Productivity

Living in another country for the past two years has allowed me to reflect on how U.S. culture (especially in New York) is hyper-individualized, especially in terms of eating meals. In New York, this culture can be seen in chain restaurants’ packaging being designed for food to be taken to-go. While I’ve seen Starbucks in other countries offer ample seating and mugs to sit down and enjoy your coffee “café-style,” Starbucks in the United States does not even offer mugs, while chains such as Sweetgreen and Chipotle automatically make your food to-go so that you can eat it while you’re in your next meeting or doing other activities.

We’ve all been there. We’ve all felt stuck in limbo, staring blearily out of a musky and dank library with a foggy headspace we can’t shake off. If you’re feeling unproductive, restless, and in search of a change of pace, you’ve come to the right place. Although Columbia is home to many libraries with various personalities, it’s totally OK to not want to spend the majority of your waking hours in one of them. Here’s a gentle reminder that there are plenty of other accessible options (within walking distance) around Morningside Heights for you to hunker down and power through all that work that’s been piling up.

Be honest. Is there an assignment you should be doing right now, instead of being online? Instead of mindlessly scrolling on Instagram or taking another nap, here’s a list of eight ways you can avoid that problem set and still feel productive. Just because you aren’t finishing that paper doesn’t mean you can’t get your life in some sort of order.

Oftentimes, I’ll convince myself that I need a tube of toothpaste just to walk to Duane Reade. I offer sick friends soup from Pret partially so I can take a stroll down Broadway and get a breath of fresh air. I’ve convinced myself that Barnard Fitness Center is superior to Dodge simply because the walk is longer.

Have you ever sat down to do homework but instead spent the entire time browsing columbia buy sell memes? Told yourself you would check Snapchat for five seconds but that turned into five hours?

It's the classic finals problem: You roll out of bed at 10:23 a.m. (if you're disciplined) and it's the first morning of reading week. You trudge over to Butler only to find that every seat is already taken. Same thing goes if you're a night studier. At 10:23 p.m. it's just as packed. Seems like it's nearly impossible to get a table in Butler ever. (Well, that's technically not true.)

During my sophomore year, I had this notion in my head that I needed to find a summer job. This is Columbia, after all—if you didn't have an internship with Goldman Sachs, did you really even have a summer?

As the spring semester draws to a close, our peers and parents have started asking us a dreaded question far too many times: "What are you doing this summer?"