Catherine Allen 🥉

I feel your pain with that tight schedule, but honestly, you're probably going to burn out no matter what.

Hey Cooper, It is rarely too late to switch in junior year, but the timeline depends on how much overlaps with your new major and on course sequencing. Run a What-If or degree audit in your student portal, select the new major, and print the list of remaining requirements. Check your catalog year and the major map, and note which prerequisites are fall only or require multi term sequences. Then meet your current advisor, the new department advisor, and the registrar to lay out a term by term plan to 120 credits and see the graduation date impact. Ask about prerequisite overrides if you can take a course concurrently to avoid waiting a full year. To reduce delay, try to have old major courses count as electives or toward a minor, file course substitution petitions, and use summer or winter terms to catch up on sequences. If your school allows it, finish lower division or general education at a community college using the transfer equivalency tool, and consider CLEP or departmental credit by exam for language or intro courses. Watch residency and upper division minimums, and confirm your financial aid SAP status and the 150 percent time rule so extra credits do not jeopardize aid. I switched from mechanical to computer science at the start of junior year and used calculus, physics, and linear algebra to satisfy the CS math and science core, took Data Structures in summer, and had Numerical Methods approved as a technical elective. That plan put me one semester behind, which was worth it, and I started internship prep early since recruiting in CS kicks off a year ahead.

Right, i feel you on forgetting stuff and it's like my brain is a sieve sometimes. I've lost so many phones because I set them down and poof, they're gone from my memory. For textbooks, what kinda works but not always is reading a section, then immediately trying to explain it out loud to myself like I'm teaching an invisible class. It sticks a bit better that way, but honestly, half the time I still blank on exams. Maybe jot down key points in your own words right after, that helps reinforce it. Don't expect miracles though, our brains are tricky like that.

When I am in a hurry I do a quick clean then a proper wash later. Unplug pop the filters out and take them outside, and give them a light tap. Then use a little puff of air from a hand blower or even the exhaust side of another vacuum to blow through the foam from the clean side out. Keep your face out of the dust cloud and do short bursts so you do not tear anything. Not for HEPA cartridges since those are delicate and for those I only tap gently or replace on schedule. To avoid waiting on dry time I keep a spare set ready. I picked up the Shark Replacement Filter Set that model and now I can swap in clean filters and wash the dirty ones when I have time. With two cats this routine saves me every time company is on the way.

Countertop diverter for the win with your setup. It lets you fill kettles fast and the water tastes cleaner without waiting on a pitcher. Easy install. If your faucet does not have a removable aerator then go with a big pitcher and a long life cartridge. Replace the countertop cartridge every six to eight months and the long life pitcher cartridge about every six months while the short ones are closer to two months if you use it a lot.

The trick is to switch from re-reading to retrieval. Chunk a chapter by subheadings, read a small section with full attention for 5–10 minutes, then close the book and write down everything you can recall in your own words plus one or two key formulas or diagrams. Turn each subheading into a specific question and answer it from memory, then reopen to check gaps and fix only what you missed. Build brief flashcards from those questions with tight prompts, and include drawings or worked steps where relevant to use dual coding. End the chapter with a two minute blank page brain dump and a 150 word summary from memory, then compare to the text and patch holes. Use spaced recalls the same day, the next day, three days later, and a week later, each time answering your own questions or doing a short mixed quiz without notes. For quantitative subjects, follow each recall with two or three fresh problems that match the section objectives, and for concept heavy ones, explain the idea aloud as if teaching and generate one concrete example per concept. Time budget wise, plan roughly 2–3 minutes of focused reading per page plus 1–2 minutes of immediate recall and question writing, so a 20 page chapter is about 60–100 minutes on day one. Add two short spaced sessions of 15–25 minutes each in the following week, which is where most of the long term retention comes from. If a chapter is dense or you are missing more than a third of your recall during checks, slow the chunk size and use 25 minute blocks with 5 minute breaks, and interleave topics in later reviews to improve exam transfer.

I keep misplacing phones and logins, so I get the chaos; stuff will go sideways right when midterms hit. Expect at least one blown evening from kid fever or overtime, so build slack: one no‑class night per week and professors who record lectures. Put every deadline in two places, and keep copies of syllabi and notes in the cloud so one lost device doesn't tank you.