Most Essential Life Skills for College Students

College teaches you many things but often leaves you alone to fight the war of life. As college is the last stop to professional life for most of you, getting ahead of yourself and learning essential life skills is important.

In this article, we’ll discuss the most essential life skills that a college student like yourself needs to develop to get better at the fight.

You don’t need reasons to not indulge yourself in learning these life skills. As you are standing on the horizon of student and professional life, these skills would smoothen your transition. Despite learning to somehow manage my time, once in a while I get disinclined to do my assignments and get some term paper help.

1. Keeping an Organized Space

College students are fundamentally disorganized. If you are not, good for you.

But if you are like me, cleaning up your desk or washing your dirty clothes might seem redundant. It’s not. Keeping an organized space while being in college helps you learn an important lesson in life. Self-sufficiency.

You only need to spend 2 hours weekly to organize your space. And if you live with a roommate, it may take even less. Divide laundry, washing sheets, scrubbing, washing dishes into two parts with your roommate and interchange tasks after every week.

If you live alone, break down the tasks throughout the whole week to not get overwhelmed by them.

2. Cooking Skills

You can save a lot by cooking yourself in college. You don’t need to be a MasterChef to cook good food for yourself. And guess what? It’d also be a healthier option. But for that, you need an apartment with a kitchen. Before leaving for college, try arranging a roomy apartment with a kitchen and a roommate.

Why the roommate?

Try teaching them cooking. So that you can save on groceries and food. Because having packaged food and dine-outs every day can get financially and medically expensive real quick. While you can cook anything, it’s wise to not do so. Cook less but cook often. Lean on general lunch and dinner meals like pasta, rice bowls, fish, and meat. Don’t go for fancy meals every day. And remember to get a refrigerator on share.

3. Navigating Through the City

No two cities in the world are the same. As you know your home city is like the palm of your hand, you should explore your new city too. As a college student, either you can go solo or gather some friends to go looking.

To safely explore a city, first, you need to know which places are safe for solo strangers. Once you’ve marked that, you can now go lost in the urban woods. Keep your location saved in Google Maps and forget about it. Keep your phone aside.

Keep exploring the roads, lanes, and shops. Look out for addresses to know how the city works. Soon you’d be back on roads which you’ve passed a while ago. That’d register a map into your brain. If you keep exploring, you’d soon be left with a general sense of the direction of the city.

Congratulations.

Don’t just keep walking, keep your eyes and mind open to new things and people.

4. Time Management Skills

We are surrounded by technology and time-consuming elements. To do good academically in college, you need to manage your time efficiently to get the most out of your classes and assignments. To do that, you need to develop time management skills. Which starts with accepting that you are wasting time that you should not.

Is social media keeping you busy for too long?

Are you procrastinating during study times?

Do you keep checking your phone while doing assignments? If yes, then you are investing your time on futile things too much.

For starters, setting up a schedule and sticking to it helps. Reward yourself for completing a task with social media and whatever that you do to waste your time. Don’t let the time-wasting elements control you.

Break up humongous tasks into small bits and tackle simple ones first. Although it’s not effective for everyone. I personally take on one or two small tasks as a warm-up before going on for the complex ones.

Don’t multitask. Do one thing at a time. If you are writing a paper, try keeping the assignment that’s due weeks later, aside.

7. Managing Finances:

Finance management in college is challenging. You’d never be able to get a leash on your spending if you don’t learn to manage your finances. While in college, food, booze, and parties contribute to a huge chunk of your spending.

Set up a categorized monthly budget.

Realize what makes you spend how much every month and make a list. Include each and every spending – how small – in your list. Budget accordingly. That way, you can keep yourself in check whenever something goes beyond the desired limit.

Start investing early while in college. If you can save enough, your education loans wouldn’t be able to make a dent in your pocket after college.

Finance management can also help you in the long term. On a professional level, when you’d have enough money to fulfill every dream you ever had, keeping yourself in check will be a necessity.