This happens to many students but most of all – to eager ones. You know the type – high achiever, always prepared, homework done two days ahead, pencils sharpened, ready to lend you a spare pen and a stack of papers. Sounds like you? At least, how you used to be at high school. However, times change and college is ruthless to such idealistic perfectionists. By the end of the first semester, here you are – disheveled hair, red-rimmed eyes, still up at 1 am thinking frantically, "Who can I get to write my paper for me in 3 hours?"

To prevent this nightmare scenario you should stop acting like you are still at school. This is your guide to mindful adulting at college.

Plan everything

You should have a big fat planner and you’d better have all the days inside broken down by hours. You will need it unless you want to wind up a weeping shadow lost in the corridors of your campus with no hope of remembering which class you were trying to find at this ungodly hour.

Start with your classes (obviously!), then add all your extracurricular activities, then plan the library hours, regular studying sessions and work on the big projects. Then you plan your breaks and hangouts with friends. That’s right, when I said everything, I meant EVERYTHING.

Stay active

You think there is no time in your schedule for working out but try to make it for at least a couple of hours a week. If you keep slithering out of exercising by the pretext of huge academic load you are doing yourself a great disservice. Physical exercises boost your cognitive abilities, actually.

It doesn’t mean that you must hit the gym and start heavy lifting on scale. The general rule – everything that is good for your heart is also good for the brain, so if dancing and jogging are more your speed – go for those. Dancing, as it involves coordination and complex pattern recognition (aka our brain making sense of music and rhythm) is quite a sweet combo when it comes to stimulating the brain.

Make sleep a priority

Extreme sleep deprivation is some kind of perverse tradition among students all over the world. It’s a rite of passage if you like. Generation after generation, young students proud themselves in their suffering and engage is this masochistic rate race of who slept less this week.

This doesn’t say anything about your dedication and perseverance. It says volumes, however, about poor time management and negligence towards your health. Sleep should be a priority because, without it, your brain doesn’t function adequately. Rendering your brain incapable of processing and retaining information in the name of learning sounds pretty absurd – and that is exactly what you do when depriving yourself of sleep.

Enjoy the moment

The underlying problem here is that students usually see their experience as an ordeal they have to go through to earn their freedom. The thought they conjure to cheer themselves up is usually something along the lines of "Everything passes, and this will as well". This won’t do.

Although looking enthusiastically forward to your adult life is okay, you should also enjoy fully the college years while they last. Despite anything you might think, you have loads of time and you have all those wonderful resources at your disposition to learn and explore your passions. You enjoy unprecedented freedom. You are in the company of your peers that are likely to become your lifetime friends. Seize the day!