The first round of midterms is over, ladies! We’re halfway through the semester with Thanksgiving break, finals and almost an entire month away from school coming faster than we know. However, sometimes that light at the end of the tunnel feels extremely far away.
My mid-semester blues, the overall bleh feeling about my classes and schedule, hit right after I found out about my last midterm grade. The optimism that was keeping my mood afloat vanished. Once I realized what was going on, I decided to take the next three days to try to get my life back on track.
The first day I tackled my closet. Living in a dorm room and loving clothes led to my closet bursting at the seams and that had to change. I took every article of clothing out of my closet, put it on my bed and went through one by one and decided if it was going back in the closet or getting packed up. I don’t have a before picture (this was a spontaneous project), but I do have an after. It’s not perfect, but perfect isn’t the goal — progress is.
The second day involved clearing out food, cleaning up my room in general, and making it look festive with seasonal decorations. To balance out this productivity, I watched a show for two hours that I didn’t have time for, but the goal is progress towards being happier and it helped.
I cleared out food I wasn’t eating and took a garbage bag to throw out all the assorted trash that I wasn’t timely about throwing away. I dusted my shelves and vacuumed the floor. Then came the fun part: decorating!
I find a lot of joy in cute, little things, so taking the time out of my day to make this a priority really helped me.
On the third day, I stopped at the HUB after class and treated myself.
My “treat yo self” day also included taking the time to do a pore strip, a face mask and painting my nails. With my first two days focused more on my external affairs (a.k.a the mess my room was), I took the third day to focus on my actual self.
Other changes I made to my daily life included changing the music I listen to. I realized most of my music was kind of sad, because that’s how I was feeling, so I’ve been listening to more upbeat music because that’s the energy I need. I’ve started to spread my school work out more and not cram it all in one night. This gives me free time every day to do whatever makes me happiest — whether that’s reading a book for fun or scrolling through Instagram.
With my room more organized, and prioritizing myself and what makes me happy, I can tell you that the mid-semester blues aren’t hitting me as hard. It’s all about taking a step back and refocusing on what makes you happy in life, whether that’s cleaning your closet or buying good food from the HUB.
The most important thing is that you can’t treat the mid-semester blues as a “one size fits all” treatment. I promise, putting yourself first and finding time to do things that bring you joy is never a bad place to start.