Adulting: Staying on Track

 It's easy to get distracted and forget about assignments while you're in college. Classes can be overwhelming, you're in a new place, and you have a social life to maintain. However, this does not mean you can ignore or push off your work. You have to remind yourself that you came to college to learn and get a degree. That should always come first, especially since you are paying so much money to go. While you don't have to be perfect, you should strive to do your best on each assignment. Not just because your grades depend on it, but because it's also disrespectful to your professor to not complete your work. It shows a lack of interest, and no professor is going to want to mentor someone who doesn't care. This especially applies to group work. If you have to peer review someone else's work, you should really take the time to look over their stuff and provide feedback. Otherwise you're being disrespectful to your peers, and they will take notice.

Recently, I've had an issue with a peer in one of my classes not turning in workshop comments. As a creative writing major, workshop comments are very important. They help you to improve your writing and see it from a reader's perspective. However, this student wasn't turning in their peer review comments. Our peer review comments are a large portion of our grade, so not only were they hurting themselves, but they were disrespecting their peers, and their professor. They were several weeks behind on comments, until they finally turned them in to everyone several weeks late. The comments had become irrelevant because everyone had already fixed their writing by the time they were received. The class has certainly taken notice. It's not a good idea to start burning bridges so early on in the school year, especially in a class that is needed for their major.

Please take advantage of the opportunity you have in college and do the best job you can, not only for yourself, but for your peers as well. Let me know what you think in the comments below.