In the world of being a student today, an immense amount of pressure is weighing on our shoulders to be the most extraordinary person possible. We are all in a constant competition, competing to prove our worth with exceptional grades, a constant devotion towards the community and somehow standing out from the crowd of thousands of other students who all want to do the same. With such exceedingly high expectations for success, one of the biggest hurdles for students desperate to be accepted to the top schools is our minds. Fighting to keep our attention on our studies is extremely exhausting, and it is from this struggle that I’ve been forced to find creative solutions to keep myself focused. Some of these methods are a bit unconventional, but hey, they work for me and my stimulation-starved mind, so they might just work for you, too.Â
- The Self-Talk Session
My first, and more tame, studying life-hack for when you need to memorize a complex concept for a big English or History test is to have a yap sesh with yourself! Talking yourself through the material you need to stick in your head helps you check your deeper understanding of the material and makes studying a lot less boring. Turn that book or historical moment into a one-person gossip session, and all of a sudden, the material gets a bit more interesting. Yes, you may look a little crazy having full-on conversations with yourself, but I promise this craziness is worth it in the pursuit of understanding.Â
- Study Crawl
My next, more tame studying tip to cure your boredom is one that has gone viral on the studying side of TikTok. Do a study crawl! This online challenge is where students will go to different study spots throughout the day. It’s like the less fun version of a bar crawl, but a lot more fun than sitting in the same spot to study all day. To me, this is a great way to refresh and avoid rotting away at the same library desk for 6 hours. So go grab yourself a sweet treat, lock in, and bring a friend along for the ride across your campus’s many different study spots.Â
- The Study Snack
The following method might be a bit more common, but I’ve found it to be super helpful when I’m getting anxious and restless. Whenever I’ve reached the point in my studies where my test anxiety starts to kick in, the way I try to ground myself is through eating crunchy snacks. For me, my go-to crunchy snack while studying happens to be an apple, but there are plenty of other snacks you could try to chew on to help you focus, such as ice cubes, nuts or baby carrots. This type of engagement is meant to help ground you while playing into your brain’s reward system, and it really helps me not to fidget in my seat, so I’d call that a win.
- Pintrest & Chill
One trick I have for when I’m in dire need of a serotonin boost comes from my best friend, Pinterest. Whenever I need to memorize a nice, long list of vocabulary words, I’ve found one of the best ways to keep myself entertained is by scrolling through some pretty pictures on Pinterest while repeating the vocabulary word and definition in my head over and over again. This way, while my mind is focused on memorizing the words, I’m remaining stimulated by looking at the photos on my feed. This method, of course, does require a little bit of restraint to not doom scroll into oblivion, but as long as you remain persistent in your repetitions, you get used to focusing more on the words in your head than the actual images.
- The Doodle Method
My final method for staying engaged while studying is what I like to call the doodle method. This is yet another method, similar to the Pinterest method, that involves stimulation for memory retention. Doing quick sketches of some of the concepts I’m trying to learn has helped me so much to put an image to a word in my head. Have you ever sat down for a test, unable to remember something, but remember exactly where in your notes you have that answer written down? Think of this trick as a way to put a clearer image in your head for when a moment like that comes.