Out of curiosity, what have you started doing differently?

Took a class in college called “college success”, and it was literally a class on just getting your shit together. A lot of the information was stuff that everyone already knows, but having it actually spelled out, defined, and being shown how it positively effects your life was absolutely game changing for me.

SMART was one of the first lessons. I don’t look at the whole acronym for setting goals anymore, but the ones I do focus on are measurable and achievable - it doesn’t do you any good to say, “I want to build my savings up” or “I’m gonna grind hard, take 20 units this semester and graduate a semester early”. You’ll never feel like you’ve built your savings up enough if you don’t have a specific goal in mind, and setting unreasonable goals to “push yourself” will just make you feel like a failure, even if you knew the goal was unattainable (I’ve always hated the “shoot for the moon, if you miss you’ll hit the stars” attitude - I set reasonable goals, and when I achieve them, they are raised. Setting a goal you know you can’t reach is almost always going to demotivate you from ever trying to reach it)

Just want to add. Don’t ask them a question, waiting with a prepared response to whatever they say. Go into the conversation with an idea of what you want to say, sure, but don’t ask someone a question you don’t intend to fully listen to the answer of in an attempt to make a smooth segue.

If you ask what she’s been doing lately, and she doesn’t happen to mention her hobbies, but she does engage the conversation with you and tells you about her week, day, whatever, make sure you’re present and listening, and don’t immediately blow her response off with, “well I do XYZ, ever try?”

You got this!

I genuinely miss Rage Comics.