The following is a guest post by our (nerdy yet totally helpful) friends at Hack College. Check ‘em out for all your techy needs. They’re like the nerdy boyfriend you never had but always needed.

When the hell did November get here? That is what I want to know. Seriously, just yesterday I was telling y’all how to prepare your brains for August and get back into the school mode. And now it’s November. How did that happen and how can I make it stop?

Well, okay, so I can’t stop the furious, oncoming train that is November. I also can’t stop December, with all of its final papers and exams and projects, from hurtling right after it. You might be thinking, “Don’t be silly. December is an entire month away! I have a whole other month before I have to start worrying about things like that. I’m not gonna worry about that ’til after Thanksgiving.”

That is where you are wrong. Let me break this down for you. Including this week, there are two more weeks until Thanksgiving. Exams start a week and a half after Thanksgiving break. Can you study for all of your exams, write multiple 15-page papers, and put together various end-of-the-semester projects in a week in a half?

Answer: no.

The solution to this post-Thanksgiving crunch is to use these two weeks that we are given to start planning ahead for finals season. I know, it may seem excessive. But if you put off preparation for your end -of-the-year work until right before or even after Thanksgiving break, you will have wished you used that two week grace period to do some of that work. Trying to organize the next month of your academic life is daunting to say the least. But with a few tips, you should at least create yourself a nice cushion of accomplished work to allow you to not completely lose your mind in the post-Thanksgiving crunch.

Make Lists of Exams/Projects/Papers

I like lists. Okay, okay, I love lists. They are the best organization tool in the entire world. If you don’t already carry around a notepad or a digital version to keep track of to-do lists and the like, you really should start. It makes it less likely that you will forget to do a small (or big) assignment or task if you keep track of everything you must do throughout the day.

For November though, you should start by making a list of all of your major assignments that will be due in the time between now and the end of the semester. Make note of which tasks are going to take more time and which are simply minor assignments. Making a list like this will not only help you prioritize all of the things that you need to do but it will also help you get a realistic idea of how much you really have to do by the end of the semester.

Look through all of your classes’ syllabuses to make sure you have listed every assignment and to ensure that some unexpected assignment doesn’t sneak up on you. There is nothing worse than feeling you have a good handle on all of your work and then realizing that you forgot about a graded portion of the course that was only mentioned on the first day of class. Don’t panic if your list is massively bigger than you expected it to be. If you use efficient time management skills and schedule your next few weeks to accommodate your list (see the next item), you should be able to finish everything on your list.

Schedule Your Calendar

It’s reasonable to panic while looking at the massive list you’ve just created. You have to do all of this end-of-the-semester work plus the day to day work that is still piling on? Oh, yes. After you’ve made your list of assignments and exams, take out your calendar. I still prefer my Outlook Calendar but many people prefer Google Calendars or even physical, handwritten calendars. Like a notebook to keep track of to-do lists, if you don’t already have a calendar you use consistently, you should get into the habit immediately. Scheduling due dates and other tasks on a calendar helps you visually gauge and organize your life.

Take the items on your list and place them all on your calendar, if they aren’t already. That, unfortunately, is the easy part. Now that you can see when all of your assignments are due and exams are scheduled, you should start to set aside blocks of times to do prepare for these assignments. Because you still have to do your day-to-day work, you will have to play around with designating certain parts of days to certain projects while still leaving space for your daily work. It’s a tricky balancing act. I like to designate certain weekends or weeks to different projects and color code them accordingly. That way I know that next week I will have to work on my Greek religions paper while next weekend I will have to start on my project for my Communication class.

By sitting down with your calendar and list of assignments and specifically scheduling blocks of time to do major assignments, you have locked it into place in your life. You can know for certain when you will have time to do all of the things on your list instead of just trying to randomly find spare time to work on various projects. If you don’t schedule it in, it’s much easier for you to procrastinate and never get around to it. Scheduling things also gives you a deadline for when you should be done with your assignment. Deadlines will motivate you to get your work done in the period you have set aside for it. Additionally, self-set deadlines is an important skill to acquire before you venture out in to the real world.

Be the Early Bird

All of these steps may seem like taking very early steps in preparing for finals season, but I want to suggest that you take this idea a step further, especially with papers and projects. If you know that you have a paper due at the end of the semester, begin brainstorming for topics, ideas, and sources now, early in the month, so that when you actually sit down to write the paper, you have already saved yourself time.

Schedule meetings with your professors about paper and project topics early so that you already have the go-ahead. Additionally, if you ask for help from professors early in the month, you will have more time to track down the hints and helpful information that they may give you during your meeting with them. Your professors want you to make a good grade. Asking for help or a point in the right direction early will not only let them know that you’re on the ball but it will give you more time to use these suggestions in your final assignment.

Ultimately, starting projects and papers early will both help you stay organized and on top of your other things to do and will give you more time to produce a better final project or paper. And eat lots and lots of stuffing/sweet potatoes/everything else your mom makes.

Do you find any of these tips useful? What do you do during November to help you prepare for the end-of-the-year rush of finals? Let us know in the comments!

As college students, we are constantly inundated with new knowledge. It can be useful, thought-provoking, or crammed into our head on a Starbucks-fueled binge several hours before an exam. However, very rarely do we question the validity of all this new knowledge (unless you take philosophy classes, then you’ll question away).

That’s where College Candy comes in. We’re not going to debate whether or not the Theory of Relativity actually exists (a disappointment, I know, but I’m a communications major and stopped taking science classes after Baby Bio fresh year). However, we are here to thoroughly investigate the most widespread college knowledge (no, not rhyming)—the myth.

We’ve all been there. It’s 9:04 am on a chilly Wednesday. We’re regretting our decision to pass on Starbucks (and especially regretting the decision to have a “practice” beer pong tournament with the roomies last night). We’re drumming our fingers on our desks, thinking of our still warm beds, wondering if our professor is going to show (and praying that she doesn’t).

Ok, now it’s 9:05, only 15 more minutes (10 if we’re waiting for a T.A.). If Dr. So-and-So still hasn’t shown, we are free and clear to peace out and crawl right back into bed. It’s the golden rule of classes- if your prof is x-amount of minutes late, class is automatically canceled, and the students who waited so—ahem—patiently, will suffer no penalty.

I remember the first magical time this happened to me. I was a nervous freshman, bundled up in my Hollister jean jacket, listening to the agitated upperclassmen counting down to 15 minutes around me. When our T.A. still hadn’t shown, they simultaneously dipped out, and one sophomore took pity on me enough to explain that I, too, should leave. “It’s like, on the campus website as an official rule,” she’d told me. From that day forward, even the slightest offense of tardiness starts me on an internal countdown.

But am I right? Yes and no. Most schools (including mine) won’t waste precious ink in the student handbook to specify such a rule. An official at University of South Florida agrees: “ I have never seen a written policy on this question.   I’ve heard the rumor about waiting 15 minutes for a prof with a masters, 30 minutes for a PhD….but I have never been able to locate a formal policy.  (And if I were a student, I would be sure to be the last one to leave, however long the rest of them waited).”

According to Snopes though, some schools do specify the elusive waiting period. At Clemson, it’s a required component of every class syllabus. However, the differentiation between T.A. wait time and professor wait time is pretty nonexistent. While fully accredited professors do enjoy more benefits than their assistants, they don’t automatically earn an extra 5 minutes of students’ time (when they’re late to class.)

So how to deal with this dilemma? When in doubt, check your syllabus, if there’s nothing in there about a “wait” policy it’s up to you whether you sit there for 15 minutes or the entirety of the class period (or just see what your classmates think). But unless you can find a specific rule in your student handbook, this myth is most likely false at your institution of higher learning. As for me, I’ll continue to interpret my professors’ lateness as a perfect excuse for me to skip class (although I normally don’t have any trouble coming up with them on my own).

What would you do? Have you ever had a professor explain their “late-wait policy”?

"I miss Welcome Week." Sigh.

Lately it seems like Facebook is on a mission (aided by the company that sells prozac) to make me feel suicidal every time I sign on. For weeks all the status updates and albums were “lovin’ summer” and “will it ever stop raining this summer?” I could easily relate to those as I was also experiencing summer and the torrential rain showers of ’09.

However, now I sign on and I have to see this:

Jessie can’t wait for classes to start up!
Shar regrets that first night back jungle juice!
Alissa accidentally packed her keys into the trunk but it won’t stop her from getting to school!

And all these statues and declarations of school spirit are forcing me to realize that I’m officially not going back to school…although my diploma has yet to come, so that’s actually still questionable. For the first time in my entire life (I started school mere months after birth) I’m not buying fresh new school supplies and I’m not sitting in classes trying to read the professor’s mind and decide if she is really going to give pop reading quizzes. I don’t even know what to do with my hands if they’re not flipping through syllabi.

Call me self-centered but it’s hard to imagine that school continues on without me. I find it preposterous to believe that people will take the same classes I did, live in my same apartment, and even go out to the same bars. Will any of my professors miss me (unlikely)? Will the bouncer I always begged for lowered cover notice my absence (doubtful)? Will the boys who moved into my apartment this year notice that we left broken appliances in their closets (I hope so!)?

And now that school’s staring, time is really ticking for me to come up with a creative lie about a job I don’t have. There’s no way I’m showing my face at homecoming to all those students and explaining the effect the recession has had on my life (although my parents LOVE those phone lectures from me). If I can’t still be in college (once again, diploma pending) then I’m going to come back as the most successful person from the class of 2009.

But so far I don’t even have to lie. I was walking home today and saw Aunt Becky (sans Nicky and Alex) on my block! I can’t name one other person, in school or graduated, that can tell a better success story.

But this semester I just can’t make myself seem to care about my classes.

I spent all my ten-minute syllabus lectures twitching to leave while glaring at the girl who thought it was okay to ask questions about the professor’s font preferences (really? is that really essential information right now?). I bought one five-subject notebook and started using an old Trapper Keeper folder that I found at home for all my handouts. I’m not even exactly sure where I even found this Trapper Keeper because the fun facts on the inside folds include a list of the presidents and ends with President Clinton 1993- ___. The only other things I have at home that are that old are an empty pog case and a Minnie-Mouse diary with one entry that reads, “Woke up, watched tv. Urkel very funny today!”

I can’t make myself do any work and I’m acting like its senior year of high school all over again. Except senior year of high school I was into a college, my grades didn’t matter, and the teachers totally knew it. But this time around I have no idea what I’m doing next year, my grades still matter (I’ll be applying to law school after one year of trying to make it in a creative field paid in opinionated blog commenters) and my professors are still assigning tons of work that will eventually lead up to midterms and exams.

It’s only the second week of classes and I already find myself procrastinating with watching bad sitcom reruns (I’m talking bad like The Nanny bad) and playing Time of your Life while looking at Facebook pictures from the past four years. And since it appears that there are rules against letting me take all my classes pass-fail, it looks like I’m going to have to come up with a lot more procrastination methods for the next few months.

I love books. Well, I should say I love books aren’t listed on a class syallabus. For every mood you’re in, there is a good book to go with it. And when you feel like procrastinating but have already read through every article on here, you can feel a bit more productive knowing you’re reading a book/a novel/even a cook book!

So here are 5 books that I thought were worth sharing with you. Share some of your faves at the bottom and spread that bookworm loooove.

1) Kaffir Boy. Mark Mathabane’s authobiography about growing up in South Africa during the Apartheid. This book is riveting, and, more importantly, eye opening. A total page turner. It’s sad, it’s motivational, it’s totally engrossing.

2) The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs. A chic-lit book with a bit more substance to the story. Not to mention it’s going to be a movie with Julia Roberts as the star, so you know you’ll want to read it before then. Another easy read worth loving.

3) Bitter with Baggage Seeks Same: The Life and Times of Some Chickens. Best Coffee Table book EVER. It’s snarky, it’s funny, it’s a must have. There is nothing like having a long, stressful day and flipping through this little picture book of attitude. LOVE.

4) You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay. Yes, it’s all about positive thinking. Yes, a lot of people think it’s a lot of mumbo jumbo, but this book has been around for years. And I think there is some definite merit in the benefits of positive thinking to help bring balance, good things, and good health, into your life. Even if you aren’t a firm believer in all the “What you think about you bring about,” it at least gives you some good tools to help turn negative situations into positive lessons.

5) The Pact by Jodi Picoult. This book is a bit older, but it’s one of those books you literally cannot put down. Jodi Picoult is such a great writer that she almost makes you want to give up going out tonight just to finish this chapter. Almost.

What are some of your all-time faves?

1. Get in Shape

Whether it’s the fact that spring break is weeks away or that people over-indulged on holiday dips and homemade cooking, everyone comes back to school with overly-optimistic gym ambitions. Ellipticals that haven’t been used in months are suddenly turned on and counting calories. Everyone tries out the stairmaster once and a few braver people venture to the other side of the gym to lift weights. It’s always easy to identify the new-years-resolution-workouts; they are the people with the too-well matched gym outfits who do an amazingly intense workout for the first five minuntes and then spend the next 35 minutes walking and talking about being really serious about getting into shape. They chug their water, wipe off their nonexistent sweat and they’re never seen in the gym after January 31st.

2. Get Involved

There is always that one friend that comes back after winter break and really wants to go get involved this semester. While this person’s enthusiasm was inspirational freshman year, they’ve just become downright delusional by senior year. Despite signing up for more than 45 listservs throughout the past few semesters, this person has yet to find time to attend one meeting. However it does not stop them from telling you how they really want to do more this semester, really want to bulk up that resume. Whether it’s building houses for Habitat, joining the winter festival committee, or taking a deeper look at Buddhism, they convince themselves that this year will be their year. However homework builds up, new shows start, and before they know it the semester is over and the only thing they got involved with was talking about getting involved.

3. Get Good Grades

The smell of fresh textbooks and bright highlighters often have the unfortunate effect of making people believe that they really will work hard this semester. Your roommate’s once blank walls are now filled with large color-coded calendars and law-school admission stats are taped onto the bathroom mirror for daily inspiration. Instead of staying quiet during syllabus week and getting out of class 58 minutes early, they’re the person who asks the professor questions about MLA format preferences and possibilities of additional office hours. They spend their spare time calculating their possible GPA after their semester of straight A’s. But as the semester wears on they remember why they didn’t have straight A’s last semester; classes are boring, homework is tedious, and studying kinda blows.

The campus is buzzing with returning students, eager to see what the new year has in store. Even if you anticipate your hardest semester to date, there’s still a feeling of excitement in the air during the very first week.

1. You Get to Scope Out Your New Classes

Maybe I’m a dork, but I was always excited to see what my new classes would be like. In certain classes–the must-take courses taught by the professors with the best reputations– it was great to see what all the buzz was about. Other classes might have sounded intriguing in the course catalog; reading through the syllabus on the first day, I’d think the class sounded interesting, and hadn’t been assigned 500 pages of reading to prove me otherwise. I would also look through the syllabus and see what the course requirements looked like, so I could estimate how little effort I could put into the class, and still walk away with an “A.”

Of course, it’s also fun to see who else has signed up for the class. Whether you walk through the door and see five of the girls from your freshman dorm, or right into the eyes of your new insta-crush, it’s fun to find out who you’ll be taking the class with.

2. Your Sched’s Not a Lock (Yet)

So, “Intro to Film” turned out to require three 15-page research papers and 7 chapters of reading a night. Drop it! Your roommate insists that you take “Deviant Behavior” instead of “Early Childhood Development.” Sign right up! In the first week of class, you can roll the dice as many times as you like, without falling behind in the course or having to beg your advisor to sign something so you can drop a class you probably shouldn’t have signed up for in the first place. My senior year, I was determined to have the best schedule ever, and must have signed up for and dropped classes about five times before I found the perfect combination of classes that I could learn from, enjoy, and ace, while still having plenty of room for senioritis.

3. There’s Free Stuff Everywhere

Clubs and organizations want you to join, so they’re apt to set up booths all over campus, offering free food, games, or knick knacks that will clutter your dorm. Often, the Student Activities department will also sponsor “Welcome Back” activities that extend beyond the incoming freshman class in order to get their returning students amped for another great school year. It’s a great way to (A) not spend money, (B) hang out with your friends, and (C) socialize with potentially new pals. Did I mention it’s all free?

4. Dorm Living Rocks in the First Week

As everyone gets settled in, and midterms are only a very distant threat, the doors to everyone’s rooms stay open, music blares through the hallway, and everyone is ready and willing to introduce themselves to their new neighbors. The schoolyear drama has yet to set in, so everyone’s pretty laid-back and carefree. Similar to scoping out your new classmates, you can scour the dorms for new friends (or crushes), figure out who the partiers are, who you can go to in an emergency, and who has the biggest TV to watch the VMA’s. Often, whole floors will arrange group trips to first-week parties, which is a sort of mixer in itself. Once the real work sets in, the doors close, the music is shut off, and you have to practically beg people to go to the bar with you on a Monday night, so enjoy week one!

5. You Can Party. All. Week. Long.

By far, the best part of the first week of school is that, since people are juggling schedules, and the first classes are usually a 20-minute overview of the syllabus, you have little, if any, assignments and responsibilities. My favorite college tradition was the week-long drinking binge that was the first week of classes. We would hit up a different bar each night to take advantage of the best drink specials, before deadlines, midterms, and research papers came pouring in. Even if you are assigned homework on the first Monday of class, you probably won’t have that class again until Wednesday, and you can probably knock it out on Tuesday after your teacher lets you out of an hour-and-a-half class after only twenty minutes. Besides, if you do get so sloshed that you start the semester off on the wrong foot, you still have plenty of time to add/drop a new class!

- Tweedledee & Tweedledum: They signed up for the class together, the live together, they went out to the bars over the weekend together, and they probably hooked up with the same skeezy dude. Now they want to recount the entire experience for everyone in class in the loudest whisper ever recorded…from right behind you.

If you can’t switch seats: Give them the old GASP treatment. It’s a 4-step process, Glare, Ahem, Say Something, and the last ditch effort — punch them in the face.

-Kitchen Sink Guy: He brings a traveling coffee mug, a laptop, two coats, all of the textbooks for the class, and a sack lunch. Worst of all, he tries to squueze it all onto his little desk, or worse, yours.

If you can’t switch seats: Grin and bear it but draw the line at your desk, or at least make him share some of the sack lunch in trade.

-Ms. Magoo: She can’t see the board, she can’t hear the professor and she can’t stop asking you to repeat and or clarify everything that’s going on. Essentially you’re playing Annie Sullivan to a second-rate Helen Keller; an annoying girl who listens to her iPod on high and thinks her glasses give her a case of fat face.

If you can’t switch seats: Encourage Blindy to take a seat in the front next time or offer to share your notes after class instead of during the lecture.

-Smelly Guy: Smelly Guy is not to be confused with Gym Rat Guy. Gym Rat Guy is gross, but it’s a hot gross since he just came from the gym, before class no less. Smelly Guy reeks of all things familiar: cigarettes, cafeteria musk, last weekend’s booze, and bad decisions. If it were just one of the above, he might be tolerable but the cocktail is pungent, making smelly guy one hot mess.

If you can’t switch seats: Offer him anything scented you may have in your bag (lotion, body spray, mints). It may make the smell temporarily worse but it’s worth a shot. If that doesn’t work, breathe through your mouth and take your clothes to the dry-cleaners.

-Fidgety Girl: It could be a case of nerves or the case of Red Bull she chugged last night but between the pen clicking, toe-tapping and gum popping you are seriously about to lose your sh*t.

If you can’t switch seats: A lot of the classroom “movers and shakers” don’t realize how loud or obnoxious they are. Since it may be nerves, don’t get too mad as it may make it worse. Politely let the lady in question know her ticks are keeping you from hearing the lecture. If it continues, GASP the hell out of her, especially step four.

Anyone else I should keep my eyes out for? Headphone Girl and Obnoxious Left-Handed Guy are the first that come to mind.

[Photo: CollegePlanning.Com]

There’s nothing wrong with knowing two languages. Actually it’s pretty cool. But if your professor teaches at a University in the U.S and they are not a fluent English speaker, and they aren’t teaching the language they are fluent in, you could be in for a rough time, especially if the class is science or math. The only thing more difficult then college level mathematics is college level mathematics from Russia (with love).

2) A complete lack of syllabus.

In college, stuff matters. Papers, grades, stuff that is trivial in High School gets more weighty once you sign away a few thousand bucks a semester. A syllabus is a contract between you and the professor to minimize f*ck-ups on both ends. With a syllabus, they can’t bust a giant exam on you and be all “I said!”, and you can’t claim you misheard the due date for the term paper (damn!). If your professor doesn’t come with a syllabus on day one, ask about it. If they don’t have plans for one, you may in some troubs. Write all important dates down.

3) Where did I put my…

People who forget stuff a lot can be cute. Unless you pay them to teach and grade you. Then it’s just annoying. We admit, teachers are people and forgetting stuff is fine, occasionally, but if your teacher forgets most of the stuff they were supposed to bring during the first week, you can bet on a semesters worth of waiting for AV equipment that wasn’t requested and photocopies that didn’t get made. Your assignments are at least slightly in your control, so make 2 copies and keep one for yourself.

4) Militant Political Views (In any direction)

It doesn’t matter if you agree with your new professor’s crazy theories, prof’s who bring their crazy into the classroom end up wasting your time. If you’ve got a super liberal, there is gonna be one Bushie student who never lets anything go. If you’ve got a right-winger, there’s gonna be a granola child who throws red paint on them. Crazy fem-nazis hate you because you have a boyfriend, and idiot chauvinists who won’t stop suggesting your ‘female chemicals’ make you irrational. It’s a free country, and you can believe whatever you want. But I don’t pay you to talk about those beliefs, motherf*cker!

5) Mr/Ms.Smiles

Every class has jerks. Kids who need the credit but don’t want to be there. They ask stupid, sarcastic questions, yell aloud, text and use the cell phone — I even had one girl bring her yippy dog to class. Jerk students are all around distractions, wasting everyone’s time. No one wants a Prof who’s mean, but you need someone who will check these offenders when the time comes, before the classroom devolves into some bizarre Lord Of The Flies type setting. Be wary of teachers who refuse to tell kids they are incorrect or out of line.

[Any other warning signs? Let us know!!]