Patrick: Well, first I think what’s most important is you need to figure out what you want to do. And so if you’re taking 15 hours of something you’re not interested in, it’s going to be a lot harder for you to complete and want to complete 15 hours a semester.

Mia: The ideal goal is to have 30 hours a year.

Laurel: If you take more at the beginning where it’s not as difficult as it is towards the end of your junior and senior year, you’re able to not take as many credit hours and then that lightens the load for you towards the end.

Patrick: The right tool I had to managing my 15 hours was again time management, and that’s the most important thing you can learn from college — time management in my opinion.

Laurel: You need that free time to also relax and get away from all the stress.

Mia: Your advisers are really really helpful. They are the experts in your classes and what you need to be taking.

Laurel: Personally, my first couple semesters I actually took 17 my first semester and 18 my second semester, and along with also playing volleyball.

Mia: you can do it. You just want to make sure that you know yourself and you know how all of your study habits are going to work,

Laurel: and not procrastinate, which I did at the beginning and I still kind of do sometimes.

Patrick: If you take 30 less minutes on Instagram or Facebook or any one of those social medias and you put that towards studying your notes over what you just had in class, you’ll be able to be that much further and succeed that much more on the upcoming quizzes and exams. That’ll make taking the 15 hours in order to graduate in four years much easier.

Mia: There’s not a secret to making college easy — you just have to put in the work. And yeah.

Mia: You’re never alone. It might seem like when you come here you’re like, “I don’t know a lot of people and now I’m in college and I moved away” — whether you moved away or stayed home — it’s just a big change.

Laurel: I actually was in the library so many hours I can’t even count the numerous hours, and I’ve been there so many times this semester. So that’s really helpful in there, being able to get away from everything. And there’s quiet rooms in there.

Mia: If you are in clubs or classes or sports, you meet people in those. Everybody is thinking the exact same thing you are about not having enough time or feeling like college is so overwhelming.

Patrick: So your advisor should be your best friend as far as your undergrad education. That’s because they will lay out your four-year plan and the first step to that is figuring out what you want to do and what you’re interested in.

Laurel: I would go in and they would help me at the beginning — help me schedule out all my four years of being here at Avila.

Mia: I had a four-year plan out ahead of me. So it was like, you should take about this many credits this semester, you need to be taking these classes, and you have this room to study and take these classes.

Laurel: And that really helped out to lessen what I had each semester. So I wasn’t overwhelmed with all the difficult classes one semester and then all the easy ones in the next semester.

Mia: I just kind of eased into college and really got used to like my studying habits and how college even worked.

Laurel: Your studies get away from you sometimes and you just want to go have fun on the weekends and go hang out with your friends. But in the end you want to graduate in your four years and so you need to prioritize what you need to do.

Patrick: I learned that through my first semester.

Time management is the most important part of college and once you acquire the skills to do that — through studying, making study groups — then you’re able to complete the 15 hours and end up graduating in the four years.