1. Stay Organized
If there’s anything that sends a student’s course-load spiraling out of control, it’s disorganization. By keeping a
few key components organized at all times, it is much easier to stay in control and stress-free. Keep your notes and binders tidy and organized by date and topic, when it comes time to write a test the materials you need to do well will all be in one place. To stay organized on a day to day basis, invest in a day planner, make lists, or use the calendar app on your phone to keep track of test dates, assignments, and extra curricular activities. Not only will this stop you forgetting to start your English paper prior to the night before it’s due, but also help you in balancing all the activities you may be juggling this semester. The last organizational tip may be the simplest, yet hardest to do, depending on your course-load. Staying on top of day to day assignments and studying for tests is a great organizational tool for beating stress, while staying on top of your class-work.
2. Live Healthy
Leading an active and healthy lifestyle is also a great way to reduce stress. Eating three nutritionally balanced meals a
day will improve your concentration, mood, and ability to learn. While sleeping for about eight hours each night will also help improve your moods, especially in relieving stress and tension, it also will improve your clarity, improving scholastic performance. Lastly, regular exercise is shown to also reduce stress as well as enhancing overall health and well being. At least 30 minutes of exercise is recommended daily.
3. Maintain a Healthy Work-Life Balance
While focusing on school, volunteering, and maybe having a part time job on the side is an important part of teenage life, as well as setting the stage for one’s future, its important to remember to make time for friends, family, and fun- maintaining an antiquate work-life balance. Not only will this keep your life fun and social throughout the school year, making time for the fun side of life will help reduce stress, giving your brain and body time to relax and unwind from daily stressors.
4. Know When Your Plate is Full
While its great to have goals of doing well in school, having countless volunteer hours, as well as having a job on the side, and whatever other aspirations you may have in mind, you need to know when enough is enough- before you reach your “breaking point.” Admitting that you’ve taken on too
much and laying off on what you feel is least important to you is better then waiting until you’ve completely broken down, or simply overwhelmed yourself later on down the road.
5. Prioritize
Even when you follow all of these tips; keeping yourself organized, living healthily, maintaining a healthy work-life balance, and not overwhelming yourself, there will be times when life simply throws more at you then is possible to do. It is times like these when it becomes crucial to examine what needs to be done and decide what comes first and is more important- prioritize. Even though you may not get everything you wanted to done, you’ll finish what was most important.




















The Gamestop Expo is an event that was started to show Gamestop store managers some new games and software from their partners. The expo occurs in Las Vegas at the Sands Expo center. This year, they opened the expo up for one more day for the public to enjoy. Electronic Arts, Activision-Blizzard, Sony, and Microsoft were a few of the vendors with their goods on display. I was lucky enough to get the chance to go to the Gamestop Expo. I would recommend this expo to anyone who likes video games because it is highly likely you will find at least one developer you would enjoy seeing.
The expo allowed guests to play released and un-released games. I personally tried BattleField 4. The developers clearly tried to make it more realistic than previous versions of the game, with buildings being much more destructible and being able to counter getting stabbed.
I also tried the Formula 1 2013, featuring realistic controls. These controls contained a gear shifter, steering wheel and multiple pedals. The game was quite challenging making it worth buying the infrastructure used for the realistic controls. I would only recommend this game (and the infrastructure) to hardcore racing fans. BattleField 4 will be released on Oct 29 and Formula 1 2013 will be released on Oct 4.
The last two games I will talk about are both music/guitar games. First I tried the Rocksmith guitar game at the Ubisoft booth. At this booth a Ubisoft presenter quickly explained the game to me and guided me through it. The game contained the ability to quickly change your level on a number scale between 1-100. I slightly disliked this game to the lack of variety in songs and I believe the visuals will confuse new players, as it did for me. Rocksmith 2014 will be available in October 2013 for the PC.
The second game I tried was Band Fuse. I began to play it and I enjoyed it so much more, because of the different visual displays of the notes I was required to play. The game was extremely easy to interpret and I constantly felt more comfortable with the controls. The scale on this game is the same but has a much more sensitive and realistic scale.








