With back to school in full swing this week and many of us back to studying our computer information systems books, I thought it would be a good idea to address a concern of many Freshmen which is often overlooked by parents and college advisers. This is the large sum of money freshmen college students often find not only burning a hole in their pockets, but are being encouraged to spend it. For many teenage PC enthusiasts, it is the first time their hobby is unrestricted and/or well funded. As someone with years of college experience, with a degree in progress, let me share some advice about maintaining your GPA while saving the universe from Reapers and Zombies.
Your College Major is a Factor in any Custom PC Build
I know what you’re thinking: A current generation gaming PC is more than enough power for school work. I will not deny that this is true for most college majors, but there are some special considerations you need to take into account. For example, if you are in college for Computer Engineering, you will need a serial port. This does not mean you should limit the selection to motherboards with serial ports, but just be aware you will be spending $10 to $15 on a serial to USB adapter or adding serial ports to your build via a back panel expansion bracket.
Spending $15 of your budget for an adapter is small, but your major could be a much larger investment. Graphical Design, Software Design, or any major involving graphics rendering can alter a build completely. You might think graphics would mean you want a powerful graphics card and you would be wrong. Programs you use for these majors like Maya and 3DS Max will eat as much CPU power and RAM as you give it. As far as graphics go, spending at least $150 on a professional GPU like the AMD FireGL or Nvidia Quadro would benefit you far more than a $700+ consumer gaming card.
This is not just for people with computer related majors either. If you are in college for an art related major or majors with a lot of audio/video editing you will need a lot of RAM, 5 Hour Energy Shots, and more RAM. This is different than a gaming rig as you need only 4 to 6 GB of RAM for even the most over powered system. A good editing computer will have 16 GB of RAM or more to keep things running smoothly.
When a computer is required for a major, you can find recommended specs online or get them from your adviser. Just remember to consider your major if the computer will double as a work machine. Not everyone will be have the luxury of lugging around two machines or have the space to put them in. Especially if you’re living in on campus housing in a very small dorm room.
Keep College Work and PC Gaming Separate
If your college major is simply not a factor in your PC selection, it is still a factor in a PC build that should last you for most of your academic career. When you are sitting in front of a computer built to play the latest and greatest games, it’s hard to keep working on your English Lit paper. The best thing you can do in this case is to simply not do college assignments on your gaming PC. If you spend your entire PC budget on your uber desktop, do your assignments somewhere else. Go to the library, the coffee shop, another friends room, dorm lobby, or anywhere away from your gaming rig. Let your room mate play a few rounds of Battlefield on your uber rig while you do your work on their system.
If you’d rather work on your own PC, then make room in your budget for a less expensive laptop. Remember, this computer is for college and not portable gaming. This time you want to focus on overall performance and not raw power. First, do not buy a netbook for school work. The 11” screen will cause eye strain headaches that feel like someone hit you in the head with a baseball bat after a few hours of squinting. An average screen around 15”, smallish HDD, dual core CPU, and 2 or 3 GB of RAM should be plenty. While this will cut into your gaming PC budget, it is more than worth it because a degree is more valuable than a level 80 Paladin. Battery life may also be a consideration so do check out AMD’s new APU powered notebooks or INTEL Core i3. Notebooks in this range can be had for around $500 or less and provide all day battery performance.
If you do decide to go the laptop route, you have to treat your laptop like a work computer. Don’t install unncessary software, especially if it’s a game. If its not school related, don’t install it. This means no movies, no Netflix, no music, no IM. If you use this laptop to take notes in class, disable the WiFi. Paying attention in class instead of reading Facebook status updates, or twitter posts will save you study time and allow you to enjoy an extra round of Starcraft II after class.
Set Your Priorities
If you are not one of the few with scholarships and grants to cover college expenses, then all the money you just got from your parents, the government, and loan offices will be gone very soon. It may seem like a lot when you first get it, but the “cost of living” is something I can’t even explain to you. Just trust me when I say you need to set a budget for the PC you are building or buying after you have a place to shower and enough to feed yourself properly. Once you grasp the concept that everything from toilet paper to ice cream comes out of your money, you will have an idea of what you can spend on a PC.
Once you have a budget, you need to start with some basic questions that we’ve briefly touched on in the previous page. Are you considering buying a companion laptop for school work? Will you need some customizations done to your PC for your major? Why did you buy pots and pans when you don’t even know how to boil water? You need to set your priorities.
Once you know what you need and want, do not go over budget. It will start with $15 over to get a better gaming mouse, or quieter case fans, and then it will snowball into $500 over budget in no time. Resistance is not futile. It will get you through school.
Don’t Go Over Your Budget
When you are selecting parts, if you ever ask yourself, “How long would I have to eat Ramen noodles to get the ATI HD 6990 instead of a HD 6950?” The answer is long enough to start crying every time you open a pack to cook one of your fifteen recipes for them. Your academic performance means feeding yourself right as well. Jamie Oliver didn’t frack around with the school lunch systems for nothing. If you feed yourself well, you will feed your brain well.
All you have to do to maintain your budget is follow these 2 rules. First, buy the companion laptop first. A laptop in the $350 to $475 range should be more than enough to write documents, spreadsheets, work on Mathmatica, and Blackboard online enough to make you want to kill bad web designers. The second thing is to build what you want within reason and downgrade into your budget. If you have an $1100 budget, build your $1250 dream machine, then downgrade items to fit your budget. It may seem counter intuitive after telling you not to go over your budget, but it will help to put your final PC build in perspective.
Time Management Without the Management
Once you have your system situation figured out, how do you avoid letting time slip away while you are killing zombie-alien Nazis? The best way is to turn your time management into something that just is apart of your day and not something you have to force upon yourself. Let me show you some common mistakes college students make that you should avoid.
Do not stack all your classes one after another in the middle of Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. First, going through 5 straight hours of college classes is more draining than you think. Second, it leaves little time to let what you have just been taught or lectured on to really sink in. Put 1 to 2 hour gaps between classes, especially your major specific classes. These are often in the same building, so you don’t have to walk anywhere to get to your next class. Take the one or two hour gaps between classes to study, clean up notes, start assignments, finish preparing for a test, etc.
The screenshot above is obviously not the ideal schedule, but it is a good representation of what you can expect you schedule to be. This is an example of how you mould some of your study and work time into your daily routine. This allows you plenty of time for other activities, gaming, additional study, and plenty of sleep. Maybe even a social life.
Do not use your games as a break from school work. When you take a break from an assignment, take an actual break. Relax for 15 minutes, watch a little TV, or taking an afternoon nap at 10:00 a.m. Use your gaming time as a reward for your work. Once you have finished an assignment and don’t have any other work that needs your immediate attention, reward yourself by powering up the gaming PC. A game is much more satisfying when you are schooling noobs because you honestly don’t have anything more important to do.
Final Thoughts
I know these tips may not be for everyone, but you should try to apply them anyway. I am sure people have told you that you are there to get your education first and foremost. This is true, but college is also a transitional period to help prepare you for real life. The degree and education is important and should be at the top of your list of tasks, but try not to forget to experience college. You have to maintain a social life, and whether it’s with other gamers, or with an entirely different crowd, these are the people that you may rely on to advance your career in the future.
Learning to manage your time, keeping a hobby in check while meeting new people, and finding that special someone are all a part of college life. Don’t fixate on one thing, especially PC gaming. If you do, you’ll forget to enjoy everything else. Even the college assignments can be fun when you are not too drunk or too sleepy to understand them and at the end of the day, when you’re done them, don’t forget to treat yourself to that game with your new friends and room mates. Everyone’s in the same boat so make sure you support each other. If everyone else is studying, you should be too.
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