All posts by aprilstange

Academics, Student Life

Avoid Procrastinating by Cutting These 5 Time Sucks

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Mid-terms can be a major wake up call. It’s a perfect opportunity to re-evaluate your time management in relation to studying and/or making your life more efficient in order to have plenty of time to study. With that in mind, I present 5 things that are sucking up more time than you would probably realize.

iTunes Radio

I already know what you’re thinking. Some people believe they study better with music on and iTunes Radio is the newest fad with the new iOS7 released by Apple. Let’s be honest with ourselves, nobody retains as much information when listening to music in the background. You cannot be singing JT’s part of Holy Grail while memorizing your tax laws. JT may go great with everything but not with studying. Sometimes in the past I would use music as an incentive to get myself to sit down and study but that does not fly this year. So, if you can, I recommend turning off the radio, Spotify, iTunes, whatever, and focus in a quiet area when you study.

Snapchat

This app is probably my favorite pass time. If I could put professional snapchatter on my resume, I would. I am getting really good at creating works of art using the draw tool on Snapchat. And we all know that takes not just natural talent on my part but a whole lot of time and dedication. Not only does it take time for you to Snapchat people, but come on, people are gonna send us some back because we are all popular and probably send really awesome ones that people just have to respond to. With that being said, it is time to face the facts. Snapchat is one of the absolute biggest time wasters currently. I usually have conversations with my friends over snapchat versus texting these days. So shut off that phone and get to work!

Online TV

If you don’t watch Game of Thrones, you’re wrong. Just kidding. But I bet you do watch some kind of online television show because you were too busy to catch it on cable. Or maybe you are like me and you would rather spend money on Chipotle than on cable so you use your laptop to get your tv fix. Either way, beware of the addiction of online tv!!

Roommates

I spend a lot of time joking around with my roommates and talking about nonsense. It is really fun and I love my roommates, but I know deep down inside that I waste a lot of my time by chatting it up the night before my paper is due. I think you should always make time for your roommates, but also know when to tell them that you are busy. They will respect your time and will probably realize that they have stuff that needs to get done as well.

Facebook/Twitter

This is a tricky one. I know that Facebook and Twitter have become intertwined with classes because of Facebook groups, Google Docs, and Twitter polls. However, if you can somehow write down how much time you spend a week on Facebook and cut that in half, then you are in good shape. It is amazing how it has become a reflex to automatically go to Facebook first when you open your laptop. So block Facebook for a few hours so you can study. There are a lot of sites that have apps to do this. Twitter is addicting because you think you just want to read a couple tweets. I mean it takes two seconds to write a quick tweet so why do I even bother to put this on here, right? Wrong!! Twitter has way too many interesting stories, pictures, and jokes. Two seconds turns into thirty minutes. Remember, you do not have to delete your social media accounts. Just try to decrease your time per day on each site!

 Which type of procrastinator are you? (I am at least 4 of those!)

Academics, Austin, Student Life

Balancing Life And Books

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As a first semester Integrated MPA student, I have a lot to learn about the program. The transition from being a BBA to an iMPA is a tough road. There are times when you feel like you cannot read another tax law exception or your brain will explode from information overload. All MPAs know this feeling. The key is to balance your life in school with a life outside of school. I know we hear this all the time but the importance of this advice never hit me until this semester. Take that study break you have been dreaming about for the past three quiz days and go out and have fun in the greatest city in Texas! Go to that football game even though you have two exams the next week! You can do fun things as an MPA as long as you maximize the time that you actually spend hitting those books.

Last week I had my first tax exam and financial concepts exam on the same day. These two classes are typically taken during the first year of iMPA. Naturally, I was so scared to take these exams, the week before I was already stressing myself out. Fortunately, I have a great friend who took me to a One Republic concert Thursday night, the weekend before my exams. The concert was at ACL Live’s Mood Theater, which is an awesome venue downtown. It was such a great show and definitely one of my favorite experiences here in Austin thus far. As a bonus, it was just the thing I needed to clear my head and forget about tax rules and financial concepts for a few hours. Sometimes you have to have a little fun to get things done!

What are your favorite things to do when you are on study breaks?

Academics, Uncategorized

Mapping Out McCombs

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Have you ever wondered why you might have two classes in the McCombs building but they are listed under GSB and CBA? Have you ever tried to find the floor “4M” in McCombs? These are the mysteries of McCombs that I am here to solve for anyone who may be having these same questions. Let’s take these questions one at a time.

First of all, the reason there are two acronyms for McCombs is because both the Graduate School and Undergraduate School of Business is located in the McCombs building. CBA represents the McCombs School of Business and GSB stands for Graduate School of Business. These buildings really do seem as if they are one building in the same but take a look at the map of McCombs and you can see the difference. McCombs, however, already has a plan to build a new graduate school of business underway, so that is definitely something for all of us to look forward to in the future.

Look familiar? Yes, this is the long lost floor of 4M.

Second mystery is the floor 4M. Although technically the M in 4M stands for Mezzanine, it should really stand for MAZE because that is exactly what this crazy floor is. I learned that this floor was created because McCombs rests on a hill so the ground it was built on was uneven. The Department of Accounting and several professors’ offices are on this floor so I encourage anyone who has a couple of minutes after class to go take a look at this side of the school so you get more familiarized with it. Hopefully, the next time you see a new accounting student wandering around McCombs confused about where this floor is you can help point them in the right direction!