According to the infographic, multitasking allows for individuals to feel as if they are accomplishing a lot all at once, when in reality, they are only being distracted and delayed from completing any number of tasks in the high quality and time frame it would take to focus on one.

Multitasking as a Student

Students who try to do multiple things at once will find their overall understanding of material and quality of work to diminish, both in class and while studying. Out of all the students who bring their laptops to a lecture, 62% of the web sites they visit will be completely unrelated to class. It is estimated that on average, students will generate 65 different screen windows per lecture! Those who send texts and messages while doing homework are more likely to identify themselves as academically impaired.

Why This Matters: When students are unable to focus on one activity at a time, their production goes down as much as 40%. Instead of saving time, time is being wasted.

Multitasking as an Employee

Students aren’t the only ones trying to get ahead by doing multiple things at once! According to the infographic, those who use a computer at work will be distracted every 10.5 minutes! Of all employees who have a smartphone, 89% of them admit to having used them at work, even though nearly half of all employees believe they have too many things they are trying to do at once as it is!

Why This Matters: It is estimated that with all of the distractions and interruptions that happen over a given workday, employers are losing over two hours from their employees everyday! That adds up to over 546 hours, or 68 days over the course of one year!

Multitasking in Your Personal Life

Would you believe that 67% of those who own a smartphone will admit to checking their texts and emails or surfing the web while they are on a date? Nearly half of all smartphone owners would check their phones at the movies, and while watching TV at home.

Why This Matters: You may be thinking, why does it matter if I multitask at home when it’s my own time that I don’t have to be held accountable for? Take a date for instance. How well are you really listening, or getting to know a person when you’re on your phone? How well are you really relaxing and enjoying a movie if you’re taking the time to email someone?

The Perils of Multitasking

Source: OnlineCollege.org via Mashable.com

Photo: mbc.edu

As a college freshman, you might find the study and exam schedule to be a bit different than in high school. There will probably be a lot more reading expected of you and you will need to cover more material in depth for each course. Studying and reading can get monotonous. The good news? There are things you can do to shake it up and have more fun while you study! I promise!

1. Pick new locations. Studying in your favorite Starbucks day after day might seem like a good, comfortable idea – the baristas might even know your order by heart – but changing up study spots every now and then is an even better idea. Explore the different coffee shops on and around campus. Find a cozy spot outside on particularly nice days. Pick out different libraries or computer labs where you could study. Mixing things up gives you something new to look forward to each study session!

2. Work with a study group. Typically, a 3 to 4 person study group works best. There are enough people to share the work, but not so many that you get off task. Take turns teaching each other concepts or chapters discussed in class. You will definitely find out what you know and still need to work on when you try teaching it to someone else. Combine forces for a more engaging study experience.

3. Try a different method. Do you find yourself resorting to flashcards for every class? Give the cards a rest for a semester and see how your study habits change. Convinced you are not a visual learner? Second guess yourself and try creating graphs, charts, or pictures to educate yourself on a subject. Retreating to the same tools gets boring, so try incorporating new methods!

4. Switch between subjects. Drowning yourself in a Shakespeare course for an entire study session can be overwhelming – and exhausting! Separate your session into blocks of time. Switch between Shakespeare and something similar or related – like an art history class. It will keep your brain active and give it breaks at the same time.

5. Study actively. Instead of just reading the material, complete any study guides or questions your professor creates. Participate in class by asking questions and taking notes. Don’t forget – teaching someone else about a topic or idea is a very strong way to learn it. When you speak terms and concepts out loud, you learn and remember them better.

If you struggle with studying or feel lost, you can always ask your professor or TA (teacher’s assistant) for tips that might be tailored to the class.

Start early

Obviously. Start studying as early as possible. All the work will pile up at the end of the semester and if you start reviewing your work early, you will put yourself in a much better position come crunch time.

Make a study guide

Make a study guide for your final. Maybe go to the library with a couple friends from your class who you know are good in the class. Pool your notes and come up with a comprehensive study guide. Four or five hours spent together coming up with a great guide will save you hours of misery in the long term.

Barter

Here’s a little secret: Once you have your study guide, if you have friends taking multiple classes together, trade your guide for theirs. If you trust their work, this can be a great way of cutting down on time spent making guides for multiple classes. Or if you had a friend take the class a semester earlier, ask them for their guide. Also to be more thorough in the same class, trade study guides with other people in the class. Read through these guides constantly wherever you go whenever you have downtime.

Find old exams

Often times, classes will make available old exams from previous years. Study these exams as much as possible. Many times, professors will recycle questions or just slightly tweak them. These also will give you an idea of what type of questions you should be expecting.

Some schools will bar you from studying from old exams and consider reviewing old exams to be academically dishonest. Other schools have professors who tell you how to find said exams. So know your school’s policies before doing this.

Go to study sessions!

This is the best thing you can do! If your class offers an extra study group session for the final exam, go to this. This session, often led by your Graduate Student Instructor/Teaching Assistant (GSI or TA depending on the school), will be a great way to find out what to expect on the test. Your GSI/TA is often the person grading your exam so this will be a great way to find out what the expectations are for your level of work.

When you’re done, use your free time to search for some scholarships!

Your over-caffeinated hands are shaking as you disperse syllabi across an unmade bed. Your folders are so stuffed with review sheets that the binding gave way weeks ago. Your dorm room is littered with Post-Its on your microwave, your bed, your door, and your desk. There are equations to remember, bones and muscles to memorize–there is so much to take in and only a few days to do it. Your color-coded calendar continues to mock you with this fact. You dig out a dusty textbook and begin bookmarking everything that looks important, which is wayyyy too many things! There’s not enough time to do this. There’s just too much. You can’t do this. You’re going to fail.  You grab a Red Bull and panic.

According to a study published in the American Journal of Health Studies entitled “College Students’ Academic Stress and Its Relation to Their Anxiety, Time Management and Leisure Satisfaction,” academic stress is something most college students experience at some point, most often in their freshman and sophomore years, and more often with women than men. One of the most common stressors in addition to grade competition is the self-imposed perception of workload in conjunction with a particular time frame. In other words, too much to do and not enough time. This panicky, overwhelmed, sleepless feeling at the end of the semester can be reduced by practicing good time management skills all year long! The following is a list of tips to help you better structure your schedule so when finals week hits, you’re in charge and you own your time.

Get Organized: While it might take a few extra seconds to file everything exactly where it belongs, and to write down every assignment, it beats spending hours looking for a paper you lost, or worse, redoing an assignment you misplaced. A planner and an adequate amount of notebook, folder, and binder space is one of the best investments you can make as a college student.

Prioritize: Categorize your assignments into a hierarchy of importance. Complete the hardest and most time consuming assignments first, and save the quick, more fun ones for later. You can also prioritize your time. Sometimes you don’t have the capacity to do everything you wanted. Decide what the best use of your time is, and go with it.

Set Goals: It’s easy to sit down to write a paper and let four hours pass with nothing to show for it, especially if you’re not interested in the assignment or aren’t prepared to write it. By setting goals for yourself such as “finish paper by 5 p.m.” you’re more likely to get things done and stay on pace.

Make Time for You: Despite how busy you may be, everyone needs time to just do what they want, whether that be a twenty minute run, dinner with your friends, or a Sunday evening of video games.

Want help managing your college search? Make your profile on Cappex.com today to learn more!

So, how do you choose classes that are out of your normal comfort zone? You’re in luck because we have to have 7 ways to choose college courses outside of your major:

1. Peruse through the entire course guide
If you’re at a larger university, this can be a daunting task, but you never know what you’ll find! There are so many intriguing, even fun, college courses being offered these days (like all of these pop culture courses).  Make sure you look through all the classes so you don’t pass over something that might be right up your alley.

2. Choose by professor
Did you have a professor who just taught the most interesting lectures on what could be the most tedious subject ever? If you found a professor who can keep your eyes open and neurons-a-firing, don’t let him/her slip through your fingers. It’s kind of like what your grandma would say about your girlfriend, “She’s a keeper.” Find another class they teach and sign on up.

3. Ask your friends
Ask your friends if they’ve taken any classes that they recommend you take. Your friends are a great source of information because they know you better than any counselor or adviser. If they think you’ll enjoy Mummies 101, you should probably trust their judgment. That is, if you trust their judgment in judging what you’d like.

4. Do some research
Course selection is almost an entire course within itself. And just like any other class, you should probably do some research. If faculty reviews are public at your school, take a look-see. Insight into what others think about a class can help inform your decisions. You can also always hit up RateMyProfessors.com.

5. Take a class outside of your comfort zone
One of the best ways to expand your mind and widen your view of the world, is to take classes about things that might make you uncomfortable at first. Take a class in a religion that you don’t practice or a history class about a country you’ve never heard of before. While your major provides the opportunity to focus in on one field, your entire college experience is about widening your horizons.

6. Channel your inner artist
A lot of us have inner artists that come out to breathe less and less frequently as we get older. So, college is a great time to give your inner artist some oxygen. Take a painting class, bongo class, creative writing class–whatever it is–just sign up; give your inner artist some room to walk around and express itself!

7. Does it fit in your schedule?
The college student’s MO is creating a school schedule that fits perfectly with their nap schedule. Or work schedule. Or whatever. The cool part about college is that you have the liberty, most of the time, to design what time you wake up and what days you wake up. You could schedule a semester with no classes on Fridays, or no classes before noon. That’s why college is magical.

How have you chosen your classes? Leave a comment below!

Why is preparing for an exam so darn difficult? If you go to class, take notes, join a study group, do the homework, it should all come together by the exam. For some reason, it doesn’t really add up like that. There can be material on the exam that your teacher never went over in class. There might’ve been a day when you missed class and it happened to be the most important lecture of the entire semester. You might’ve attended every single class, but you still need to go back and memorize which specific dates match up to which specific events of the French Revolution.

Exams are hard. But here are 5 ways you can have an incredibly effective studying session before you take the test:

1. Blockade yourself from the Internet (if possible)
I’m not gonna lie. Internet is amazing. It gives you gossip, games, and Cappex. But when it comes to studying, Internet is the sworn enemy. You’ll be studying and think you’re all deserving of a break, so you log in to Facebook. Three hours later you know more about Janie Margolis’ sister’s best friend’s bachelorette party than the Communist Manifesto you’re supposed to be writing an essay on.

2. Tell your mom and BFF to hold off from texting
Just like the Internet, texting is a black hole that will suck you up, speed time up, and spit you out all confused and empty-headed one hour before the test. Let your friends know you are out of communication. And let your mom know especially, because when she won’t be able to contact you for 3 hours, she’ll order a missing person report on you.

3. Bring everything you need
Prepare for your studying session like my grandma prepares for going to the mall–have everything in your purse you could possibly need. And yes, that often involves a simple pulley system. While, you never know what roadblocks you will hit, you can at least make an educated guess: You’ll probably get hungry and tired. So bring some snacks and definitely a coffee or Red Bull. You’ll probably need to study something, so bring any and all class materials. You’ll probably need something to write with, so bring a pen and paper. You might want to make flashcards. So, bring flashcards. You know how this works.

4. Make goals
Going into a study session with checkpoints will help you make better progress. Before you jump right into the books, make an outline of what you need to accomplish, and at what points in time they need to happen. Having checkpoints will keep your pace up and keep you motivated as you mark off each one.

5. Give yourself time
This one is essential. Your brain needs time to marinate all the information you’re pushing into your head. Studying a couple hours before the exam will not work to your benefit. It’s always better to work a couple days before the test so that you can sleep on the information, let it soak in, and go over any unanswered questions the next day.

Do you have any study tips? Leave a comment below!

The Princeton Review recently published which colleges and universities had the most studious student bodies. So if you think you’re a bookworm who would fit in with the other kids at the library, check out these ten most studious schools:

1. Harvey Mudd College
Fun fact: Students at Harvey Mudd are encouraged to take classes for academic credit at the other four Claremont colleges-Pitzer College, Scripps College, Claremont McKenna College, Pomona College, Claremont Graduate College and Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences.

2. MIT
Fun fact: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was founded in 1861 in response to the increasing industrialization of the United States.

3. Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering
Fun fact: The College currently awards the half-tuition Olin Scholarship to each admitted student.

4. Harvard University
Fun fact: Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States.

5. Princeton University
Fun fact: Princeton has been associated with 33 Nobel Laureates, 17 National Medal of Science winners, and three National Humanities Medal winners.

6. United States Military Academy, West Point
Fun fact: Candidates for admission must both apply directly to the academy and receive a nomination, usually from a congressman.

7. Davidson College
Fun fact: Both the town and college were named after Brigadier General William Lee Davidson, a Revolutionary War commander.

8. Haverford College
Fun fact: Although the College no longer has a formal religious affiliation, the Quaker philosophy still influences campus life such as its Honor Code, which allows for students to schedule their own final exams.

9. University of Chicago
Fun fact: The University of Chicago is said to look the most like the fictional magic school Hogwarts.

10. California Institute of Technology
Fun fact: Caltech has a strong tradition of practical jokes and pranks, but similarly to Haverford, student life is governed by an honor code which allows faculty to assign take-home examinations.

Would you want to go to one of these “bookish” schools? Leave a comment!

Bapst Library - Boston College

Your dorm room can get cramped.  Plus, it might be hard to concentrate when your theater major roommate is practicing his monologue for the Glengarry Glen Ross audition, so why not study in your college library?

Chances are you’ve got a beautiful one just a couple minutes away.

Here are the top 25 most beautiful college libraries according to CampusGrotto:
1. Bapst Library, Boston College
2. William W. Cook Legal Research Library, University of Michigan
3. Suzzallo Library, University of Washington
4. Butler Library, Columbia University
5. Fisher Fine Arts Library, Penn
6. Chancellor Green Library, Princeton
7. Doe Library, UC Berkeley
8. Harper Library, University of Chicago
9. Frederick Ferris Thompson Memorial Library, Vassar
10. Sterling Memorial Library, Yale
11. Firestone Library, Princeton
12. Powell Library, UCLA
13. George Peabody Library, Johns Hopkins University
14. Widener Library, Harvard
15. Special Collections Library, University of Virginia
16. Perkins/Bostock Library, Duke University
17. Riggs Library, Georgetown University
18. Bizzell Memorial Library, University of Oklahoma
19. Rush Rhees Library, University of Rochester
20. Baker Hall, Harvard
21. Williston Library, Mount Holyoke College
22. Uris Library, Cornell
23. Monroe Library, Loyola University New Orleans
24. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale
25. Baker Memorial Library, Dartmouth