How to End Spring Break Energized and Prepared

By Elianna Wood on March 30, 2021

As you’re preparing for the start of spring break, the last thing you want on your mind is the school you will need to return to. But after several late nights of enjoying yourself and trying to make the most out of your break, you always seem to end your week more tired than when you started.

However, if you use spring break to prepare for the final stretch, you will be able to ace those exams and complete those annoying essays without the exhaustion and extreme stress associated with the end of the semester.

You may be thinking to yourself, “Wait, how can I prepare for those assignments? I don’t even have them listed, and I’m certainly not going to read to the last chapter of my textbooks to prepare for finals!”

And you don’t have to. You simply need to have good scheduling habits and maintain a winner’s mentality throughout spring break. Once you do this, you can study academic concepts to return prepared and ahead.

spring break

Good Scheduling Habits

While you certainly should take some time to reward yourself for your hard work during spring break, you should also reward yourself by planning out your time, so you can truly maximize and enjoy your experience.

To start, you should plan out and set your main goals. Take this as an opportunity to take yourself to the next level. Do you want to take another look at that concept you’re struggling with, so you can be prepared when you return? Are you hoping to begin transforming that hobby into a skill with the time you have? Do you want to ensure that you end the week rested?

However, even though you should have a primary goal, it should not be your sole focus. If you only focus on academic concepts, you will either procrastinate or burn out by the end of the week. If you only focus on that hobby, you will grow frustrated and possibly grow to dislike it. The most dangerous issue, however, is only focusing on ending the week rested. If you only set this goal, you will find yourself fall into boredom and a sluggish state, which will destroy your momentum when spring break ends.

Because of this, you should set multiple smaller goals in all three categories. Then, you should assign a timestamp to each. It does not need to be strict (it is spring break after all!), but it should give you a structure and routine to follow. When do you plan to wake up and go to bed? Will you study for 30 minutes in the morning or evening? Will you study your hobby in the afternoon and take a walk outside afterward? Planning out the smaller things will give you the motivation and energy to pursue your larger goal.

For more helpful tips on scheduling for spring break, check out this Forbes article.

Maintaining a Winner’s Mentality

Once you design your schedule for spring break, you need to stick to it! Because you don’t have impending deadlines, it can be surprisingly easy to slip away from a schedule and into that state of sluggishness.

To keep yourself to this schedule, you need to ensure that you have motivation. Whether it’s envisioning the long-term benefits of the schedule you have planned or rewarding yourself with a snack or video game after you have completed a study session, you need to associate your schedule with rewards. Speaking of rewards, take a look through your schedule (aka recall from your head, who takes notes as they read a blog for fun?). Does it include some “fun time” to do those guilty pleasures, such as watching TV and playing video games? Let’s be honest, having a military-style breakdown of your day isn’t going to work for more than a couple of hours. You need to plan in your free time not only to reward yourself but also to give yourself the motivation to follow your schedule in the first place.

Again, here’s another website to help you develop the self-discipline needed for a winner’s mentality.

studying spring break

Image: Ben White via https://unsplash.com/photos/vtCBruWoNqo

Study Academic Concepts

Alright, now that you have the conceptual parts of planning for spring break down, you are probably wondering how you should plan out your studying time. After all, I told you that this blog would teach you how to get ahead academically, but I haven’t really covered that in-depth yet.

First of all, take away the distractions. Especially since you don’t have deadlines, that phone or those chocolate snacks are going to be a lot more tempting. Perform your studying time in a quiet room.

At the same time, however, don’t become so hyperfocused that you end up poring over your textbooks for hours on end still stuck on the same spot. Since you don’t have deadlines right now, you only need to study for about 30 minutes a day. If you decide to study for longer, that’s great, but be sure to take 15-minute breaks regularly to avoid frustration.

During your study time, you should be focused, working on studying your weak points and possibly reading up to one chapter ahead for each subject. Start by skimming through the older chapters and thinking about your homework submissions to recall your weak areas. Then, take notes on them, find the relevant section of your textbook, and use studying resources such as online videos and practice worksheets. This should be your main focus before you ever read ahead, or you will fail because you lack a foundation.

Once you have patched up your weak spots, you can study ahead. Read through what the instructor will be assigning for homework first, so you can plan and study for what is coming up. Then, study as usual, reading through the material, taking notes, and using online resources as needed.

(Psst, I’ve written another article on studying for college classes, which contains some relevant tips.)

I hope this article was helpful for you. Please feel free to leave a comment about what you think and share on your favorite social media platform.

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