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DECEMBER
What’s Going On this Month:The high-level excitement of the holidays as well as the intense pressure of exams make December a month of extreme highs and lows for students. Some students may find it difficult to concentrate and may have problems with procrastination. The pressures of end-of-term exams are more intense and the realities of the academic work load can sometimes be overwhelming. International students who may not be going home for the holidays may find it especially difficult as their friends are leaving for home. As applications are available in January, some students may be considering the possibility of running for residents’ council next year or becoming employed as a residence staff member. In addition, the concern about where to live next year is also beginning to become a concern at this time. Some additional student concerns this month include:
Time Management:Most universities have guidelines that govern how much a student should work, particularly during the first year. The recommended commitment is usually ten to twelve hours per week. Most students have trouble managing any more than that. Students often find that the balance of work, social life, and academics difficult at first...Time management is often at the root of problems balancing study demands. Most campuses have programs to help students learn to manage competing demands. Some students thrive when they are busy; others need more downtime in order to cope with the pressures of university. Note: Learning Skills Counsellors in Student Development Services or staff in the Centre for New Students have resources to help improve time management skills. What to Do :
What to Avoid :
Coming Home for the Holidays:Parents who are excited about having their child come home for the holidays may be shocked to see such dramatic changes in their child’s appearance. Parents assume these changes are profound and lasting; they probably aren’t. While the student will maintain a “no big deal” attitude toward these changes, they are symbolic of a need to differentiate from parents and to begin to create a new and separate identity. Most experts on human development point to late adolescence as a particularly important time in an individual’s identity formation...As the parent of a university student experimenting with a new identity, you need to decide which battles to wage. Most students will experiment a bit with new looks and personal appearance. Remember the late sixties and early seventies when families engaged in raging battles about hair length and rock music? A lot of damage was done over relatively trivial issues in those days. Today we are faced with tattoos, body piercing, and even stranger tastes in music and entertainment. These aspects of popular culture are important to adolescents. For example, take a walk in the mall and notice how you can categorize young people. You can tell the jocks from the nerds, the alternatives from the popular crowd, simply by the way they dress. When your son or daughter became a teenager, you probably noticed how all the teenagers looked alike and spent of a lot of time talking to friends about what kind of music and what musical groups they liked. Music, appearance, and other somewhat superficial aspects of popular culture define social groups for adolescents, much as neighbourhoods, profession, church affiliation, and political and community involvement define social groups for adults. For adolescents, these social groups provide a temporary group identity while they search for their own individual identity. What to Do :
What to Avoid :
Responsive Programming Activities in Residence:
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