I’m starting to feel tired all the time, and while I’ve completely given up on this semester already, I want to know how to make sure that I have a functional schedule next semester.

Don’t give up hope just yet! There are still nine weeks left before the last day of classes this semester, and with Spring break coming up so soon, there’s a time set aside just for chilling out and re-calibrating your sleep schedule. While we’re out for the week, maybe take that time to observe your current patterns and plan for next semester accordingly. Perhaps you’ve just learned over the past few months that you’re a total night owl. That’s fine, but if you know that, it doesn’t make sense to have morning classes next fall if your body is telling you to stay awake until 2 a.m. every night. Having classes from noon onward should work well for anyone who has trouble getting up in the morning. If finding time for homework and studying are part of the problem, it’s also important to look at what activities you’re taking part in. As someone who jumped into four or five clubs when I first got to UNCW and slowly whittled it down to two, I can attest that clubs can be huge time vampires even if they’re something that you enjoy. College is a great place to have fun and experience new things, but not at the expense of your health. I hope you can get things in order and start to feel more on top of things!

xoxo

Sally Seahawk

I have no idea what to do about housing for next semester.  Last time I checked, I was about 100 spots down on the wait-list. How long should I wait before I start looking at off-campus housing?

The optimist in me is saying that if you stick around with the wait-list, people will drop out and the school will find somewhere to place you. However, if you’re not in the top twenty-or-so of the list now, I would definitely start to look at off-campus options at least as a back-up plan. If you’re looking at one specific apartment building and thinking, “This deal is too good to be true,” there’s probably someone else thinking it too, so it’s smart to have a lot of fall-back plans if you’re not ready to commit to off-campus housing. Living off-campus isn’t even that bad of a set-up, as most of the options promoted by UNC Wilmington are within a mile of the school and have direct shuttles to and from the campus throughout the day. It’s a different world than living on-campus, and working out contracts and roommate situations can be more complex with apartments than with dorms, but this same complexity can be necessary for helping you transition into the full-adulthood-shebang later on, so I’d say it’s definitely worth looking at.

xoxo

Sally Seahawk

My stories got rejected by Atlantis a few weeks ago. I wasn’t too broken up about it when it first happened, but it’s starting to hit hard now. Do you have any advice for a struggling writer?

With Atlantis working within the same office as The Seahawk and a handful of creative writers within the paper’s staff, questions about story rejections have been commonplace since the submission deadline on Feb. 4. One of the more important things to realize is that Atlantis’ seasonal magazines are pretty short, with the Spring 2018 issue in particular only featuring four non-fiction pieces, three fiction stories, and five poems. The UNCW’s creative writing department is pretty big, so the school’s big creative magazine was bombarded with hopeful candidates, and that’s not even including submissions to the art and photography sections. When you get that e-mail reading, “we were unable to find a place for your piece in this upcoming issue,” it’s not just an excuse to spare your feelings – it’s the truth. The next step is gathering your story and taking it elsewhere, as Atlantis doesn’t become the only creative magazine that matters simply because it’s the one nearest to you. A few literary magazine options tossed around The Seahawk’s editorial board include The Forge and Spilled Milk, and if since you never know how much tastes can differ between Atlantis’ selection team and those of other notable magazines, there’s no need to count out big names like The New Yorker just yet. Rejection is going to hurt no matter how much success you find, but don’t let it discourage you from continuing to try other avenues!

xoxo

Sally Seahawk