experiment entitled “Jacketed Kettle”. The idea of this particular experiment was to study the rate of heat transfer in heating and cooling water with mixing versus just letting it sit. In case you’re wondering, if you’re trying to cool something quickly, you really need to mix it. To collect enough data to write a report about, one of my lab partners and I hung out in the lab for 4 hours one day just waiting for the water to cool from 90˚C to 30˚C. It was a long day, but we collected all the data we needed. At least we hope we did; we’re writing the lab report in the next couple of days.

Homework and report writing

After finishing the experiment, we write the lab report about it. The engineering building has a great space for working on group stuff, which also comes in handy when there’s a large group of us working on the same homework assignment. Luckily, the building has lots of table space. I spend a lot of time in this building so I’m getting to know a lot of the people who also do homework there. The Chemical Engineering department at University of Iowa is very close and I know the majority of my class as well as a quite a few people in the classes above and below me. I think it makes homework a little more enjoyable to work on it with a group of people, it adds a little more of a social aspect to it.

I’ll try to update my blog more regularly now that I’m used to the craziness of writing lab reports and doing homework.

Hey Hawkeyes!

I hope everyone had a great week! I managed to survive my first week of classes. Everyone always says the first week is just syllabus week and you don’t do anything. I’m not sure if it’s just because of my major, but I had homework by Wednesday of “syllabus week.” It wasn’t a lot (only two classes), but the other professors warned that there would be homework the following week. I had also made the incorrect assumption that it would be a relatively slow week with all the activities. As it turns out, every one of the organizations I’m involved in had their first meeting last week. It’s really surprising how the semester seems so long from the class/homework perspective, but when you’re trying to plan events the semester seems so short. We’re already in September, which leaves the rest of September, and just two more months to plan events, since December gets tricky with finals week. We can’t do an event every week (no one has that much time) but once a month is too spread out (and only like 3 events). I’m really excited about all the activities and the things we’re planning. It will make this year really busy, but it will be so much fun.

I had a really cool observation/realization last week. One of my classes (a photography class) is in Art Building West across the river from where most my classes are. I was completely fine until I was walking up the sidewalk to the building. Then I realized I was really tense. Why was I so tense? I was nervous. I was just a little bit terrified of walking into that building and knowing that every person I pass probably has more artistic talent than I do. What if they’re judging me about how I’m dressed or my little to non-existent creativity? Then I had a light-bulb moment: How many people walk into the engineering building and feel like everyone they  pass is probably way smarter? I may not be the smartest person in the engineering building, but I’m comfortable there because that’s where my friends are. Every building is the same way. Everyone has a different set of talents and everyone feels less competent in an area they don’t know as well. One talent isn’t better than the others. Just because I chose to major in chemical engineering, it doesn’t make art less important (or less cool; there’s some really cool things in the art building). We can all learn a lot from each other if we choose to be friends with people who have different talents as well as expand on what we already know by having friends with similar interests. Everything is easier once you’re comfortable with being in a new place and make a couple friends. Once I realized that everyone feels out of their element in a new building for a subject they don’t know much about, I felt a lot better. I met some cool people in my class and I can’t wait to learn more about artistic photography. It’s all about perspective.

After the first week was over, it was nice to have a long weekend. Especially when it started with a football game! I was so happy to have a large group to walk with and sit with. It definitely makes the games more fun when you have people to talk to and cheer with. I also have them explain parts of the game to me (I don’t understand football). I get the basics, but I miss a lot of the penalties.

My football group!

We left the East Side fairly early so we could get good seats in Kinnick; with the definition of good seats being that there were enough that we could all sit together.

Stadium smiles!

Just being in the environment at Kinnick is exciting. All the cheering and music really gets everyone’s school spirit pumped up. Even though football isn’t my favorite sport, I absolutely love going to the games with friends and cheering for the Hawkeyes. I love being in this stadium with all the black and gold on a Saturday morning. I can’t wait until we have a bit more fall-like weather so it’s a bit cooler. The weather at this last game wasn’t too bad. It was a bit warm, but nothing compared to last year. I hope it will be a really mild fall/start of winter and that we continue winning! It definitely makes the hours in the sun worth it if we win! On Iowa-Go Hawks!

Go Hawks!

Hey Hawkeyes!

It’s been a busy weekend! Saturday was an awesome day for On Iowa! Ok, it was still a little too warm and humid but it was great besides that. We had some great discussions about what it meant to excel at Iowa and what activities we wanted to engage in. We also discussed bystander intervention in tough situations. This discussion was what I was most nervous for, but I had no reason to be. My small group students were extremely mature and took this discussion very seriously without making it kind of dark and depressing. I am extremely proud of how all my first year students responded when I asked them for one way they, as individuals, would feel comfortable reacting to a situation in which someone may need help. They did so well with that discussion that I also talked with them about the benefits of delaying drinking. They had some questions for me and they responded really well to it. They did such a great job discussing these tough topics and were such responsible adults about the situations that I didn’t get to play all the icebreaker games I had planned. I’m totally Ok with that though. Our discussions were much more valuable and I think (hope) it made them feel more prepared for the responsibility they have now that they’re in college. They will truly uphold our Hawks Helping Hawks commitments. I’m really happy I had such an amazing group. I couldn’t have asked for a better group. I hope they all have an awesome year and that they remember me enough to wave when I excitedly wave at them in passing on campus. I hope I was able to impact them in some way and make their first year in this amazing journey just a little bit easier. At the President’s Block Party following convocation, I saw two of my students hanging out and it made me so happy to see that at least they both felt like they had a friend to sit with and eat dinner with for that day. I hope they stay friends and that the rest of the group will also say hi to each other when they walk by on the way to class. All these hopes and experiences are the reasons why I put so much time and energy into being an On Iowa! leader. It really is incredibly rewarding and I love having the chance to help a few new students have a better year because they(hopefully) felt comfortable asking all their questions.

Sunday was the day Code Red said goodbye. It was really “see you later,” but it seemed like it was goodbye since we wouldn’t be spending hours and hours together anymore.

Red Squad: Code Red!

We did an activity that I did last year with Teal Squad, where we have a yarn ball that gets thrown around the circle and we make a web. Whenever a person caught the yarn ball they had to say why they joined On Iowa! and how they think it helped them. We had some very personal stories in Code Red in which people said that Code Red had helped them overcome some very big issues. A lot of us(me included) were tearing up listening to our friends share their achievements.

Our red web. We’re all connected and will always remember each other! Go Red Squad!

After this extremely touching activity. We decided we needed to quit crying (after the huge group hug) and play some of our favorite icebreakers (yay!). After 5 minutes of icebreakers we were laughing so hard some of us were crying again. I loved my whole squad so much. They had such fantastic, unique personalities! They really taught me what it means to be yourself and find your own style of leadership. One of the things I showed my students was a video from Kid President, his pep talk to students and teachers. In the video, Kid President talked about how we’re teaching the world something everyday and that we need to realize what we’re teaching the world around us. We need to be teaching the world who we are and what we believe. I think it’s true for everyone and it made me think about what goals I want to achieve this semester. I’m working on writing them all down and making sure I’m sticking to them.

The first day was pretty uneventful. I was one of the lucky ones who didn’t get rained on and my first class of the day was even cancelled. I also had mentor training for the Women in Science and Engineering mentoring program. I’m so excited that I live so close to my mentee again this year and that she seems to like me as well! I also love the fact that my mentee from last year still hangs out with me. I absolutely love everything I’m involved with this year. I’m so excited for everything I’ll get to be a part of!

I’ll try and update again at the end of the first week to let you know how the whole first week went!

By the way, holding to tradition: I’m cautiously optimistic for Polymer Chemistry 🙂

Hey Hawkeyes!

I hope everyone has been staying warm. It hasn’t been an awfully cold week which is kinda nice. However, since it has been warmer the walkways are sloppy with melted snow and sand. When you’re wearing snow boots it really isn’t so bad, but when you need to look nice and wear dress pants with nice shoes it can be a bit difficult. I had a meeting, two classes, and then an interview on Friday and I discovered the previously mentioned difficulty.

I ended up wearing my dress pants tucked into my snow boot with my shiny heels packed in my backpack next to my notebooks. When I got to my interview, I stopped outside and changed into my heels while shoving my boots into my backpack. The interview went well and I’m really excited about that opportunity. I also have two more interviews coming up in the next week and I’m kinda nervous about them. I have all these great opportunities that I’m really excited about.

It’s that situation where you want to get all of them because they’re all amazing but you know that you have to choose between them because they’re all happening at the same time. All of them would provide great experiences and help me develop leadership as well as other skills. I’m hoping that by this time next month I’ll be able to report that I have been offered all three positions and will start the pro and con lists. But until then the only thing I can do is prep for my two interviews and hope.

In other news, I took my first midterm this past week. It went really well, but I’m still nervously awaiting the grade. This next week will bring two tests (both of which I’m a little nervous for) and of course they’re on the same day so my brain will be mush by the end of Wednesday. Luckily, with this past Friday being Valentine’s Day, the stores had some great sales on chocolate so I will be well-prepared for doing homework while eating chocolate that night. At least with two tests it means I have a one less quiz and one less homework assignment this week. My friends and I are falling into a routine of homework along with planning ice cream breaks and movie nights for when we get the homework done early. Hopefully I’ll have time to get my camera out soon so I’ll have more pictures to post of all this snow.

Talk to you all later this week and I’ll let you know how the interviews and tests go.

Hey Hawkeyes!

I can’t believe it’s only the third week of class! I’m so used to my schedule already. Most my classes are falling into a routine(weekly homework and quizzes), which just means that I can now plan out my schedule a little more. I have a class that is only on Wednesday nights and I’m still worried about forgetting to take the quiz before class so I’m hoping that I’ll fall into a routine for that class soon so I don’t have that mini heart attack before I remember what day of the week it is.

My first round of tests is quickly approaching though. One test in the upcoming week, two the next week, and one the week after. I think I’ll have a little bit of break until after spring break (note: I think, it’s not definite yet). I’m really enjoying a few of my classes but haven’t started really disliking any of them yet. My friends and I are still constantly doing homework, the only difference now is that we’ve been trying to finish the homework a couple days before it’s due. With this goal, we’ve had more time to go do fun things, like going to an improv show. This show was a a combination of three different groups. It was a great way to laugh at the end of the week. All three groups did a great job of making the audience laugh and knowing what material to focus on based on how the audience responded. If you’re looking for something to do, definitely check out these groups, they usually post upcoming shows on Facebook.

Great White Narcs

Janice

Paperback Rhino

All the groups doing some improv together

I also had the opportunity to volunteer at a Girl Scout Badge Day hosted by WiSE. The activity I helped with was making drinking straw boats, where we talked about buoyant forces and larger surfaces to support more weight.

Talking about the physics behind buoyancy and boats

If there was an odd number of girls, I would be paired with the lone girl. The first girl I was paired with, I felt really sorry for. She wasn’t feeling well and I had no clue how to build a decent boat. The next girl already had a plan when I walked up to her and I did a fantastic job taping the straws together. Our boat held 141 pennies! I’m not sure who was more excited: me or the girl scout.

The amazing boat that held 141 pennies

Even though the record ended up being 189 pennies, I was still pretty proud of our boat(even though I just put the tape on). It was a lot of fun getting to know the girls and watching them get really excited about the number of pennies their boats held.

As some of you may know, last weekend was also Superbowl Sunday. We had a Superbowl party in our lounge.

Superbowl!

We ordered pizza and had chips, carrots, grapes, and meatballs. It was also my friend Abby’s birthday so she shared the birthday cake her family had brought her. It was nice to just spend time with friends and relax(although I did more homework than game watching). Hopefully the rest of the semester continues to be as stress-free as the first few weeks have been!

Hey Hawkeyes!

Glad to be back to another semester? I am! Well, ok, I’m still nervous about my classes but I’m determined to make this semester even better than last semester. But first a little catch up on some of the activities leading up to winter break.

To start of the fun of finals week, Women in Science and Engineering hosted their annual cookie decorating party for the living-learning community. As always there was lots of frosting, sprinkles, and of course ugly sweaters. It’s so nice to relax for a few hours, eat some cookies (not all of them are pretty enough to be donated), and drink hot cocoa while watching it snow. We always have a lot of fun mixing new colors and creatively decorating the different cookie shapes.

Cookie Decorating!

Here’s some of the cookies I decorated:

Let’s just say it’s a good think I’m chemical engineering and not anything that involves decorating.

Then, of course, was the fun-filled week of studying and taking tests like a crazy person. I had five finals so I knew I had to be on top of studying. Luckily, I have some great friends in my classes so we had some major study sessions in my floor’s lounge with the white boards.

Yay! Thermodynamics!

I’ve said it before and I’ll probably say it again, you really need to know how you study most effectively. If I’m trying to learn something, I need to be by myself. But if I’m reviewing or practicing, I like to be with other people working on the same things. Especially for long math problems or complicated organic chemistry reactions, other people can catch your mistakes as you’re making them so you don’t have to re-do the entire problem just to get the right answer. I also like hearing other people’s methods for remembering patterns or formulas we need.

Almost done with finals!

Another great way to study is to make review sheets for yourself. I like to go through all my notes and make a list of the main topics with a couple of the more detailed concepts and then follow my sheet. For math, I made a list of concepts with check boxes next to them and would do practice problems until I got several right and then would check it off. I would also use the back of my review sheets to make short notes about little details that I would always forget, like a step in a problem or a key definition. When I left for the final I would glance over the review sheet one last time as well as look at my list of common mistakes so the correct answers were in my head before I took the final. All of my finals went pretty well, so I guess my system works for me.

The view from the front of Old Capital on my way to a review session

One of the other fun things that was up before finals week was the bulletin board design. Each floor has a bulletin board that’s decorated each month with creative ideas. In the Women in Science and Engineering Living-Learning Community, half the board is designed by the RA and the other is designed by the LLC programmer, who is in charge of planning events that go with the floor’s theme. I thought this design was absolutely awesome. It was a map of the United States with a world map below it with road maps as a background. All the residents received a pin with a string tied around it that had our name attached. We were to put the pin on the most interesting place we would be traveling to over winter break. It was really cool when everyone had put their pins in. Some people were taking family vacations to places like Mexico or Washington D.C., some people were taking classes in India, and some were simply going home to places like Florida or visiting family in Africa. It was interesting to stand at the board just turning over little pieces of paper to read the names and see where everyone was going.

My floor’s map

It was also easier  to ask everyone how their break was when we got back because you knew what cool places they had been to. It was definitely awesome to see everyone again. It’s weird when you get used to seeing people everyday or just hearing the sound of their voice down the hall, and then all of the sudden you don’t have that any more. The first night we were all back, the girls on my floor were up and down the entire hallway trying to talk to everybody. It took me a couple days to unpack because I kept getting distracted with talking to everyone. My group of friends went out to eat as soon as everyone was moved back in on Monday night. When we left dinner, we realized it was snowing really heavily and, since I absolutely love how pretty snow is, I thought campus looked beautiful so I had to take a picture.

Pentacrest at night in a snowstorm

Break definitely helped me feel relaxed and a lot more ready to take on another semester. By the end of first semester I always feel so burned out and I’m so thankful to have a month off class and homework, especially the homework part. Technically, Tuesday was the first day of classes, but I only had two seminars that are actually a lot more of talking, discussing, and participating. That basically means Tuesday did not feel like a school day, Wednesday definitely felt like a school day though. I had classes from 9:30 to 2:30 and then from 7-9. Talk about a busy day. I can’t wait to fall into a routine with my schedule. I think the class I’m most cautiously optimistic for is a class called Drugs: Their Nature Action and Use. The class is about why medications react the way they do in the body and cause the side effects everyone worries about. We will also be discussing how new medications are developed. I think it will be a really interesting class and I’m going to learn a ton. My advisor says it will help me decide if I want to study the pharmaceutical side of chemical engineering or if I want to look at some other areas of chemical engineering. I know at least one person in most of my classes and look forward to making some new friends. I think the most exciting parts of new classes is the possibility of new friends to talk to and new information to learn.

One of my New Year’s Resolutions is to set aside more time to blog so I’ll try to stick to it! Until next time, have a great first week!

Hey Hawkeyes,

You know how time can feel like it’s going so slowly but then you look back and you have no idea where the time went? That’s pretty much what’s been going on. In the week before Thanksgiving break I had a ton of homework due and a test each week with three right before Thanksgiving break. But I also found some time to have fun too. College can be stressful and you really need to balance school and fun. Sometimes it can be tough when you’re living in the dorm because you feel like you’re always at school. If you make the most of college though, the dorms can actually become the best thing. You always have people to study with. My engineering friends and I have Thermo Thursday where we all get together and work on the Thermodynamics assignment together since it’s due Friday. We all try to start it a little bit early so we can compare answers and rework problems if there’s a discrepancy in the answers, but let’s be honest, most of us start that night. Here’s one of our Thermo Thursday parties.

Study party!

I wish I had the picture from the Thermo Thursday a couple weeks after this one; we had so many people we ended up in the lounge with 4 tables pushed together and some people on the floor.

Sometimes you have to reward yourself when you’ve been working hard. My reward for working hard/finally taking a break from homework, class, and tests was to see the musical “Wicked” in Chicago. The Campus Activities Board(CAB) organized a trip to see the musical on a Saturday night. We got on the bus at 3pm and arrived home at 3:30am the next morning. It was a long night, but so much fun. I was so glad to have friends go with me too!

Wicked!

I tried to convince myself that I would do homework on the bus there, but then we watched “The Wizard of OZ” and “Rent”, so homework didn’t really happen. It was a great relaxing weekend and I absolutely loved seeing “Wicked”. This trip was my first time ever seeing it and it was awesome! I couldn’t have been more excited for this trip; now I want to go see it again.

The weekend after “Wicked” was the last home game for this football season. Remember my last post where I said games were getting colder?

Well, this last home game was pretty cold. Actually, it was really cold! Everyone was bundled up. I hadn’t had the chance to bring my snowboots and as it turns out, regular shoes just don’t keep your feet warm even when you’re wearing three layers of socks.

Going home after the game was definitely one of the best feelings ever. Just something about knowing you have an entire week of no class, no turning in homework, and finally getting caught up on sleep is simply exciting. I heard some first years talking about going home for the first time and I realized that as a first year, I hadn’t really thought about what it would be like going home for the first time since I live so close. However, I realized that everything they were saying was just as true for me as it was for them, even now as a sophomore. So why is going home in college so different? Well,

1. Driving a car for the first time after being gone for weeks or even months is one of the weirdest things. My friends and I were all used to driving to school and driving to all our activities. Now in college, we walk every where or take a bus. When we finally get home, climbing into a car can seem strangely strange. You wouldn’t think it would feel so weird, but it does.

2. Homework should really be done over a weekend of going home, but it normally just doesn’t happen. Even over long breaks like Thanksgiving(although this break, I actually did quite a bit of homework), it’s really hard to get motivated to do homework.

3. Sleep is an amazing thing and nothing it better than being able to sleep in your own bed again. Something about being home, or even just going home, is calming and puts you to sleep right away. One of the first-years I was talking to  said that since she lived 3 hours away she was going to do homework on the ride there and back so she could finish her homework without having to actually do it at home. This is a combination of both point 2 and point 3. She said she got in the car and she just fell asleep right away. Then she didn’t do the homework at home, slept on the way back, and stayed up way too late trying to finish the homework.

Those are probably the three top things that everyone deals with, so don’t feel like you’re the only one struggling with motivation or think you’re a bad student for not doing homework when you go home. You can definitely fix those issues, but you don’t have to feel alone either.

Until next time, Hawkeyes, stay warm!