Self Care Tips for College Students in 2021

hey there my name's linda and welcome back to my youtube channel on this channel i discuss topics like academics mental health and self-care so if those are topics that you're interested in then hit that subscribe button and let's get to it in today's video i'm going to be discussing self-care tips for college students so what is self-care so self-care is any intentional action that you take to take care of your wellness and wellness can include many different aspects such as your physical wellness your emotional wellness your spiritual wellness or mental wellness so self-care is really about identifying your own needs and taking steps to meet them because it's very common to get overwhelmed with school and personal responsibilities practicing self-care can help you manage your stress and maintain your well-being um i do want to make a disclaimer though so i just want to say that these are self-care strategies that i've developed over the past few years so i find these strategies really helpful however everyone's a different person so just take what you find helpful and leave the rest so the first self-care tip i have for you is to create a schedule for your day or week creating a schedule not only helps you manage your time and stay organized but it also allows you to have some predictability or structure in your life we all know that going through a global pandemic there's so much uncertainty and unpredictability but creating a schedule can help you regain that control over your life and creating a schedule can be as simple as writing a plan in your agenda or in your smartphone's calendar something to keep in mind when creating the schedule is that you don't want to take on too much or more than you can handle and i definitely learned this lesson the hard way because i would often take on way more activities than i can handle when i did my bachelor's degree such as working going to classes volunteering etc you might not be able to do everything you want to so make sure to prioritize what's important for you so the second self-care tip i have for you is to take breaks and i know this might sound very obvious but when i was an undergraduate student i would often sit at my desk for several hours and try to finish the work or project that i was working on at the time so even though i would lose focus after less than an hour of work i still tried to push myself to keep going and what i found really helpful now is to only work on a task for about 40 minutes to an hour and then get up walk around eat something take a break so this is really important because of course we have a limited attention span and sitting for longer periods of time can make us pretty tired so this is really important for me personally because when i'd focus on my work for too long i often forget to actually eat something taking breaks can also help us practice self-care in other ways such as getting some exercise or getting enough sleep so i can tell you now that no assignment or project or class is worth more than your health and well-being so i definitely recommend that you take some breaks every once in a while so the next tip i have for you is something else that i've been recently doing and that's to make myself unavailable sometimes so working and going to school online i found it initially difficult to separate my home and school and work life from each other i felt like i was always working or always had to be available to work i also had a boss whose primary mode of communication with me was through text messages and sometimes i get these text messages early in the morning or after business hours even when i was not expected to be available because we have access to email and instant messaging devices it's up to us as individuals to set boundaries about our availability and for me that means only responding to emails or text messages during office or business hours and i've also heard of people who only respond to emails once or twice a day and never over the weekends of course you can also do this with your cell phone or your social media for me i just hide my phone under my pillow and put it on silent and then if i don't want to respond to any messages i won't for a couple hours and this will give me time to focus on my schoolwork or whatever else i'm doing so as an individual you want to find what works for you in terms of separating your school and work life from your home life so the last self-care strategy i have for you is to reach out to friends family and professional support a lot of times we avoid reaching out to others because we want to try to solve problems on our own or we want to avoid feeling like a burden to other people i definitely felt this way when i was going through academic as well as mental health challenges essentially i isolated myself from other people so i can tell you now that this is not the best strategy when we're able to reach out to others we can get an outsider perspective on our problems as well as have someone to help us solve the problems or get support from sometimes it can even be helpful to just simply to talk to someone even if we're not talking about the problems that we have as a student it's also important to reach out to your professors when you're having medical or mental health issues over the past few semesters i did end up working as a teaching assistant and i did see that professors did tend to be understanding of the situation as well as providing accommodations so students can be successful in the course i would definitely recommend talking to your teaching assistants or professors so they can provide you with support so a lot of people are feeling the mental health effects of the global pandemic so chances are the person you're planning to reach out to is probably experiencing something similar and would probably appreciate having someone to talk to as well make sure you reach out to friends family professional support as well as your professors or teaching assistants if you need some support all right so those are a few ways you can practice self-care as a college student this year i hope you found these tips helpful and let us know in the comments down below if you have any other tips for us well thank you so much for watching and i'll see you next time bye so i think i'm actually gonna put my tea down because i am very prone to accidents or being clumsy and mostly most likely i think i would probably spill it at some point during this video so probably best to avoid that