It seems as if July has quietly crept up on us and August isn’t too far behind. For many college students this means there’s only a little over a month until it’s time to return to school. In all reality, when preparing for the year, a month offers more than enough time to get the basics in order. While it may be too early to pack everything up there are a few things that are best done now rather than last minute:
Get into an appropriate sleep schedule.
During the summer it’s easy for us to get away with only a few hours of sleep. We can enjoy guilt free late nights with friends when we know we can either sleep in the next day or take a two hour nap in the afternoon. Once school starts though, we’ll need more energy than that two hour nap can give us. We’ll be back to early morning classes, hours of homework, a part time job, and club meetings. If you start catching up on your sleep now it will be that much easier to fall back into your school routine when classes start. Try to go to bed around the same time each night and wake up around the same time each morning. Oversleeping and napping should be avoided as they can keep you up into the early hours of the morning. You don’t have to give up all of your nights. It’s ok to go out every once in a while, but if you lessen these occurrences now you’ll definitely gain the benefits when it’s most important.
Go through everything in your closet.
This may sound like boring tedious work, but if you’re anything like most you probably have clothes that no longer fit, are in bad shape, or haven’t been worn in years. If you take just a day to sort through it all you’ll make back to school shopping that much easier by saving yourself time and money. Once you’ve gotten rid of everything you can’t keep you’ll have a better idea of what you already have and what you need to purchase. This way you can search ahead of time to find the best deals and save yourself some money to splurge on the items you want.
Get in touch with your roommate.
Once you’ve found out whom you’ll be living with for most of the year one of the best things you can do is e-mail them. The more you get to know them the more comfortable you’ll feel when it comes time to move in. Be sure to find out who is bringing what. You don’t want to reach moving day and discover that you both brought a mini fridge. You could also use this time to set some basics for the room such as when people can stay over, will you keep it hot or cold, how often the room should be cleaned, what to do when you have the opposite sex over, etc.
Check on prescription medications.
If you’re one of those people who have to take a certain kind of medication every day for the rest of your life, like me, be sure to check them out. Look to see if they’ll need to be refilled before you leave. Also look to see if they have any more refills left on them as some doctors want you to have a consultation with them before they allow you to have more. If that’s the case you should talk to your doctor about possibly getting a few more refills on the bottle; especially if you’re going to a school hours away from your hometown and will have difficulty making regular appointments.
And last but not least,
Save your quarters!
I have yet to find a school that does not charge students to wash clothes. It is college; they charge you for almost everything. The amount charged depends on the school you go to, but unless you like wearing dirty clothes or you only live 20 minutes away from your parents you’ll be spending quite a bit on laundry. Start saving quarters now. Your friends and roommate will thank you in the long run when you smell like fresh and clean laundry detergent instead of sweat and what you had last week for lunch.
