My TikTok feed has been taken over by The Great Lock-In of 25-26 school year.
It seems like everyone has decided that this school year we are being academic weapons. I have also decided that I am an academic weapon this year.
But much like a New Year’s resolution, I feel like we all abandon that a few weeks into this. But I personally am determined to not quit and get lazy. This year is my year, and it can be yours too. Here is what I am doing to make the 2025-2026 school year the one of The Great Lock-In.
Study crawls
Heard of a bar crawl? That might be for Saturday, but for Sunday, we’re study crawling.
Study Crawls are where you pack up for the day, these work best on a day without classes, and get so much work done.
Quick note, this is set up for having multiple assignments due. If you are working on one big assignment or one reading, you are going to want to split up your work into intervals ahead of time.
Completing a Study Crawl is easy. Wake up early in the morning to get yourself up and moving. Pack up everything you will need for your assignments into your bag. This might include your laptop, books, notebooks, hard copies, chargers etc. With all that stuff, pack one snack for each assignment you have to do.
Go to one place, eat your snack and start working on the assignment. One you finish, you are going to get up, go somewhere else, and repeat until you have all your assignments or intervals finished.
The key to this is going to new places. It tricks our brain into staying focused because we are not in one place for too long.
calendar keeping
This academic year, I have been committing to putting EVERYTHING on my calendar. I’m being a little neurotic about it.
I have a two calendar system that I have been having success with. One is a whiteboard wall calendar in my room. This is for bigger reminders at a glance. My rugby schedule, my weekend trips, big assignments, days I’m teaching. The less specific things in my life.
The second calendar is my Google calendar. This is the super specific stuff. Every class I have, meetings, practices, assignments I have due. This is for everything else so that I can just glance at it and see what my day is going to look like.
hours of study
I am an early bird through and through. This year I have decided to play into this during this school year. 3 days a week, I don’t have class until 11:30 so I have been getting up early and doing work in the mornings.
Instead of forcing myself to be productive in the afternoons when I really want to be laying in my bed, I get up and am productive in the morning.
This has had a couple of great advantages to me. One is that few other people are working in the library at 9:00 AM, so it is easier to focus. The second is that I can take more time for relaxing in the afternoons which I really enjoy. The last advantage it gives me is that my nights and evenings are now free for doing fun things like hanging out with my friends, working out, or clubs without stress about getting work done after.