"I am an engineering student with a demanding class schedule. I am not able to concentrate on my studies because I have become like a slave to pornographic videos. I can't seem to restrict my bad thoughts. Exams are coming up and I feel like I am heading for disaster. I feel very embarrassed and ashamed. Can you please give me a suggestion?"

Gunnar responds below...

Guess what happens then?

Your subsequent anxiety, depression and shame over this behavior only leads to more self-medication through the same behavior. When you understand this cycle you can regain control of your life and experience sexual feelings without negatively impacting other areas of your life.

One way to relieve your shame is to speak with a mental health professional. Your friends may not be helpful because a great deal of confusion exists in the general public about this problem.

I would also recommend that you speak with a physician about getting you on a medication to curb obsessional behavior, avoid depression and permit you to be more focused on your studies.

Best,
Gunnar

"I know you say not to listen to music while you study, but what about the studies that show a correlation to increased IQ and listening to classical music while you study?"

Gunnar responds below...

I seem to recall the study you mention regarding classical music. While I am not in a position either to dispute or support these findings, I would not be in favor of this practice if you have a tendency to be distracted by classical music because of an abiding passion for the genre. (In this case the purported IQ benefits are meaningless because you will lack focus as you luxuriate in this or that movement.) If, however, such music tends to be white noise that fades into the background then I'm cool with studying to it. By the way, I find that the more you listen to a specific piece of music or a certain CD, the more it can become akin to sonic wallpaper that you hardly notice. But I still prefer silence as the ultimate backdrop for effective and efficient study.

Best,
Gunnar

"I am having a difficult time finding a place to study in quiet. Even at the library in the quiet area I still find myself distracted by students talking. I have been looking at earplugs and even noise cancelling headphones. Do you have any suggestions?"

Gunnar responds below...

It is your right to have a place to study in the library. If you are not receiving quiet, that's like not receiving books. Would any credible college library not have books? Remember, you are a client of your school, and the school should be pressured to supply your needs. If a diplomatic approach doesn't help, you might write a quick letter to your school newspaper. You can do it anonymously. But I would urge you to get over any bashfulness and take it to the next level: ask professors whether they would be willing to co-sign the letter with you. Surely they would be disappointed and even indignant to know that students have no comfortable place to study. At a minimum, ask for their advice. They may have particular stroke with the library.

I would also suggest that -- if it doesn't have already them -- that the library create a couple of free-standing signs that say:

The new signs should reinforce the quiet area rules. See how the chatty Cathys like them apples.

Best,
Gunnar

How to deal?

Whether we travel to foreign countries or go off to college or go off to war, we are changed in ways we may not entirely realize. And change can be threatening to those close to us. But your heart, and what is at your core―that which makes others love and care for you―remains intact.

The key is to share your new experiences in a way that makes your friends and family feel close to you. One way to do that is to make an effort to ask them how their lives have progressed since your departure. Being a good listener rather than immediately launching into your laundry list of exciting new friends and interests is one way to reach out and show them that they remain important to you. Then treat yourselves to a movie or a meal at a favorite restaurant to re-establish familiar relationship cadences, if you will.

Before you know it they'll tell you it feels as though you were never gone at all.

This isn't about being a hoity-toity little neat freak. It's about how you feel about yourself and how you present yourself to the world. Both are obviously critical to the quality of life you enjoy.

Do some people take neatness to an extreme? Of course. Some students actually clean and organize as a form of procrastination. They may be trying to take comfort in exerting control over their personal surroundings because they feel out of control in other areas of their lives, such as their studies. That's why doing nightly cleaning for just a couple of minutes tends to ward off this kind of procrastination paralysis. If you want to take an hour on the weekend for more thorough cleaning and laundry, go for it. But don't ever let cleaning become the focus of your life.

In your future career, you'll want to act like, and appear as, a serious professional. You'll want to show up to work in a clean car. And you'll want to stride into your workplace dressed for the job you aspire to get, when you're promoted. Sorry folks, but image is important. But fortunately, it's easy to maintain a basically neat appearance. Why would you ever swim upstream by looking like a slob? This doesn't mean you must have a pricey car or a fancy wardrobe. It just means you make the most of what you have. That says a great deal about where you are going in life and quietly inspires the respect of your colleagues and supervisors.

By the way, a five-minute nightly room maintenance break is actually part of my recommended 15-minute pre-sleep regime, which also includes: five minutes for nightly goal-writing for the following day (so you'll have a jump-start the minute you wake up); and five minutes for dental health, including flossing.

Not to get too far afield but while we're on the subject of cleanliness... flossing is probably the best thing you can do to protect yourself from illness. Your dentist will confirm that a great deal of disease throughout the body―including serious disease―stems from poor dental hygiene. (And ask any vet and they'll tell you that animals who have periodic dental cleanings live longer because their overall health is improved.)

My students avoid illness through small acts of self-protection, like taking a minute to floss before bed, washing their hands after using the gym (and at other obviously appropriate times), and eating some decent food every day.

In the modern world, we are often tempted to perform many tasks at once. I am a chief offender when I'm at home, sometimes using the phone, my laptop, and my Blackberry all at once. If I’m just playing around, the T.V. might even come on. But when it comes to performing serious work, my rule is that the multitasking stops. In “Kick Ass in College” we talk, for example, about the need to avoid listening to music while studying. Sorry if I sound like a hardass but your time is precious and you are simply wasting it if you don’t study in silence. Multi-tasking like this deteriorates our ability to focus and remember, and listening to music amounts to a “task.” This means you music lovers have to study much lo-o-o-onger to master the same amount of material.

But don’t just take my word for it. "When we're multi-tasking, we don't focus our attention, so information never gets into our memory stores," says Dr. Gary Small, a memory specialist at the University of California, Los Angeles. "We just never learned the information to begin with." NBC News correspondent Dr. Bruce Hensel seconds that emotion, noting that “research shows multi-tasking uses too many parts of the brain at once… Memory and focus areas may not light up on brain maps as much. The stress also may shrink memory receptors.”

Okay, okay… I suppose you do have the occasional exception. Take US snowboarder Hannah Teter, who listened to her iPod as she won her gold medal in Turin. She says she was listening to her boyfriend’s band while doing her thing on the half-pipe. But I bet she wouldn’t have won a gold medal in Biochemistry if she listened to that crap during the big test.