Did you know that Parkland College has free counseling services available to its students? The Counseling Support Center, “[offers] free 60-minute workshops designed to provide information/understanding and coping skills focused on common issues facing you in college and in life.”
Parkland Mental Health Counselors lead these workshops, which allow students to ask questions and share experiences with one another. The last workshop that the counseling center had this semester was titled “Planning for the Future.” This was the last scheduled workshop for the spring semester, but Parkland will resume these workshops in the fall.
At this workshop, the speaker, Angela Jancola, discussed mindsets and ideas to implement into your life. Here are some topics that the Jancola included in her talk:
Time
The first step in planning your future is thinking about how you spend your time now. Jancola said, “Time is a finite commodity.” How do you split up your time between school, studying, work, and other obligations? Working a full-time job as a full-time student can be a lot of stress and responsibility. Evaluating how you spend your time is the first step in making goals to schedule your time in an effective manner.
Past, Present, and Future
Remember, you cannot change the past. People are often still so worried about what happened in the past that they are not able to focus on the future. Instead, think about what you learned from the past that you can now apply to future scenarios. Think about where you can make a difference in your habits or schedule that will allow you to meet your future goals.
The speaker says to be mindful, be present, and focus on the present. Focusing on what is happening in the present allows you to change what will happen in the future.
Goals
A helpful mindset that Jancola said to have is, “treat goals like they are your job.” Thinking of your goals as your job allows you to hold yourself accountable. It also gives you motivation to complete and maintain your goals on a daily basis. When you prioritize important things, stuff gets done.
Here are a few tips Jancola shares:
- Stay in one location to get work done. For example, staying at school after class to get all your homework done. Getting your work done earlier in the day means you can go home and be ready to tackle the next day.
- A change in environment can help you focus. Including places like a library, coffee shop, empty classroom, outside, and more.
- Reach out for help, whether that be instructors, peer tutoring, or others.
- Larger goals are achievable via smaller goals. For example, doing half of an assignment one day and the other half another day splits the workload.
- Longer-term goals are not as obtainable without completion of immediate goals.
Reward yourself
Remember that everyone deserves and needs to take breaks. Planning daily awards like a coffee, nap or funny video, are tools that help affirm our accomplishments throughout the day. It is also important to schedule time for yourself. As stated earlier, it is important to hold yourself accountable. That also includes acknowledging your hard work, whether the achievement be small or large.
Jancola said, “But also note, that needs to be planned as well. You need to look at your schedule as, what is the primary times that you can plan on being productive and getting things done. And then what are the things that you can kind of insert to give yourself like an actual break.”
Reminders from the speaker
- Change is possible and it matters
- What you tell yourself matters
- What do you spend time on?
- Are you approaching it differently?
- Focus on the now/present
- Keep it simple and do chunks of work at a time
- Care
All counseling workshops are from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. and advertise having free pizza if you attend in person. The workshops are held in Room U140, but you can also attend online via Teams. For more information about Parkland’s counseling services, you can visit, Counseling Services.
