Fall is almost upon us, and with that comes the shortening of days and frigidity in the air. Gone are those long, hot, and sunny summer days, and people are often left depressed in its wake. There is a name for the blues some people experience in the colder months; seasonal affective disorder (SAD). When left unchecked, it can lead to serious depression and a whole host of issues, so it’s best to be avoided. Here are four tips to beat SAD, and to make fall and winter just as fun and exciting as summer:

1. Vitamin D: this vitamin is vital in maintaining good mood, and it’s most readily available through the sun. Long, dark days make it harder to get sunshine, so make sure you go outside for at least ten minutes a day in the sun. If not possible, pop a Vitamin D supplement, your mood will thank you.
2. Go on vacation; having something to look forward to does wonders for the mood, and a change of scenery and pace can defeat the cold season doldrums. Plan a trip, it doesn’t have to be extravagant or exotic, and see how your perspective changes.
3. Exercise: activity of all forms, especially cardio, has been proven to boost endorphin production, a hormone responsible for good mood. Working out outside can provide the double whammy of activity and sunshine, but the gym is an excellent resource when it gets ugly out there.
4. Pamper yourself; with the nasty weather, short days, and holidays of the colder months, people often neglect themselves. It’s important to take care of yourself on a personal level, be it massage, a pedicure, or even just a hot bath. Make sure this fall and winter you don’t forget about yourself, and if a schoolwork-overload is preventing you from some pampering, visit Unemployed Professors, who specialize in your well-being.

College can be tough, especially for freshmen coming in to a new environment. It can be overwhelming living alone for the first time, and the freedom combined with responsibility can prove to be a heady mix. Many have crumbled under the pressure of the first-year of college, but you don’t have to. Start by investing some time in becoming organized. Buy a planner, download an app, and mark your calendars, as this can save so much time in the long run. Keep your space organized and you won’t waste time looking for lost things, or forgetting that a ten-page paper is due tomorrow.

Organization can help you stay ahead, which is another important aspect of success as a college freshman. With the freedom of college, it can be easy to leave assignments and studying to the last minute, which can and will catch up with you. Instead, use your new-found organization skills to stay ahead of the curve. Beat procrastination and do things as soon as you can after they’re assigned. This will help with your grades, as well as ease up a lot of stress in your mind.

Speaking of stress, it’s important to find activities outside of the lecture hall that you can focus on. This will help you deal with stress, and make your quality of life better overall during this time of transition. Join a club, make some friends, and make sure you include some time to party and blow off some steam. If you find that school work is just taking up too much of your time, head on over to Unemployed Professors. They specialize in letting you not neglect your important social life.

Summer is almost over, and that means fall keggers, pumpkin spice everything, and tailgating with wings, shots, and carbs. Packing on the pounds gets easier the more we cover up with clothes, and before we know it, we can’t fit into our summer daisy dukes for the Halloween party. Here are some tips on how to avoid the cool weather weight gain that inevitably seems to creep up:

1. Make it a skinny: Fall beverages are part of the allure of the cooler months. Nothing is cozier than drinking a sugary, creamy concoction with extra whip cream on a dark fall night. Buyer beware; those drinks are loaded with calories, making them a deceptively effortless way to see the number on the scale rise. Try not to drink your calories this fall, you’re going to need them.

2. Get a hobby: Many outdoor activities are more challenging during the cooler and shorter fall day, making sedentary evenings on the couch with snacks a viable option. Don’t fall into this trap; instead of Netflix and chill, rediscover your love of reading, drawing, or music.

3. Pick up the pace: chilly days mean warm cars, as people avoid walking outside in lieu of an automotive journey. Instead of driving, walk where you can, bundling up in the process. Activity in cold weather is especially effective in weight loss since the body expends more calories warming itself. So, instead of buckling in this fall, go for a walk, or better yet a jog outside; and if you find that schoolwork is robbing you of exercise time, make sure you visit Unemployed Professor to get some much needed free-time.

…and remember, one of our friendly, tweed-wearing Unemployed Professors is happy to help you tame the essay writing monster.

According to a threatening email my company received today, Ray Hammond thinks I should “burn in hell” for starting this site and hopes that I “choke on [my] money.” This message was sent from his official email account at the New York Quarterly, a non-profit and poetry publication.  

Instead of responding to this highly unpoetic message in kind, I am choosing to be the bigger person in this situation and I therefore made a gift to your organization. 

I began Unemployed Professors to help out both struggling students in a credential-oriented, capitalist educational system, as well as under-employed academics who may be struggling to pay for food, medical bills, or childcare.  

Mr. Hammond, I respect the work you do and hold your own organization in high regard. You don’t need to respect mine, but veiled threats and evocations of eternal damnation are uncalled for. After taxes, this is the largest donation I can afford to make this holiday season. 

Unlike NYQ, my organization would never under any circumstances wish death, violence, or eternal damnation on anyone. I hope you will use this gift to reflect on the true goals and values of your organization, as well as how you use its official communication channels.

In today’s day and age, people have the ability to engage in a more diverse range of hobbies than ever before. Some are physical activities, things like yoga and Zumba, which challenge the body and contribute to bodily health. Others, such as interactive gaming, stimulate the mind and, if interactive, create social situations for people who may otherwise be more introverted in their everyday lives. A hobby that’s been around for a long time, but is gaining popularity due to the technology driven world around us is creative writing. Something that is completely free to do, creative writing has the ability to improve one’s vocabulary, language, and cognitive reasoning skills.

Money is an issue for many people, and finding a hobby that can fit into a tight budget may seem daunting. Creative writing only costs time and the rewards that can stem from it are innumerable, especially when it comes to developing language skills. In the present culture of text messaging and emails, spelling, grammar and vocabulary tend to fall by the wayside. As a result, language and reading skills of the general public are suffering. This can prove problematic in any social situation, but especially in academic and professional environments. An easy way to overcome this is with creative writing, which forces the writer to utilize various words to get their ideas across. Dictionaries and thesauri are tools that creative writers often end up utilizing, which helps them get a more widespread grasp on language. The more someone writes, the more they tend to seek out new and innovative words to convey their thoughts, which translates into improved vocabulary in all aspects of life.

Creative writing can be anything from free-form prose to a structured and coordinated script, the possibilities are endless. Once a writer chooses a path, the goal is to organize their thoughts in a way that the reader can grasp the work. Often, this type of discipline and organization in creative writing will translate into more cogent and organized reasoning skills in everyday life. For example, during arguments many people feel flustered and incapable of expressing their thoughts in a cohesive and easily understood way. The intent, emotion and reasoning is there, yet the person lacks the language tools to effectively get their point across. Creative writing will help with that, as it trains the writer’s mind to express himself in a way that is more easily understood. This also works in reserve, making the writer more capable of understanding and unraveling communication from others.

Ultimately, creative writing is one of the best things someone can do to improve various communication skills. Vocabulary, language, and cognitive reasoning all improve when creative writing becomes a hobby. It is one of the most flexible and inexpensive diversions from everyday life, and there is also no set standard for someone to write. Creative writing does not discriminate, anyone from a child just learning to write to a genius academic can engage in this informal hobby; improvement and progress is inevitable.

Here at Unemployed Professors, we acknowledge this fact and are here to help you with your creative needs! Our profs are here to help with your term paper!

Are you constantly scrambling to get stuff done at the last minute? Maybe the problem isn’t what you do or not do, but how you prioritize it. The scrawled list of things “to do” may work well if you only have a few simple tasks to accomplish, as one of the best Kids in the Hall sketches demonstrates. I used to put things on my to-do list like “drink coffee” and “drink more coffee.” This made me feel productive, but it didn’t get my important tasks done.

When you have to do important, complex tasks, and figure out how to best implement the Pareto Principle, it is best to implement a system. Steven Covey’s time management quadrant is an easy way to prioritize things. You don’t even actually need to fill in all the quadrants. For the purposes of this blog, we’re considering a to do list that only contains academic things.

Quadrant I is important, urgent items. Your house is on fire? Quick, write it into the quadrant (actually, don’t) and get out. Gotta pee? Quadrant I. That 14 page paper you have been putting off for 2 months and that’s now due tomorrow? That’s important and urgent, now. Quadrant II is important, but not urgent. That’s where you put stuff like calculus homework due next week, a paper due in a month, and so on.

Quadrant III is where you have to make some choices: these are not important, but urgent things are ones you can’t get out of. They might be homework assignments for classes you hate, or conversations with that roommate who never shuts up. It might be scheduling an appointment with your advisor because you know you have to do it this term. They might include eating before you pass out.

Quadrant IV is for not important, not urgent stuff. Just thinking about what might go here can help you focus your energies. Tragically, reading hilarious Wikipedia articles is not going to get your important, urgent tasks done. Neither will re-watching every episode of your favorite childhood cartoon on YouTube. Someday these things may ec=-

The trick with this system is doing things before they become important and urgent, because most things eventually become urgent if you do not attend to them. Not important and not urgent – those might be things you want to do, like Facebook, or things that otherwise do not improve your life. I used to put “Return library books” on there because even though it was not important (at least before they were overdue), and not even really urgent, it made me feel productive. Don’t do that.

I used this system for years and it helped me become a top student in high school, college, and graduate school. Here are my tips:

1. Break down big tasks into smaller tasks. “Dissertation” was important, but putting it on my to do list was, obviously, useless. “Add suggested sources to dissertation prospectus” was not, and it was both important and urgent.
2. Appointments are important and urgent, because flaking out is shady, and having an appointment in your day affects how much of your time is left to do other things.
3. Put categories of unimportant, not-urgent stuff in Quadrant IV. Don’t write in specific timewasters, but keep your eye on it and ask yourself if you are getting distracted or if what you are doing is contributing to the big picture.
4. Consider each item in Quadrant II to be a ticking time bomb. If you don’t deal with it, after a while it will become urgent. And urgent, important tasks are no fun.
5. Only you get to decide what is important. Sometimes, school gets so intense you have to make tough decisions, and this might mean that a worksheet for art history isn’t as important as, say, a business exam. This might mean that you need to outsource or ask for help.

Have you let an important task become urgent? Are you trying to delegate your work flow so that you can work smarter, not harder? Try letting an Unemployed Professor tackle the task so you can focus on other important things.