Category: Maddy

Has the election been more of a nailbiter than you were anticipating? Are you literally writhing on the floor and/or shoveling chips into your mouth while the news tells you everything is still too close to call? Here are a few activities you and your roomie(s) can do to distract yourselves from the impending civil war.

Play board games!

While watching the news last night, my roommates and I played several absolutely manic rounds of Clue, and it was a fantastic distraction. It requires just enough focus that you can tune out the news, and if you’re competitive, it can be a great way to get your anger out. We also played Dobble, a picture-matching game that is embarrassingly hard but extremely fun!

Find an empty study lounge in your building and just run around

At another point during the night, we were so anxious that we just need to scream and/or run. Luckily, Stuvi 2’s 26th floor is a big empty lounge with an awesome view, so we did a few laps and kind of rolled around on the floor and then we felt so much better!

If you don’t have a lounge, consider taking a jog outside. The freezing cold will definitely distract you from the insanity that is the 2020 election.

Bake

If you have an apartment, this is a great time to bake that cake you’ve been thinking of making. While you’ll have to sit and wait while it’s in the oven, your apartment will be filled with wonderful aromas, and you’ll know you have a yummy treat waiting for you even if the election results go horribly wrong.

Play slither.io (or other computer games)

Another addiction in my household is slither.io, a computer game notoriously banned from high schools for being so distracting. In the game, you’re a snake surrounded by stars, and you have to eat the stars and kill other snakes, who turn into stars once they die. If you eat enough, you might end up on the leaderboard! This game is very stressful in itself, but luckily if you die in this game you can just start all over again, something we can’t do if we lose the election. 

Hope these tips were helpful! Tune in next time for my blog about how to cope with the next four years, regardless of who wins!

Baking bread in quarantine is the 2020 equivalent of a Victory Garden. It’s a convenient and fun way to provide yourself with sustenance and “reduce pressure on the public food supply,” because that’s a thing we have to think about now. So while we’re all watching our futures be canceled indefinitely, it is probably useful to brush up on our baking skills for when we inevitably have to become bakers in the post-pandemic world, at least until we are chosen to compete against Tributes from the other districts. And that’s on Peeta Mallark! Though you may not ever be a breadwinner, you can always be a bread baker, so here’s what kind of bread you should make based on what career you might have had if we weren't in a pandemic.

1. PR Professional - Whole Wheat

Whole wheat gets a bad rap because it has a weird texture and it’s good for you, which of course makes it kind of gross. This is exactly why YOU, an aspiring PR professional, must give it a good name. Practice baking this bread in quarantine and maybe give it a nice rebrand so the millennials will buy it.

1. Advertising Account Manager - Sourdough

Like sourdough, I imagine this job is kind of tough. Also, sourdough is THE bread of capitalism. Don’t ask me why - I just know.

1. Filmmaker - Banana bread

This is barely a bread and it is useful to no one, but it is very nice and it makes life better, just like you will with your little movies.

1. Documentary filmmaker - Rye

This is a bread that is sometimes average and sometimes GREAT, much like documentary filmmaking.

1. Journalist - Croissant

If croissants even count as bread, they are the hardest bread to bake. It takes skill, patience, and LOTS of butter to get these right. The same can be said for journalism. Also like journalism, croissants will reveal the TRUTH...of whether or not you suck at baking.

Happy breadmaking!

Hey commies! It’s that time of year; cuffing season is upon us, you can’t inspire yourself to leave your single, your friends all left for break but you have one freaking class the day before so you can’t leave til Wednesday morning...just me???

The point is, it is loneliness szn, but here are some pros and cons to being alone (and pros for the cons.)

Eating Alone Is GOOD

While mealtime is social time for many people, eating alone can be great for a few reasons. For one thing, it can be a time of mindfulness and solemn reflection as you play out fantasy scenarios in your head and practice dealing with your worst anxieties, so you’ll be ready for these situations when they absolutely never happen. Also, you’re on your own eating schedule, so you don’t have to wait til the conversation ends to get up and get your next course. Are these tips helping? NEXT!

Living in a single is A BLESSING 

If you’re an introvert like me, you need to get home after a long day and just decompress. Interacting with people takes a lot of energy, and you deserve to completely chill, zone in on your homework, nap, or do whatever. It can be hard to motivate yourself to leave, which is something you absolutely must do, but if you live in the moment and enjoy your alone time, you’ll find that when you do reenter civilization, you’ll do it with a clear head. 

Take yourself to the movies!!!!! 

Take -- and I cannot stress this enough -- yourself to the movies.

You might get lonely

I threw a con in there, were you ready for it?!! Yes, you might get lonely - duh. But in the immortal words of Veronica Sawyer from Heathers The Musical, if you were happy all the time, you’d be a game show host. If you can learn to be alone with yourself now while it’s a choice, you’ll be able to handle it when you graduate and move to a new city, or when you enter any new situation. Most importantly, if you learn to like being alone, you’ll appreciate being with people even more.

I guess all I’m trying to say is...if you ever feel like you’re always alone, don’t worry, you’re not alone. Good luck on your journey to going back inside and locking the door.

“A wise man can always be found alone.” - Bruce Lee (???) 🙂

Absolutely no one wants to sit down and do homework, but it’s a necessary evil. It can be extremely hard to motivate yourself to get it done, especially if you’re a chronic procrastinator like me. Luckily, I’ve devised a few ways to trick myself into doing homework, which I will share with you now. You are a dog, your homework is the pill, and these tips are the cheese wrapped around it. Does that make sense? Here goes!

• Start homework the day it’s assigned

This is a great way to trick yourself into getting ahead! You don’t actually have to do the thing yet, but it feels good to convince yourself you’re ahead of the game. if you outline your paper or do one of your readings, then in a few days when it’s actually time to work on it, you’ve given yourself a nice little head start.

• Set reasonable goals for how much you’ll get done

Trick yourself into feeling good about what you’ve accomplished by accomplishing less than what you actually have to do! It’s tempting to write out all 25 things you have to do by the end of the week and plan to knock out as many as possible by the end of the night. However, that’s an easy way to overwhelm yourself. Don’t do it! Write out MAX 4 things you think you can realistically get done by tomorrow, and you’ll feel great when you accomplish them all. I also suggest knocking the easy stuff out of the way, and/or doing little bits of larger assignments.

• Set a timer for 20 minutes

My friend and I were having a study bool and we absolutely could not focus, so I decided to set a timer for 20 minutes where we’d totally focus on our work. When the timer hit 15 minutes, I turned it off, but we were so focused that we kept working for another hour (she totally forgot we ever set a timer.) This is a hard trick to pull on yourself when you’re alone, but you’ll find that even if you leave the timer on and it rings, you’ll be so focused that you won’t want to stop.

• Plan to reward yourself when you finish

Promise yourself that as soon as you get everything done, you’ll do something fun. Get some mochi ice cream from Whole Foods. Have your friends over for a movie and face masks. If you’re looking forward to something at the end of your study session, you’ll be way more motivated to get your work over with.

Happy (ish) studying! 😉