College Grad Lessons

Thanks to everyone that posted! Expect an e-mail from me to get your mailing address so I can send you cookies. Check back later today for a write up about your responses and to see my answers to the survey questions.

I hope everyone’s exams are going well!

One of my friends, Melinda, sent me a facebook message last night saying she finally got the chance to check out the blog while she was taking a break from writing a paper that was due at midnight. I was thrilled that she had a chance to check out the blog and enjoyed it, but her message also reminded me that I was glad I wasn’t writing papers or studying for exams on a Friday night.

For those of you that are going through final exam week, here’s a quick survey to take during a study break. Post a comment on this post with your answers and I’ll bake cookies and mail them to the people that answer first and tenth, as well as for one random person that posts between those two. If we get past twenty comments, I’ll pick two more random people. If you’re a college grad, please join in too! The survey will end Monday at midnight (Eastern Standard Time).

Here are the questions:

1. What do you want to be when you grow up if it could be anything and why?

2. What are you (or were you) nervous about after graduating from college?

3. What’s the best holiday gift for a college student?

I look forward to reading your posts! Please share this with people by posting the link in your Facebook status, on your blog, on Twitter, etc.

This morning I realized that I had 757 e-mails in my inbox at work. Not okay.

So I set a goal for myself - never have more than 100 e-mails in my inbox. Eventually I’d like to get that number down more, but I’m going to take it one step at a time.

I went through all of my e-mails and deleted e-mails related to completed projects, as well as newsletters, LISTSERVs and college-wide e-mails. Then I combed through more recent e-mails and got read of anything that I had responded to already and did not contain important information. Finally I managed to get down to 75 e-mails. Not bad!

In order to better manage my e-mail inbox, I plan to:

1. Save documents I receive to the appropriate project folder on my desktop immediately.
2. Delete e-mails that I’ve already replied to, especially if I expect a response back. Their reply will contain the chain of e-mails that I have gone back and forth anyways.
3. Clean up every Friday morning. When my day is busy, I often leave e-mails untouched. I see them and respond if necessary, but leave the e-mail in place to remind me of any action items.

Hopefully next Friday my inbox will be down to 50 e-mails.

One of the challenges I had when transitioning from college life to working full-time was that everything on my personal to do list had to be completed in the evening or on weekends. Add in the 10:30 bed time that is required in order for me to get 8 hours of sleep and my evenings seemed too short to get anything done.

Over the past week I’ve decided that I want to take the GRE and start working out. I’ll post more about my study and workout plan later this week, but in this post I’m going to share how I plan to get more done each evening.

Over the past month or two, my evening schedule has included eating dinner, hanging out with my housemates, going out with friends for dinner or a drink, cleaning, running errands and watching TV.

I typically have 5 hours from the time I get home to the time I go to sleep. In order to make the most out of my evening time, I’m going to try to keep to the following schedule: (more…)

As a college student, weekends consisted of homework, TV, going out with friends and lots of sleep. I ran errand and did most of my homework during the week in between classes. As a college graduate working full-time, weekdays are busy enough with work alone. I wish some one had told me how tiring working full-time was.

As an “adult,” my weekends consist of a lot less fun than they did in college. Grocery shopping, running errands, miscellaneous appointments like haircuts and cleaning take A LOT OF TIME! I need to come up with a way to better manage my weekend time. I’ll keep you posted on any ideas that I think of, but in the mean time I’d appreciate suggestions!

If you happen to be looking for a way to procrasinate from homework or cleaning, sign up for the recent college graduate network on Ning and post something. And the network isn’t just for recent college grads. If you’re a college student looking for insight into life after college or graduated awhile ago and want to share advice, this network is for you too!