Now is not the time to panic

September – you want to be outside, catching up with friends, enjoying the beautiful weather, watching a football game and enjoying college life. September on a college campus could be pretty idyllic, except that September is also when reality strikes and the workload in your classes ramps up. Ramps up might be an understatement. It often feels more like a cliff which you are standing at the bottom of and being asked to scale without a harness or a safety net. There is a lot to learn in a term and not much time. Professors like to get off to a running start when students are fresh from their summer break.

Receiving a syllabus for a course – or even worse multiple syllabi for multiple courses – can feel like staring up at that cliff. How in the world are you going to get all of this work done? The odds of survival can feel slim and you might feel completely overwhelmed.

Contemplating several months’ worth of work times several classes can make even the most ambitious and dedicated students nervous. You will probably be responsible for knowing hundreds of pages of material, attending hundreds of hours of lectures and putting in hundreds of hours of study time. Those hundreds add up! If you are feeling intimidated and thinking about dropping half of your classes to ease the pressure, you’re not alone. The beginning of the term is hard for a lot of students. Before you make a frenzied call to your parents telling them that you are dropping out and moving back home, take a moment to pause and consider the following.

Now is not the time to panic

That is perhaps the most hypocritical sentence I have ever written. When I was a student, I panicked every single term over every single syllabus. Just ask my mom…. What I learned from all that hysteria was that panicking was not helpful to me in any way, shape or form. It just caused me more stress which was the last thing I needed at that moment. I was so busy dealing with my emotional state that I didn’t have time to deal with the actual problem and take the steps I needed to take to make the term more manageable. Rather than solving the problem, panicking effectively creates a new problem. Now you have two problems instead of one.

Now is the time to plan

A much healthier and more productive reaction to those intimidating syllabi is a forming a robust plan to cope with all of the challenges they present. If you have a planner or a planning system, use it. Get out a big red pen and write all of the most important deadlines on your calendar. If you are a visual person, get a different color pen for each class or for each type of task and color code your planner. Be sure to schedule prep time, study time, reading time, research time, and writing time in the days and weeks leading up to those big deadlines. A looming deadline written in bold red letters doesn’t help to alleviate stress, but knowing that you have prepared for that deadline by taking all of the interim steps you need to take does turn the temperature down. Breaking large tasks down into smaller tasks makes them so much more manageable. If you don’t have a time management system, check out my Time Management Workshop and my Priorities and Productivity Workshop.

Find a friend

Pairing up with a friend or two in each class can help you to succeed in following the plan you just made. When you study together, you not only have more fun and learn more, but you are also less likely to procrastinate or to quit early. Positive peer pressure will make you show up for a study session when you would rather watch TikTok and will keep you proof reading when the first draft might feel good enough. You’ll also remember far more of what you discuss with your study group and what you teach them than you will remember what you read on your own or reviewed in your notes. Learning together is more fun and more effective. It’s also encouraging to have someone to commiserate with. Shared suffering is so much more tolerable!

Your professor wants you to succeed

It’s easy to cast the instructor in the role of the villain. They wrote the syllabus; they induced this panic; they must be diabolical masochists! Sure, it’s easy to foist the responsibility for the situation onto someone else to relieve your own stress, but in truth most professors care deeply about the subject they are teaching and about you as a student. They are smart people who care about you and your success. They can help you to sort through the syllabus and prioritize what’s most important. Part of succeeding in any class is figuring out what this particular instructor wants from you. Asking them in an honest and upfront manner is more effective and efficient than experimenting through the term. If they see your face in their office early, they will be more likely to help you later if you do get behind. Be sure to approach them during scheduled office hours or using their preferred method of contact (which is probably listed in the syllabus) and to come to your meeting prepared with copy of the syllabus and specific questions about it.

Worst case scenario

If you are still panicked and overwhelmed and truly think that you can’t complete all of your classes this term, schedule an appointment with your academic advisor. Be sure you know when the last day you can drop a class is and when the last day can you withdraw from a class is. Have them explain the difference between dropping and withdrawing. Ask for information about the impact drops and withdrawals have on your GPA, scholarships, financial aid, and graduation date. More information helps you make better decisions and avoid unpleasant surprises.

September can feel overwhelming and intimidating. Using healthy strategies to cope with your stress will help you move past the panic and keep you moving forward toward your goals.