By Adam Shroeder
Aurum Staff

School of Mines students are no strangers to studying. With classes that have a demanding curriculum and professors with high expectations, studying becomes a time consuming must. There comes a point though where one must choose how to manage time. One’s social life and academic work are a delicate balance. Too much studying and you become stressed and unhappy for lack of socializing and relaxing. Too much time spent socializing and relaxing and grades slip. So how do we balance the two of these?

The best way to mix a social life and academic work is to study in teams, or with a friend. I’ve found that by studying in the company of friends, comprehension and retention of material increases. It creates a relaxing friendly environment to learn. You can quiz each other back and forth and gain a better understanding of the material by seeing how others think. However the key to this type of studying is a joint understanding of the primary goal: LEARNING! If we get distracted amongst friends and it becomes complete socialization it defeats the purpose.

The key to college is balance. We have to manage our time and balance our studying with our lives. The idea of studying with friends is to make this balance much easier. It allows us to catch up on the week’s events and weekend plans. But it also gives us a stress free environment in which to unwind and attempt to learn our rigorous curriculum. We can socialize and study at the same time. This can be seen as a form of multi-tasking, and when it comes to college multi-tasking is a much needed skill.