5 Great Apps for Grad Students

Today I have the pleasure of hosting Emily Newhook  for a guest post on apps for busy students. Emily is an outreach coordinator for the MHA degree program from The George Washington University, MHA@GW. Outside of work, she enjoys writing, film studies and powerlifting. Follow Emily on Twitter and Google+.

Balancing grad school with a job and other obligations is no easy task. Fortunately, there are a growing number of apps that help busy grad students leverage technology to better streamline their workload, improve focus and increase productivity. Here's a look at five that tap into some of most common grad student stressors, from managing your sleep cycle to backing up your thesis. 

• EasyBib: When classes require research papers with sources in APA, Chicago or MLA formats, properly citing and formatting the bibliography can be a time-intensive proposition. EasyBib is an online tool that assists with citing websites, books, newspaper articles and more (with more than 60 types of source options in total). The free basic version helps with MLA citations, while EasyBib Pro helps with APA and Chicago/Turabian citations and offers dynamic outlining to help simplify the writing process. EasyBib Pro offers a free three-day trial. After that, you can pay $4.99 monthly, $14.99 semi-yearly or $19.99 yearly. 
•  Focus Time — Activity Tracker and Pomodoro Timer: When tasks like research papers, exam studying and work deadlines pile up, focusing on one thing at a time can prove challenging. The Pomodoro Technique is a time-management method that uses 25-minute work sessions separated by 5-minute breaks. The premise is that short, focused sessions with breaks can prove more productive than longer sessions that lead to mental fatigue and lost focus. This iOS app encourages users to choose a task, set the timer and work for 25 minutes before taking a break. Every fourth session, you take a longer break. The app also synchs with iCloud so that users can view accomplishments on all their devices. Focus Time costs $4.99.
• SyncBack Freeware: Ever lost a homework assignment to a computer meltdown? Or needed to access class notes on your laptop while traveling but it was saved on your computer at home? Enter SyncBack Freeware, a free Windows tool that backs up documents and synchronizes between devices so that busy students and professionals will always have access to the files they need. With SyncBack, you can schedule backups and process unlimited filename lengths, avoiding a last-minute scramble to redo a homework assignment or search frantically for a missing term paper. 
•  Sleep Cycle Alarm: For graduate programs that demand unpredictable hours like medicine or health care administration, it's crucial that you get enough sleep to maintain mental acuity and good health – or at least ensure that the little sleep you do get is restful. The Sleep Cycle Alarm is an app that can analyze your sleep and wake you during your lightest sleep phase in the hopes that you'll rise rejuvenated and ready for the day ahead. Sleep Cycle costs $0.99. 
• Outliner: Creating a logical, well-organized research paper is challenging for some students. If fall into that camp, then you might benefit from an app to help organize your thoughts. Outliner is an iOS app that can help you create outlines full of notes, structured lists or tasks. Search and tag your outlines, drag and drop items within your outlines, get a quick overview of projects in progress and more. The app costs $4.99. 

These are just a few of the many tools that can help grad students stay organized and on top of their coursework and other responsibilities. 

Are there other apps you'd recommend? Leave a comment and let us know!

Stop, Breathe and Think app

I recently was notified about a relatively new app for meditation and mindfulness, called "Stop, Breathe & Think".

The app is a perfect tool for both beginners and people with a steady meditation practice. The meditations are short, and the app has the lovely feature of selecting the right meditation for you depending on your mood, which you can select from a menu of options.

The visuals of the app are lovely, as you can see from the sketch above, which is used on the website of Stop, Breathe and Think to explain the benefit of meditation.

With the light visual, and the open approach of the app, Stop, Breathe and Think is a lovely little tool for people of all ages. It comes with the neat feature of earning "stickers" for each time you meditate, which is an excellent way of building up the habit.

As I'm currently struggling with my schedule, and lost my good habits of exercising and meditating, I am planning to start small again, with meditations that are short enough to help me grow the habit once more.

The meditations on this app are all just a few minutes long - enough to help me build up the meditation habit again.

In short: this cute little app is a great tool for meditating - cordially recommended!

Treat Yourself to Relaxation: Silva Relaxation App

Silva Relaxation is a free app that can be used as part of your meditation practice.

If you enjoy these recordings with headphones, you can use them as a means to relax and shut out the outer world while you are on-the-go.

The relaxation exercises guide you through an extended version of a body scan, and then help you to be centered in your breathing.

After a stressful day of thesis writing, or an overly busy conference or meeting, I've used these recordings to let go of the day and get some quiet time.

Pranayama iPhone app

It's been a while since I wrote about mindfulness and meditation, and the reason is that in all the thesis stress, I've been slacking off.


However, I recently started doing some breathing exercises, based on the instructions from an iPhone app. It is called Pranayama by Saagara and -of course, as a cheap graduate student- I use the free, lite version of the app.


Here's what I really like about the app:

1. Guided with just two sounds

The app uses a sound for inhaling and one for exhaling. As a result, you can simply close your eyes and focus on the breathing meditation.

2. Different levels

The free version offers two breathing schemes, and for each scheme you have 5 options for the length of breathing. So, even though it has way less options than the full version (of which I read in the comments that it still has ads in there, so probably it's a bad buy!), it does have enough material in there to keep you entertained for quite some time.

3. Time

You can chose from different options between 5 minutes to 60 minutes to time your breathing meditation session.

4. Automatic tracking

The app also has a log, that gives an overview of what you have exercised so far. However, I just checked my own log and apparently the memory is cleared...