Somewhere during the summer we end up with summer goals that look incredible on paper and in our minds. Read twelve books, learn film photography, get in shape, journal every morning, finally figure out this whole life. Then the list is buried under a beach towel and we feel a little behind on a season that was supposed to be the break.

Seven Amazon study essentials that actually earn a spot in your bag. All under twenty dollars.

How does a 10-minute habit sound? Just once a week, and your relationship with your schedule changes noticeably. The weekly check-in is not a productivity ritual with seventeen steps. It is a short, intentional pause to look ahead, remember what matters, and set yourself up so you are not surprised by your own life.

Back to school outfits that feel like you, work for real campus days, and do not need a whole new wardrobe or a big budget.

The Eisenhower Matrix is one of the most useful prioritization tools for students because it is simple, it works on paper or in a notes app, and it solves exactly that problem. Here is how to use it — plus an interactive version you can fill in and print right on this page.

Meet Ayden Crawford! She is talented, smart and hard working. Here is some advice from her, and things she does as apart of her college routine.

Staying local for summer does not mean settling. It means figuring out what is actually there — which, in most places, is more than people give it credit for. Here is how to have a genuinely good summer without going anywhere.

Dr. Sarah Howes is a music professor at Southwest Baptist University. She has been teaching here for a couple years now. Pouring her heart and soul into the music department. Whether it be through voice lessons, on the stage of a musical, in the dramatic scenes on an opers, and even in the meeting room. Dr. Howes is a truly inspiring professor here in Bolivar, MO.

You open the app for three minutes and suddenly everyone is somewhere beautiful, doing something fun, looking like they are having the summer of their life. And you are on your couch and it is a Tuesday and somehow you feel worse than you did before you opened your phone.

Sometimes it goes like this: you open the group chat at 11pm the night before something is due and see that you are still the only person who has touched the shared doc. Or watch the loudest person in the group steamroll a meeting and assign you the least interesting part. Or realizing that one of your group members has not responded to a single message in eleven days.

A fun, no-pressure college packing list, sorted by category so nothing slips through the cracks. The stuff that actually makes dorm life easier, plus what you can happily leave at home.

The barrier to entry is actually just a dark sky and about ten minutes of patience and the payoff is one of those rare things that makes you feel genuinely small in a good way.

How to stay close with friends over summer when everyone scatters back home, plus the small habits that keep college friendships strong without forcing it.

Maisie is going into her senior year at Bolivar High School, where she stays busy with football season, track and field, wrestling, choir, and student council. If you know Maisie, you know she is a fun person to be around, with the sweetest smile and the most contagious laugh.

Looking at your schedule the week before classes start and realizing you signed up for 18 credit hours is a specific kind of stomach drop. Maybe you needed the hours to stay on track for graduation. Maybe the schedule looked fine in April and looks insane in August. Either way, you are here now, and figuring out how to handle a heavy class load in college is the actual job for the next few months.

Somewhere around late May every year, the pressure to have an amazing summer quietly arrives. It shows up in the posts you start seeing, the plans your friends are making, the vague sense that this particular stretch of time should be meaningful and memorable and full of things worth sharing.

Knowing how to retain information when studying is not about reading slower or harder. It is about working with the way your brain actually stores information, instead of against it.

Every summer there is a version of the bucket list that lives in your head and a version that actually happens. The one in your head involves travel and concerts and big experiences.

The one that actually happens is mostly hanging out, a few really good days, and some memories you did not plan.

Summer means longer days, warmer air, the feeling that you should leave the to do list behind or maybe you just need to add sunshine to the to do list.

If you have ever finished a 75 minute lecture and looked down at your notes only to realize you have eight pages of unconnected sentences and no idea what the professor was actually trying to say, this one is for you.