8 Helpful tips for college students studying at home
Behold, 8 helpful tips for college students studying at home.
Studying at home as a college student can be such a pain. Take it from someone who’s a veteran at this.
I went through college living at home the whole time, so this is coming from someone with more experience in this than I would prefer to have.
The biggest challenge with studying at home is boundaries.
The people around you need to respect your study time enough to leave you alone, so you can focus and study in peace.
Of course, that doesn’t have to be the case, though. Your challenge could be something else however, whatever it is, I shall cover it in this post.
Without further ado, here are:
Table of Contents
The most helpful tips for college students studying at home
1. Set a schedule
The first thing that comes to mind is setting a study schedule.
A schedule is good for you as well as for the people around you. If you have to study on your schedule every day from say 7 pm to 10 pm then soon enough it becomes routine right?
This will be good for both you and your family. They will quickly learn that from 7 pm to 10 pm they need to give you room to study.
2. Time your study sessions
This is another one that I had to learn the hard way.
Why is it important to time your study sessions?
Because the mind tends to wander, right?
Timing your study sessions programs your brain to know that it has a very limited window to get this particular task done, which is great as a motivator for concentration.
Speaking of timing study sessions and concentrating during your study sessions, have you tried Forest?
It’s an amazing app that helps you stay focused while you’re undertaking a task.
The way it works is that you set a timeframe for a task, like 1 hour or forty-five minutes, when you hit start, it plants a tree that grows as your session comes to an end. If you come out of the app during this session, your tree dies.
If you wish to keep the tree alive, you have to stay focused on your task for the set time.
3. Time your breaks
This is another very important tip.
When studying from home, the environment is very relaxed. You can leave your room, go get a coffee, and easily wind up catching up with a family member for half an hour.
While family bonding is highly encouraged, it shouldn’t come at the expense of your study session.
It’s for that and various other reasons that you need to time your breaks.
If you have been studying for an hour straight, then a 15-min break is fair and reasonable. You can visit the powder room at that time and refill your coffee mug, then get back to your desk for the next set.
4. Create a study nook
It is also important for you to create a conducive study space. You need a space that’s kind of hidden from the action so that when you’re studying the destruction is reduced by at least half.
It is also possible to make a simple makeshift cubical which you can pretty much pace anywhere in the public shared space to give you some considerable privacy, so you can focus on studying.
5. Create boundaries with your family
I touched on this briefly in the first tip. You must create boundaries with your family if studying from home is going to work.
As a student, your goal is to do well and complete the level you are at.
Your family could easily get in the way of you accomplishing this if you don’t create some healthy boundaries.
You need to make it clear that study time is not the time for them to send you around or call on you for nonsensical reasons or share funny videos.
I’ll give you a tip inside a tip. The easiest way to make the boundaries stick is by taking your study sessions seriously.
If you are strict with yourself, then no one will dare bother you when you’re studying. Take it from me.
This is tried and tested and worked like a charm!
6. Eliminate distractions
I have talked about this in one of the tips above, but I think it’s worth mentioning by itself.
It is important for you to remove yourself from the action. I mean, being home is the most comfortable thing.
It’s where your family is. As such, there is always chatter about this and that which might be of interest to you.
This will definitely be a distraction for you. That is why you need to take responsibility and move away from the noise and conversation.
You can also lock other browsers until you compete studying. And of course, for your phone, there is always the Forest App.
The forest app will keep your phone blocked from receiving notifications for the length of your study session.
Keeping your study session free from distracting dinging and buzzing.
7. Don’t study on your bed
Here is another important tip for college students studying at home. Don’t study on your bed.
Your body has been programmed to know that the bed is where you go to relax and sleep.
Trying to be focused and read from your bed is needlessly swimming upstream.
Study at your desk if you have one at home and if you don’t then study at the dining table.
Being in a seated, upright position is good for staying focused, and it’s also ideal for taking down summary notes and even typing.
8. Get noise-canceling headphones
Finally, and this ought to have been closer to the top, but no matter.
If you are a college student studying at home, then you need noise-canceling headphones. This is mandatory if you wish to have full concentration.
Home is home. It is loud for the most part, especially if it’s a house with a lot of adults. To help you keep to your study program, get some powerful noise-canceling headphones, and you should be golden.
Conclusion
It can be easy to make excuses for failing. You could say you failed because your house is loud, and you had nowhere to study.
You could also look for a solution. I live at home with five very, very loud and obnoxious family members, I mean I love them, but they can be very loud and annoying and this could have easily been a hindrance to me doing well if I wasn’t serious about overcoming all things.
And for some college students who are studying at home, this could be their situation too. If that’s the case, you need to ask yourself whether you are looking for an excuse or a solution.
If it’s the latter, then this post is for you.
I’m rooting for you. Good luck!
