Got a question? We’ve got an answer. 

Tired of hearing about what your college experience might be like? Have some burning questions that you’re embarrassed to ask about? Look no further! The Advice Corner allows you to submit your questions anonymously to college students who have gone through anything and everything you could possibly think of. From college applications to black out nights to acing exams and graduation- we’ve done it. Submit your anonymous questions by clicking here. 

The post The Campus Companion Advice Corner appeared first on The Campus Companion.

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Your weekend could be this!

Understand your sleeping arrangements:  Be one with the floor

Visiting your best girl friend? Maybe you’ll share a bed….a twin XL bed made for the bodies of house elves. Make sure you have some idea of where you’re sleeping so you’re not calling the bare linoleum floor your abode for a few nights. Need a blanket? Bring a blanket. If you’re the type of person who can’t sleep unless your body is on a 40000-thread count sheet, then be ready to be uncomfortable. College kids everywhere are just as broke as you and don’t necessarily have extra beds just lying around (or maybe they do!). Point is, ask where you’re sleeping and plan ahead.

Know where you’re sleeping. This could be you.

Bring Your Shower Flip-Flops–DO NOT FORGET

Don’t even ask ahead. Just do it. Dorm showers everywhere are GROSS. You can get diseases in any shower used by twenty people. Bring your shower supplies to the greatest extent that you can, but definitely do not neglect the shower shoes. No further explanation.

These will actually keep you from becoming diseased.

Don’t get lost

If you’re planning on going hard and taking advantage of a *totally awesome and new* party culture, then definitely charge your phone and acquire some understanding of how to get back to your host if needed. I’m going to out on a limb here, but chances are if you’re intoxicated/tipsy/drunk, your sense of direction probably will decline. Don’t lose track of your friend through the night. Buddy system all the way! Maybe leave a trail of breadcrumbs…

Stick to your buddy and you’ll make it home alright.

Do not hookup with your host’s roommate

NO. NO. NO. You may hit it off really with them, and it may be tempting. Still, don’t be that girl or guy that tries to get some immediately after hitting the new campus. Your friend might hate you forever, and if you visit again, it will inevitably be awkward. Make some friends! Have a dance floor make out! Just don’t cross the line with people that are a big part of your host friend’s life. Reeking havoc over the course of a day or weekend definitely does not make you a good guest.

Be respectful, man

Your parents raised you to be a good person. Don’t be a bad guest, i.e. pee in your friend’s closet, use their toothbrush, disappear for the entire time your there, etc. You’re taking up their time, meal credits, and (already nonexistent) dorm space. Be kind, and you just might be invited back for a second visit.

The post Visiting Friends at College: An Etiquette Guide appeared first on The Campus Companion.

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The best thing about college is that it is a time for growing.  I think a lot of us get into this mindset of what the “typical” college experience should be, what the “typical” college student is like, and are blindsided when things change.  I’m here to tell you it’s okay if plans change.  I went through it myself.  It’s okay to look back and say “Wow, this is not where I thought I would be.”  It’s okay to change your mind, change your career path, change your outlook on life.  If you aren’t going to do it in college, when else will you?

My Semester Off

My sophomore year of college, my mother got sick.  She developed serious stomach pain and doctors couldn’t find the source.  Being a single mother who worked full time as a professor, she found balancing caring for my high-school aged special needs sister and paying the bills difficult.  Narcotics limited her ability to drive, and pain tested her patience.  As I entered my spring semester, I found my classes became harder to focus on, my relationships struggling, and my presence at school increasingly marred by worrying about home.  When I went out, I felt like I wasn’t all there with my friends.  When I sat at the dining hall, I often tuned out of conversations about sororities and stories from that weekend, because I was busy worrying about my family at home.  In late February of my sophomore year, I decided to withdraw for the remainder of the semester.

Withdrawing was terrifying at first.  I thought of all the stuff I would miss, of all the classes I would need to catch up on.  I worried the “W” on my transcript would look bad in the future, that I would look like a lazy, incompetent student.  I hated explaining to friends why I was leaving, hated letting people into the harsh reality I’d been trying so hard to hide.  But the truth was, my heart wasn’t at school.  I was doing poorly in all of my classes, wasn’t sleeping well at night, and couldn’t find the energy to do much of anything but lay in bed.

I won’t say going home was easy.  It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.  I left my friends, a new boyfriend, and my classes behind to spend the next three months helping drive my mother to appointments, take my sister to and from school, do the grocery shopping and the cooking (which was usually pasta, let’s be real).  I felt lonely at home because all my local friends were at school.  I felt like I was messing everything up, that I would come back to school and have no friends, and that my life was over as I knew it because I might not graduate on time.  I was missing a whole semester, and that seemed like the end of the world.

Why Leaving School Isn’t the End of the World

I talked to some friends who also took semesters off for personal reasons.  One went home because she had an issue with a medication, and needed a stable environment to get it straightened out.  Another was having trouble coping with anxiety, and wanted to take care of herself first. Still another took an entire semester off to travel, because she didn’t think she would find a better time to do so.  The point is, no matter what the reason, being flexible and willing to adapt is the best attitude you can have in college.

Be willing to change your plans.  Don’t be afraid to change your mind.  Make an effort to challenge yourself.  College is the best chance to grow before being heaped with the responsibilities of bills, careers, marriage, kids, and all that other stuff adults have to deal with.  School is a place to try things out, to grow as a person, and to really evaluate yourself.  I grew up a lot being home, and also learned that things wouldn’t always be picture perfect, and that that is okay.  Don’t be afraid of the bumps in the road.  As cliche as that sounds, they are there to help slow you down, and make sure you are headed the way you want to go.

The post Taking a Semester Off: Why It’s Not the End of the World appeared first on The Campus Companion.

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You’ve heard it time and time again–college is a bubble. Yet nothing drives this point home more than all of the insane, bat-shit crazy things college students do that really makes you wonder if they’re real people. From bad manners to blatant acts of stupidity, here are some of the greatest hits of things college students forget about the real world:

1. Being a pedestrian does not entitle you to forget common sense.

In Kindergarten it’s drummed into you to look both ways before crossing the street. Yet, at some point during your first semester of freshman year, those 13 years of training just get suppressed. I don’t know whether it’s because all of the six packs that are crushed during the weekend or because 90% of college students are perpetually buzzed on caffeine, but it makes for irate drivers, yours truly included. Some of the behavior is absolutely absurd, from texting while crossing the street to blatantly walking in the middle of the road onto oncoming traffic. It’s one thing to adeptly jaywalk, but college students don’t…ever.

2. Dropping the F bomb in public generally is not socially acceptable.

This is something I’ve become more attune to ever since I started working with little kids. College students seem to forget that while they are all liberated and shit while on a college campus, it doesn’t entitle them to be crass when they’re off campus at the local Chili’s. Watch your language when you’re at your local off-campus joint because even though it’s part and parcel of your college bubble, it’s still part of the real world and the rules of general human decency do apply. The rule of thumb is if you wouldn’t say it in front of your semi-progressive, yet still fairly conservative grandmother, you probably shouldn’t be saying it in public. Practice adopting a filter earlier on…it’ll save you a lot of hassle once you re-enter the real world after college graduation.

3. Most people over the age of 18 are not usually awake at 1 AM.

This one legitimately kills me. What you have to realize is that most adults, once they leave college, are in bed, fast asleep when you drunk dial them Thursday night at 1 AM. I know it sounds lame, but it’s true. This thing called work forces you to pass out around 9 PM most nights against your deepest wishes, 10 PM max if you’re really determined. So while you think it’s HI-larious to call someone at that godforsaken hour, you’re really just shooting yourself in the foot because without fail, you’re friend will call you back at 5 AM the next morning.

The same applies to any tenured professor you try to get an extension from at 1 AM the night before a paper is due. They don’t have anything to prove anymore now that they’re tenured, so the more likely scenario is that they are in bed by 8 pm.

4. You are what you wear.

Roaming the streets in pajamas is the mark of a homeless person, not a scholar. Don’t be surprised when you venture out into the world in flannel and Uggs and find yourself being pelted with quarters. I’m not even sure how appropriate it is to wander into class in nothing but your PJs, but at least clean yourself up somewhat if you’re going to be encountering any non-college students.

5. The payment dates for bills aren’t negotiable the way paper deadlines are.

College teaches you some important life skills, not least of which is learning how to BS your way through anything and everything. Unfortunately, in real life, banks are pretty rigid institutions and display little pity when you turn in your payments late. Even if you’re willing to incur late fees in the short run, you’ve got to remember that not paying your bills on time could very well affect your chances of getting a much needed loan down the road for grad school.

The post 5 Things College Students Forget About the Real World appeared first on The Campus Companion.

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I can tell you this:  taking a gap year between college and law school was one of the best decisions I ever made. I lived in fear that I would never go back to school once I had the chance to leave it, but after being out in the real world for 2 years, I find myself constantly wanting to go back to it. Real life sucks. School is easy.

The Virtues of the Gap Year:

1. Allows You to Develop into a Real Person

I touch on this in some of my other posts. College is a time to be selfish. It is all about the cultivation of you as a scholar, a thinker, and an individual. It isn’t a bad thing…it just is what it is.

But, no man is an island. You have to learn how to deal with others, work for others, and bridge the age and culture gap between yourself and the rest of the world. If you’re a woman, it means throwing all of that post-adolescent idealism regarding feminism out the window and experiencing the real challenges of being a woman in a man’s world. If you’re a man, it means learning a certain code of professionalism and respect that gets lost amid the keg stands and naked parties in college.

Regardless of what gender you are, it also means learning how to fail at and struggle with real life circumstances that puts into perspective how getting a C (or even a B) in a course isn’t the end of the world.

2. Provides a Much-Needed Break from School

Yeah, you’re afraid you’re going to lose your momentum and motivation by not going straight into grad school. But, did you ever think that you might just run yourself into the ground if you continue at the rate you’re going? You’ve been going to school for at least 16 years. Most people don’t even stay at a job or in a given career path for that amount of time. Burnout is inevitable, and you really don’t want to be that person who drops out in year 2 of a super awesome PhD program just because you’re sick of school.

3. Refine Academic Interests

If you’re going the Masters route, you don’t want to be throwing money out the window by flinging from one sub-specialty to the other. It’s tempting to go right into a Masters program after undergrad because most are only 1-2 year programs, and a lot of universities allow you to jump right into their grad schools. But, don’t do it unless you’re 100% sure. We no longer live in an age where we can just freely spend money. Even if you get financial aid, grad school usually involves some serious loans that can take the rest of your adult life to pay off.

The gap year gives you an opportunity to try out a bunch of things and figure out what you want to do at a much cheaper cost. You may find all of a sudden that you’re really into management and the only way to get a significant bump in pay is to get your MBA. Financial incentives are always a great way to refine your academic interests, but you won’t get those incentives until you’re out beyond academia’s gates.

4. Gives You Time to Test Prep

If I had taken the LSATs during the fall of my senior year of college, I can say with full confidence that I would have bombed big time. Depending on what kind of program you’re looking at, sometimes all you are to the admissions office is a number: GPA + Standardized Test Score. You want to take the time to really study and prepare for these tests, because not only are they pricey and lengthy (some in the 6+ hours range), but very few counselors will hesitate to throw your application into the reject pile just based on your score.

College life is hectic and chaotic, especially in the junior spring and senior fall. Make sure you’re in the position to do your best studying for these tests.

5. Allows You to Earn Money to Finance Your Graduate Education

Even if your parents are (mercifully) going to be helping you pay for grad school, the least you can do is earn some money for your personal pocket change, rent, gas, food, etc. Also, if you are fully financing your graduate education, one, I have so much respect and admiration for you, and two, it will keep you from just throwing money at a degree that will be entirely useless to you. Also, while you’re earning money, you may realize that you actually don’t need to go to grad school and are doing fine supporting yourself without that higher higher education degree.

6. Let’s You Use Your Passport

Travel is so fundamentally important in cultivating awesome human beings. If you’ve been cooped up on the same campus for 4 years, take this time to stretch your wings and marvel at something on the other side of the world. This is especially important for those on the professional track (JD, MD) and the PhD track. Once you’re on those tracks, it’s impossible to step off the path because the next 3-7 years of your life have already been planned out for you by these programs. So enjoy your freedom while you can, little dove.

7. Let’s You Have a Guilt-Free Social Life

This is clutch. I remember always feeling guilty for going out Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights or just hanging out with friends because I should have been studying. The guilt never really stopped me from socializing, but it was still unpleasant to have this unnecessary emotional strain. The nice thing about being out of school is that in the real world you leave your work at work. It’s terrific. There are the occasional times when you do have to pull a few all-nighters or bring work home, but generally speaking, once 6 pm hits, your time is your own. You can actually take advantage of Cheap Movie Tuesday and go to Happy Hour, which is a freakishly funny phenomenon because everyone is getting hammered in their work clothes.

The post 7 Reasons Why You Should Take a Gap Year before Grad School appeared first on The Campus Companion.

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Getting scholarships is a great way to supplement important college expenses like tuition and rent–and beer. And for most of us, the college scholarship deadline is drawing near.

As a journalism major whose emphasis is editing, I go over a lot of academic work. People usually make common mistakes when turning essays into professors or other academic officials. That one mistake can be difference between getting and not getting a scholarship.

Use these five tips to optimize your chances at a scholarship when writing those essays:

Watch Your Grammar

Yeah, it’s elementary, but there is no faster way to get your application thrown out faster than using the underlined words improperly. These things drive professors crazy. You’re in college now. You need to learn the difference between the spelling varieties. It’s nothing a few once-overs can’t cure.

Read More: Every Time You Use Poor Grammar, God Kills a Puppy

Use Proper Punctuation

The worst thing about reading long, dry essays is learning about why people deserve to get a scholarship, but doing so in the form of long, three-line sentences that no one wants to read because by the time they finish reading your extremely long sentence they’ve already lost all interest in what you’re trying to convey.

See? You get the idea.  Keep your thoughts concise and succinct. People like short sentences. It makes things more readable. When you have a long sentence, reread it. It can probably be turned into two or three different sentences with proper punctuation. From my experience, this goes a long way for judges reading the essays. I’ve sat in on those meetings before and even helped with them.  Comma splices, run-on sentences, passive voice and dangling modifiers will hurt your scholarship essays.

Elaborate On Your Ideas

One of the more common things people do is make statements, but don’t explain why they made them. For example, I was helping a friend with her scholarship essay. She talked about how studying at San Francisco State was going to help with her educational goals, but never explained why. It was a great idea, but means nothing unless you explain why. Faculty love having their egos massaged and hearing about how great their colleges are does just that. Making those points can be powerful. You just need to elaborate more. If you don’t, it makes you look like you’re just bullshitting and you have no clue what you’re talking about.

Stop Talking About How You Pay Your Own Way Through College

Guess what? So does everyone else. You’re not special. This is something that’s pretty much implied when you apply for a scholarship. If you didn’t pay your own way then you probably wouldn’t need the scholarship.  It’s a weak point to base your essay on. It also makes it seem like you have a self-entitlement complex—like you deserve it more than other people based on this universal problem. Judges tell me about the massive amount of essays they read where people use this argument. They dislike it because of the reasons above.

Let Your Work Do All The Talking

Most of the essays you’ll apply for are major or subject specific. To break away from the point above, talk about what you’ve done. A useful adage in journalism, and all writing really, is “show, don’t tell.” Don’t tell the judges why you deserve the scholarship—show them.

No one likes to be told what to do. Talk about all the things you’ve done that apply to the scholarship you’re going for.  It makes you look much stronger when it doesn’t look like you’re trying to sell something on a late-night infomercial. Let your skills do all the talking. Explaining why the things you’re saying make you deserving comes off as unsure and desperate. It’s okay to write about your skills and experiences to the scholarship committee. That’s as far as your explaining should go though. The rest should be conveyed by your accomplishments and actions.

The post 5 Tips To Writing A Better College Scholarship Essay appeared first on The Campus Companion.

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There’s been a lot of speculation as to whether or not college is worth the money, and rightfully so. People are straddled with tens of thousands in debt after they “do their time,” but have little luck paying it back if they majored in a less-than-lucrative career path.

I read an article in Newsweek recently addressing the issue of taking out loans to pay for college and whether or not it’s worth it. To sum up the article, it says, “not really.” In the words of Megan McArdle, who wrote the Newsweek piece:

But how much, exactly, does credentialism matter? For years there’s been a fierce debate among economists over how much of the value of a degree is credentials and how much the education. Heckman thinks the credentialism argument—what economists call “signaling”—is “way overstated.” His work does show that a lot depends on outside factors like cognitive ability and early childhood health. But he says flatly that “no one thinks that schooling has no effect on ability.”

That debate matters a lot, because while the value of an education can be very high, the value of a credential is strictly limited. If students are gaining real, valuable skills in school, then putting more students into college will increase the productive capacity of firms and the economy—a net gain for everyone. Credentials, meanwhile, are a zero-sum game. They don’t create value; they just reallocate it, in the same way that rising home values serve to ration slots in good public schools.

They make a good point. Today’s typical college student attends college merely to attain a piece of paper. While this piece of paper is important, they miss the whole purpose of going to college: to get an education. There’s a huge difference from getting a degree and getting an education.

I don’t intend to debate whether college is worth your money. For the kinds of people who show up 10 minutes late with glazed eyes, it’s obviously not. My point is to shed light on the intangible reasons why we go to college. Sure, the piece of paper is nice, but so is not being excommunicated from a respectable social status by your peers.

Going to college is turning into wearing a style of clothing. What you’re wearing says a lot about who you are and as much as I’d like to live in the world of self-consciousness deficiency, I don’t. People judge people. Like wearing something lacking style, not going to college gives someone a certain perception of you.

Just going to a community college made me feel that way. I felt like I had a dunce cap on my head whenever someone from UCSB found out I went to SBCC. The thought might not have even crossed the other person’s mind, but it crossed mine. It’s almost absurd to think that way considering 45 percent of students that completed a degree at a four-year school started at a community college in the 2010-2011 academic year.

We have an innate fear of being left out. Subsequently, we go to college, major in something like anthropology (My apologies to dedicated anthropology majors), finish college and say, “Shit. Now what?”

This is where Newsweek starts their article. The problem is that they oversimplify the issue. Their intention is to say, “Hey, if you’re going to fuck around, don’t go,” or “If you’re going to graduate and work in retail you’re whole life then don’t go to college because you don’t need a college degree to do that.” But I’m not Nostradamus. I can’t sit there the summer before college and say, “Well, I’m definitely going to work at the state prison anyway so screw going to college.” That’s an ignorant assessment of contemporaneous circumstances that surround potential college students.

Unfortunately, life isn’t that cut and dry. This is an issue of mass psychology, not just whether or not to invest in yourself. This universal disposition of “I need to get a college degree” has spawned this kind of uniformity that’s not going to separate yourself when it comes time to apply for a paying job. Newsweek comes out saying the same thing, but fails to accurately address how we got here. We do it just as much for social security as we do financial security.

Don’t worry. On average, college graduates still make a prodigious amount of money as opposed to someone who just graduated high school. This mentality is leading to the point where you’re going to need a degree to work at a gas station though. It’s what Rick Santorum meant when he called Barack Obama a snob for thinking everyone should go to college. I believe Santorum also wraps tinfoil around his head to block alien transmissions from entering his brain so I don’t know what to believe.

The only thing I know for sure is that the most common major amongst college students is debt. But it will never be as easy as saying, “Then don’t go.”

The post The Fear Of Being Left Out: Why Everyone Wants To Go To College appeared first on The Campus Companion.

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The start of a new semester always reveals a classic college dilemma: You buy your textbooks and have no money for the rest of the month.

There have been a bunch of new sites that have sprung up over the years where you can buy or rent textbooks cheaper than you otherwise could on campus. You have Amazon, eCampus and Chegg to name a few.

I just stumbled upon another one called Skyo and I’ll be using that over the others. Here are a few reasons why:

1. It’s cheaper. If that’s not a good enough reason alone to shop there, I don’t know what is. I took inventory of all the textbooks I’m using this semester and stacked them up with a few other popular textbook rental sites. I would have saved an average of around $100 on Skyo. I could buy $100 worth of beer with my savings to celebrate my economic savvy.
2. They have more books. With it being a relatively new site, I noticed they have more in stock. On some of the other sites, getting used textbooks wasn’t even an option. I don’t know anyone that would rather buy a new textbook over a used one. I’m sure those people are out there, but I’m not one of them.
3. Better rental options. This was the best part about the site. You can only buy or rent textbooks for a semester most other places. On Skyo, you have the option of buying them or renting them in increments of 30, 45, 60, 90 or 125 days. This comes in handy for those classes where you don’t really need the book until a certain point in the class, or a week before finals to study.
4. There’s a blog. Everything should have a blog. Whether I chose to read it is at my own discretion. Skyo has a convenient penny-pinching, student lifestyle blog with tips for college and advice on how to save money. I thought it was a nice touch to an already sound website.

Skyo has the option to buy digital textbooks on some, but not all textbook purchases.

College has never been more expensive than right now. I’m sure I’ll be saying the same thing next semester and the semester after that too. It’s not getting any easier. Students should always be looking for any way to save money.  Skyo is perfect for exactly that.

The post Skyo: A Textbook Rental Service That Will ACTUALLY Save Students Money appeared first on The Campus Companion.

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Courtesy of Omega

Fall semester can be a rude awakening for many students. Syllabus week should serve as the perfect transition back into college life, but more often that not it becomes an excuse to go out every night. This is really a shame, because students who stumble at the start of the semester rarely recover. Backpedaling through the semester is no way to experience college.

Get An Assignment Calendar:

Unless you ACTUALLY have a photographic memory, writing down your assignments is a good idea. There’s no worse feeling than showing up to class and watching everyone else assuredly unzip their bags and place an assignment down on their desks. Except for maybe doing the same, only to realize you’ve done the wrong chapter.

The psychic stress of trying to keep your assignments in your mind will bleed into the rest of your day. Plus, your classmates will forever know you as “that kid who doesn’t have his life together” because you are constantly texting them asking about the homework.

Organize Your Finances:

Even though, increasingly, college is for the rich, there are still many students out there who finance their own education. Even students who receive assistance from their parents (which is totally ok, too) would do well to establish this important skill early on in life.

If it sounds a little too complicated, there are countless apps and websites dedicated to organizing your personal finances (Mint.com, Geezeo.com, and Wesabe.com are all excellent resources). If you’re not sold on the idea, try tracking where all your money goes for one month. You might be surprised enough to keep up the practice when you seen how much money you spend on beer and food. And if you decide that it’s not for you, feel free to return to your old way of life. As they say, ignorance is bliss.

DO SOMETHING BESIDES JUST GO TO CLASS. ANYTHING:

Seriously. Just do anything besides get up, go to class, watch TV and go to bed, repeat. This isn’t Punxsutawney. You are throwing away the only four years of your life where BILLIONS of dollars have gone into creating what amounts to an adolescent playground.

Go to the gym and learn how to play squash or racquetball. Go slack-line with the hippies on the campus green. Join a club. The specifics aren’t really important here, as long as you don’t spend your life sitting – sitting in class, sitting in your room, and sitting on the toilet. Just get out and DO. Going to class is literally the least you can do in college. Although that does bring us to the next point. 

Don’t Skip Your Classes…Yet.

A lot of students skip syllabus week. This is a critcal error, especially if you are a slacker. The first week of classes is like shopping for your schedule. When I was picking my classes, I would sit in on upwards of ten classes to get a feel for what courses would work best for me. That way, I was able to see a wide range of professors and their teaching styles, as well as mix and match my classes to create a practical course load.

If you only check out five classes, you’re blind to the other options that are available. Most importantly, however, if you don’t attend syllabus week, your going to be blindsided by the fact that your professor is a real hard-ass. If that’s not what you’re looking for, it’s better to find that out early and drop the course in a timely fashion. Instead, you might find yourself with a C+ on the first paper and a sick feeling in your stomach.

Be very honest with yourself here. How hard do you want to work? Is this semester going to be more about work or play? These questions, and others like it, should be at the forefront of your mind when you’re sitting, with a wicked hangover, in the back row of your classes during syllabus week. Which brings us to our last point.

It’s OK to be this guy. Just be sure you actually show up.

Budget Time For Self-Reflection:

In the whirlwind of homework, partying, and general debauchery, we sometimes forget to sit down, take a deep breath, and think about numero uno. Taking stock of where you are in life, what you want to achieve, and how you intend to get there – that’s an important exercise to establish, but one that most people ignore.

Throughout your college career, you’ll hear many people, often in a hushed whisper, discuss how much so-and-so has “changed”, and not in a good way. Change is good! Losing yourself is not.

The post Getting Your Life In Order: 5 Steps To Starting The Semester Off Right appeared first on The Campus Companion.

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After spending last semester studying abroad in London, where I spent about 1.5 times more money on every single thing I bought (go to hell, pound currency), getting a job this summer was sort of a priority. I pictured doing something really fun, high paying and with flexible hours so I could maximize my fun time. Instead, I’m working midnights at a retail store. I was thankful to get the job, because I need the cash, but working all night definitely wasn’t my idea of an ideal job at first.

Working midnight or flex hours is a situation that many college kids will have to encounter, whether in the immediate or distant future. Twenty percent of the American workforce, after all, does some type of shift work. Adding in the competition that exists these days for work, the need to take on midnight hours might be an attractive, if not your only, option.

As you can imagine, working evening hours comes with its share of problems. There’s a reason that humans predominately work during the day. The body isn’t physiologically meant to work midnights. It goes against something called the circadian clock, a tiny part of your brain that regulates how much light you see and tells you to get some damn sleep. Yet in a way, the college lifestyle is an exercise in telling your circadian clock to shove it over a four year stretch anyway.

The college lifestyle is certainly more of a late night thing after all. It can come in many forms, including staying up all night cramming before finals or staying out until four on a fun Saturday night, but in a way college life is already working pseudo midnights, with the exception that we’re actually paying (through our tuition) for those hours rather than getting paid. Regardless, the adjustment can still be difficult. Here’s some tips for those college kids who may be just starting midnights or flex hours.

Get as close as possible to a normal sleep schedule:

The key words here are “as possible.” You won’t be able to achieve a normal sleep schedule. That’s just a given. So get as close as possible to a normal sleep schedule. If you get off work at 7 am, go right to sleep no matter how long it takes. You can sleep until about 2 pm if you’re lucky, and get on living with the daywalkers once you get up. You then have all day to resume life as a normal functioning human being.

Schedule a meal for one of your breaks:

I’ve noticed that working flex hours, including midnights can really mess up your appetite. Again using the “as possible” approach, schedule your dinner roughly for when you have a break at work. Call it a “late dinner” or something. This will ensure that your meals are somewhat spread apart normally. Say you wake up at 2 pm, that’s your first meal. Second could be at 8 or so, then 2 am about for the last. This will ensure that your eating schedule is around the norm, just pushed to different hours.

Never stay up the entire time between shifts:

This should be a no-brainer, but when it’s 7 am and you’re just getting off your shift, your brain is often MIA anyway. Every time I get off work it tries to tell me “well it’s early in the morning, and I’m not tired, maybe I’ll just stay up.” This is your brain on crazy, do not listen to it. You need sleep so you might as well just get down to it right away. If you listen to that advice, you may find yourself in a situation where you’re going into your shift having not slept in about 36 hours. Imagine how long that eight hour shift will feel as you slink around like a zombie. It will suck, so don’t do it under any circumstance.

Party it up on your off days:

This is actually my advice for any job, not just flex hour ones. You work crazy undesirable hours, reward yourself on your nights off. You’re already used to staying out all night (at work), so you’ll actually have a partying leg up on all those daywalking friends of yours.

The post Midnight Life: Common Sense Tips On Working Flex Hours appeared first on The Campus Companion.

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