Starting the Semester off Right: Tips for the Columbus Winter

Winter in Ohio is a familiar challenge to most OSU students. Cold, windy, everything is vaguely the color grey. On campus though, winter is also associated with a particularly challenging part of the year: coming back from winter break. Classes start up again, potentially with unknown professors and locations. It can be a stressful and dreary way to start the year. It is important to find habits and behaviors that can be helpful for getting through this time of year. 

Audrey Edwards, a second year accounting major at Ohio State, is having a particularly busy start to her second semester this year. She has recently started a remote spring internship with a small accounting firm from Cincinnati working on tax returns, on top of her usual course load and other academic and extracurricular activities, such as being a member of Delta Zeta, her sorority. When asked how she was prioritizing herself within her busy schedule, she strongly advocated for balance. She stated how important taking breaks is for her. When your plate is full and a variety of stressors seem to be pulling at you, it can be easy to feel that you have to tackle it all at once and push through it in one go. She maintained that this hasn’t led to sustainable results for her in the past and doing so much all at once leads to her feeling exhausted and unmotivated. 

When speaking more about taking breaks, she spoke about how the breaks do not necessarily have to be long or busy. Taking a short walk or calling someone just to talk, or maybe at some points complain, can be effective in recentering your brain into work. She also mentioned how she feels that this has led to better quality results in both her professional and academic life. Obviously there are deadlines that are immoveable and work that will naturally pile up, but Edwards says that these short breaks have been important to her as her schedule has gotten more and more packed. But not being overwhelmed is not the same as finding joy, is it? 

Edwards also recognized this. She said that this is another part of her finding balance. Making sure to make time for things that are important to her independent of being a break from her working schedule. She is a very social person and as such, like many people on campus, finds a lot of joy within the company of her friends. As previously stated, she is a member of Delta Zeta, and she says that just knowing that there is an event later is the week to look forward to makes the rest of her week flow more easily. She also spoke about how being social within her academic spaces has been really important for her. She shares a common idea that studying with friends can be largely beneficial when feeling overwhelmed or stressed. 

Edwards also shared a couple places on campus she loved to study in. Her personal favorite, she said, was the library within the architecture building. She said finding somewhere that she loved to go when she needed to be productive has been really helpful to her. She laughed at the number of times she got breakfast at KSA before going to the library upstairs. “It really got me through finals,” she said. 

Edwards also shared some of the more random things she does to make her weeks a little more enjoyable. She spoke about how she loves trying new places to eat around campus. A personal favorite of hers right now is Roots Natural Kitchen. Sometimes, she says, it can be as simple as getting food you love after a stressful day. Another habit she has built is getting ready for each day. She shared that taking time in the morning makes her feel more prepared for the day ahead of her. Building small habits like this can be really important, especially this early in the semester. Finding something small that you enjoy to do every day to set a good tone is a great way to start your semester off right. 

Ellie Jelinek, a second year double major in both Accounting and Mandarin, also shared her thoughts on how she was being intentional about starting this semester. She agrees with Edwards on a lot of the points that she touched on, such as making time to be social and build community as well as finding ways to prioritize yourself within a busy schedule. Jelinek, however, shared some different habits that help alleviate her stress during the start of the semester. She spoke about how much she loves to stay active. When it was warmer outside she loved to play pickleball with friends, but as it has gotten colder she has found classes on campus that she loves as well. She specifically spoke about how much she enjoys the Zumba class offered at the RPAC. She shared that it can be nice to let out some energy with friends doing a class like that. Another active outlet that she enjoys is line dancing. She says that she started this her freshman year and has continued to go at least a couple of times a month and has had a lot of fun with it.

When asked about finding motivation, Jelinek shared how important it was for her to find something she was really passionate about. She has recently started the process of starting a non-profit to help foster care kids who have a lot of transition in their lives. She spoke about how her personal experience has shaped her care for this non-profit. She spoke about how grateful she is of her own situation that was a product of foster care, but she knows that this is not the case for many. The non-profit she is in the process of building is focused on providing kids who have a lot of movement in their lives. Most kids, Jelinek shared, end up traveling with their belongings in trash bags. Her goal with the non-profit is to provide kids in these situations with suitcases filled with necessities and essentials to hopefully make the challenging transitions a little easier. 

Jelinek says that finding this cause has brought her a lot of joy and that it means a lot to her to be able to work on something she cares about so much. This cause has made her more energetic in several different parts of her life and has given her something to work on at the beginning of the semester that she finds consistent motivation for. Sometimes, when you find yourself in a cycle of lack of motivation, it can be really helpful to find a passion project that can break that cycle. 

Both women definitely have extremely busy schedules for the upcoming semester, but believe in their habits to make it an enjoyable one. They shared that they will lean on their community and routines through the more challenging parts of the semester and believe by setting up these habits early they are setting a good precedent for the next couple of months.