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"3...2...1...Blastoff!!!"

30…29…28…27…26…25…24…23…22…21…

It’s here. Every college student on campus can feel it, and every professor can sense it each hour they enter the classroom. The counseling center is packed full because of it. The library has never been so loved nor the coffee pot. What is here, you wonder?

The Countdown

Yes, it’s the countdown. November is the most stressful month nation wide on college campuses. This is the month where college students really find out what their made of—especially if they are freshman. Let’s take a look at what’s going on.

The first tell-tale sign of the countdown is course work. By November, the course work starts to get a lot harder for most classes. By now, each professor has covered the basics. The material that each student has been tested on up to this point is now just fundamentals while the new material is increasingly more complex and involved. Now it becomes more important than ever to find a study group! It’s perfectly normal for students to struggle at this time of year, but even as the countdown draws to a close, you can remind your child that it’s never too late to join a study group.

Another big factor to the stress level is projects and papers. With only so much time left in the semester, professors are really pushing to squeeze in any projects that they want accomplished. Students might have papers from 5 pages to 40 pages to write before the end of the year. Projects and papers are stressful for one important reason: they take a lot of time! If they weren’t time consuming, everyone would love writing papers! As the countdown draws to a close, most college students are realizing that they really need to devote their efforts to finish these things up. The problem is, how much time do they really need to devote? What will make their paper good enough? What will really awe their professor when they present their project? There is no answer, but it’s not completely hopeless. Urge your child to finish things early this month! Finishing early gives the big advantage of talking to your professor before the due date. A lot of professors will give feedback before the grade if you can show them real progress. Give them a well revised draft of your paper to read and see what they think. Run the key points of your project by them and ‘pick their brain’ about it.

So what are we counting down to? You guessed it, the end of the semester. With the end of the semester comes all sorts of stresses: final exams, getting your grades, paying for the next semester and going home for the break. Even though we still have some time before these things show up, they all take some planning. Remind your child that these things are coming (although I’m not sure how they could forget)! After all, it won’t be too long before it’s 3…2…1…0…