College Success Tip – Stay On Campus

Especially during your freshman year, you will most likely be homesick at some point.  You might miss your parents, your friends from high school or a significant other; there is nothing wrong with this at all.  You should try to get home for a weekend during each semester, but no more than once or twice.

By leaving campus every weekend, you are missing out on a great opportunity to meet new people, get involved in new activities and experience stuff you never imagined.  Many students transfer after a semester because they left every weekend and never even gave the school a fair shot.

Even though the temptation to leave may be great, you have to give your school a fair shot and this means staying on campus for the majority of the weekends for an entire year.  You cannot go back and forth for one semester and decide that a place isn’t right for you, it takes longer than that to make an educated decision.

By leaving campus frequently, you are robbing yourself of friends and experiences that you could be having on campus.

The Bottom Line:  Like so many things in life, there is an easy thing to do and a more difficult thing to do.  The “easy thing” in this situation is to leave campus every weekend to be back in your comfort zone.  The difficult thing, which is also the right thing, is to give yourself every chance to succeed in your new environment.  By leaving all the time you could be missing out on the time of your life!

College Success Tip – Take Care Of Yourself Physically

You have probably heard of the “Freshman 15” – this is where you gain 15 pounds your freshman year from eating junk food, not working out and crashing one too many parties.  Everyone knows about it, but somehow most people are unable to avoid it.  There is a happy medium between having fun and taking care of yourself, so just like everything else, make sure that you have balance.

A couple easy rules to follow so that you can take good care of yourself:

• Workout at least 3 days a week (this could include running outside, going to the gym or playing an intramural sport)
• Eat healthy (its OK to cheat once in awhile, but educate yourself on proper eating habits so that you know the types of foods to avoid)
• Get into a routine (have a diet, workout regularly, go to bed and wake up at the same times)
• Don’t do drugs (they are a waste of money and brain cells)

If you are in good physical shape you will feel better about yourself, be more active, get more done and feel better mentally.  Your physical health will also have an impact on your classroom performance as well.

The Bottom Line:  It might be tempting to get into some poor habits with your new found freedom, but make sure you are staying balanced.  Getting out of shape is much easier than it is to get back in shape, so create a good routine that balances having fun and taking care of yourself.

College Success Tip – Have Great People Skills

Having great people skills simply means that you can communicate well with a variety of people, understand what they are saying to you and have them understand what you are saying to them.  Make it a goal of yours to get along and communicate with everyone that you interact with.  It will benefit you for the rest of your life to develop this skill.

People always want to help and work with people who they like and trust.  Someone’s likeability is much more important than the way he dresses or how smart he is.  Everyone just wants to be around “people like them” who they can relate to and have a conversation with.  Be likeable and you’ll be just fine.

The Bottom Line:  Regardless of what activities you are involved with in school and what career you get into after you gradate, you will be around people for the rest of your life.  The better your people skills are, the better relationships that you will be able to build with others.

College Success Tip – Study At The Library

Some people claim that they get more out of studying when the television is on in front of them – they may feel like they are retaining the information, but it is very difficult to have a quality study session with distractions.  Throw in phone calls, text messages, emails, people and all kinds of other distractions, and it becomes pretty much impossible to be productive.  You will end up spending hours of your time getting nothing done, which is a complete waste of time.  If you just go to the library, put your cell phone on silent and find a quiet room you’ll get more done in one hour than you would sitting in your dorm room for five hours trying to study.

Studying at the library is an efficient and effective way to get significantly more accomplished in much less time.  You will survive for an hour without a text message, phone call or email, even if it is hard to believe.

The Bottom Line:  When you need to study, find a quiet spot in the library, put the phone on silent and get it finished.  Don’t waste hours on end thinking you are being productive while you are really not getting anything done.  One hour of focused studying is quicker and more effective than hours of putting forth a minimal effort with constant distractions.

College Success Tip – Determine The Right Major For You

Before you spend 4 years in college studying something and then 100,000+ hours in the “real world” working in a certain field, don’t you think it would be wise to spend some time determining the proper major?  It is easy to say, “Lots of people do something that has nothing to do with their major after college,” but that isn’t an excuse to waste four years of classes and tuition doing something you either don’t enjoy or have no desire to do after college.

If you are unsure of what to major in, spend some time meeting with academic advisors in various departments throughout the university.  Also seek out professionals in those areas and see if you can take them out to lunch, shadow them at their offices for the day or even do an internship.  You’ll have a much better idea of what you like and don’t like once you go through this process – it’s better to spend a little bit of time figuring out what you don’t like now versus figuring it out after you studied it in college and spend your first couple years doing it after you graduate.

Also, don’t be afraid to switch majors while you are in school.  Again, it is better to figure this stuff out early in the game than to wait until a year or two after you graduate to figure it out.  Your parents might be picking up the tab on your first degree, but I bet they will be a lot less willing the second time around.

Many times, majors are chosen for the wrong reasons.  A few examples of the wrong ways to choose a major include:

• “I’m doing it because both of my parents were (major)’s”
• “(major)’s make way more money than (major)’s”
• “Only (characteristic) can be (major)’s”
• “Being a (major) is way too much work”

If you aren’t sure what you would like to major in, here is the biggest word you need to know:  passion.  Figure out what you love to do, study it in college and then do it in the “real world.”  Don’t worry about what fields hire more frequently, who makes more money during their first year out of college, or any of the other irrelevant items that too many people will lead you to believe are important.  At the end of the day you will be happier and more successful if you simply major in something that you enjoy.

The Bottom Line:  Pick the right major for yourself, not the best one for your parents or the one that you think will make you the most money.  In the long run, life is too short to not be happy and enjoy yourself.  If you are able to find something you enjoy and learn about it on your campus, you’ll be off to a great start!

5 Things College Student Activity Coordinators Need to Know About Social Media

I wanted to share a video I just posted on YouTube – it is from a talk I recently gave in Las Vegas to student activity coordinators from around the country on how to use Social Media to improve their campus organizations.  The following clip is the 5 things that activity coordinators need to know about social media and the impact it can have on their student organizations if the right strategy is implemented.  Enjoy!

For more information on bringing Tom Healy to your campus to speak on social media, check out a list of his programs HERE!

Campus Activities: 4 Reasons to Incorporate Social Media Into Your Student Organizations Marketing Immediately

For some of you, the first website you check every morning is Facebook.  For others, you have no interest in this social media craze and already have your hands full with the pile of daily emails you receive.  Regardless of which side you lean towards, you must realize one very important thing – social media is here and it isn’t going away.

So what is social media?  It is simply real people having conversation online, through websites such as Facebook, Twitter and Blogs.  As use of these sites continues to grow substantially, especially by the students on your campus, it has become essential to incorporate social media into your marketing efforts.

As an undergraduate, I was heavily involved in student activities as an IFC President and Vice President, treasurer of my fraternity for two years and held leadership positions on a variety of councils.  I wish we would have had these social media tools available to us because we could have made a much larger impact on the university community.  Fortunately, I am able to advise student organizations across the country on how to use social media to carry out the mission of their organizations; using these tools the right way leads to huge results for organizations.

The great thing about social media is that it is very easy to use and costs absolutely nothing!  Let’s take a look at the 4 major reasons why you need to incorporate social media into your marketing efforts immediately:

Social Media is Not a Fad
It is here and it is here to stay.  Businesses are investing millions of dollars into these initiatives because they know how powerful a well-developed social media strategy can be for them.  Student organizations are just like a business – goals are in place and there is a mission that needs accomplished.

People Listen to People
14% of our country trusts advertisements, while 78% trust the recommendations of other consumers.  Students are exponentially more likely to attend an event that a friend recommends on Facebook versus an event they see advertised in the paper or flyers they see on campus walls. Why invest money in advertisements and flyers when Twitter posts from students are free and more effective?

People Are Talking About You Right Now
As you are reading this, students on your campus are putting up Facebook statuses about the campus event they are attending, the activity meeting they have this evening or the council position they are running for.  These conversations are going to happen with or without you – they key is to make sure your organization is part of the conversation!

Social Media is Becoming Critical For Any Organization
Millenials are spending 16+ hours per week online and 90% of them have social media accounts with an average of 53 friends.  The goal is for your organization to have a presence in these online communities.  Also note that students don’t care about advertisements, they care what their friends think.  If their friends are talking up your organization and programming, they will be much more likely to attend than they will from the ad in your paper.

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Tom Healy’s “Done-For-You Social Media Workshop” shows student organizations how to use their social media accounts to create campus awareness, recruit new members, increase attendance at events and accomplish their overall mission more quickly.  APCA schools are entitled to a FREE keynote talk from Tom Healy when they bring this workshop to campus.

Contact Tom Healy:
(p) 623.239.4096
(e) tom@reachyourvision.com
(w) www.reachyourvision.com