Spring Break is the point in the school year that everyone, students and teachers alike, look forward to. It doesn’t matter whether you’re going to party on the beach with your friends, or you’re going to visit family somewhere, or you’re just going to sit at home catching up on Game of Thrones. It’s a week away from school and you don’t have to do jack-squat, which is awesome.
But the week eventually ends and you have to go back to school and its responsibilities. You have to jump back into waking up at an appropriate time every day, getting your work done, and just overall using your brain again.
The problem with Spring Break is that while it’s wonderful to have a week off, it gives you the taste of the summer vacation that you’re eagerly anticipating. And that means that when you get back, your mind starts telling you, “Eh, it’s practically summer. You don’t really have to do that essay.” Then it’s the day the essay’s due and you’ve only written your name and the date in the Word document, if that. Soon you have a test and you don’t know anything because, oh, that’s right, your brain told you that nothing your teacher says for the rest of the semester really matters because summer is only a couple weeks away.
I’m not trying to call anyone out on this bad habit or make you feel bad; I have no right to judge, since I’m one of those students myself. But why are we like this? All it does is bring us stress and upset stomachs. We should be fighting against procrastination with every fiber of our being, but instead we laugh at the idea of getting out of bed and go on Tumblr instead.
We actually need to look at our teachers and see how they handle things. Whenever students come back from Spring Break (or any break, for that matter), the teachers are always waiting with open arms filled with tests, essays, and homework assignments. So while all the students on Spring Break just threw their hands in the air and said, “Eh, forget it,” and came back only to fall victim to the annual plague of procrastination, the teachers buckled down and got their plans together so they could finish the year strong.
Students grow up thinking that teachers are just some more adults thrown into your life to boss you around and annoy you, but really we need to be emulating them. They know when it’s time to get things done, and so they sit down and do their work while their students mourn the loss of another Spring Break.
So let’s break the status quo. Instead of moping that our week-long vacation is gone, we should put procrastination in its place and tells our hobbies, “Brb, gotta go do some homework first before I blog/watch television/LARP/whatever kids do these days.” Here are some basic tips to get you started. It’ll help you get over the hump after Spring Break and push you through the rest of the semester, and the sooner you start them, the sooner they’ll become habitual:
- Download a program onto your computer to block any websites you use to procrastinate. StayFocusd on Google Chrome and LeechBlock on Mozilla Firefox are just two examples of the many add-ons that do this, and you can change the settings so you can go on during certain times of the day. That way you can get work done in the morning and afternoon, but you can check in on your friends at night
- Write down your schedule and fill in when you’ll do your homework. Instead of just getting to it whenever you get to it, you’ll almost feel like it’s a meeting you have to go to at a certain time and you’ll be more likely to get it done.
- Keep a to-do list to make sure you don’t miss anything. You can use a giant marker to cross stuff off as you go along; giant markers make everything better.
- Get your hardest stuff done first. If you know you’ll hate doing your math homework, might as well just get it done early instead of dreading it all day.
- Reward yourself. You’ll be motivated to get work done. My favorite reward system: when I have to read sections of a textbook, I put a gummy bear on the page every couple of paragraphs. Keep reading and you can eat the gummy bears (or whatever candy you choose) when you get to those points.
- Study with friends. WARNING: This can be a blessing and a curse. Some friends might help keep you motivated, but others might be bad influences and distract you. You know which of your friends fall into which category.
- The hardest part of getting your work done is just getting started, but after that, it’s typically smooth sailing. As Isaac Newton said, “Objects in motion stay in motion.” Once you get started, it’ll be easy to just keep going.
Yes, Spring Break is a lovely friend that we look forward to every year. It’s fine to enjoy it, but once it’s over, it’s over and you still have school for another month. I’m sure there are some other clichéd endings I could add to this to sum up how you beat your procrastination issues and I have faith in you and go team go, but you’ve already heard them all, so I’m just gonna let you go and get started on that homework now.