Coming into the second semester, I thought I had prepared myself enough to handle it. The first semester of transferring into a brand-new program caused me to be all over the place. I struggled to get used to a new system and creating a new schedule, on top of everything COVID-19 related. I did have my sturggles, but I eventually was able to figure it out. With the second semester given a delay of one week, this gave me and other students plenty of time to refresh and get back on the grind of finishing off the year. I ordered my textbooks a month early, and I received them before school started. I prepared all the tools necessary to jump in, everything was appearing to show that the beginning of the second semseter was going to start off right. What I failed to realize is how different the second semester was going to be. With the combination of a now nightly schedule and heavier courses in a smaller time frame, I felt a weight on my shoulders. My motivation continued to decline, and I started falling into old habits such as not looking at required readings in-depth, not participating in discussions, just not wanting to associate with classes, or even participating in fun online school events. Surely, this may be the norm for some students who prefer a more laid-back approach to learning, but for students who prefer to be hands-on and have a high drive to do well in classes, it is not.
The world is still chaotic, and I (as many students) are still staying inside (as we should be unless we HAVE TO leave) and it just feels the same. It feels like a constant state of purgatory. For those of us that do not work, we have become so used to a certain part of our house that our focus starts to drift, and our workspace just becomes another place to lounge around. I know I had written in a previous article about online burnout and how to combat it, but if I’m honest, once the semester hit December, I was barely hanging on. I tried moving my workspace, but I could not find a spot that did not have a bad internet connection aside from my room, nor was I able to find a room at all (besides my room) that someone does not frequent.
Every time I walked into my room to do work after the holiday break, I just kept getting distracted and just allowed myself to get into a deeper hole of negligence. So, during reading week, I had finally had enough. I cleaned my room, threw things out, took things down, sorted stuff for future donations, but most importantly, I changed the structure of the furniture in my room. From my bed to my books, to my desk, I changed as much as I could on my own. When I finished my re-arrangement, I felt refreshed in an old environment. Over the course of a few weeks, my ‘work space’, no longer felt stale. Without having to spend any money, I was able to create a ‘new’ positive environment to combat old habits and creating new ones. I hope you understand that subtle changes can impact your mood significantly as it did for me because now even though I’m still working in the same four walls I have been for the past six months, I can have a different routine and a different mindset to get me through this next month and a bit.