Just like finals, winter break is upon us and sneaking up faster than we could imagine. To many, this is a good thing — it brings us joy to be able to sleep without alarms and staying up late. For me, winter break brings a time to make money and share the leftovers with my pup. But something I’ve noticed for myself is despite how amazing three weeks can be, it can be damaging to my schedule and self. Three weeks of not exercising my brain or advancing my career can leave a negative effect and make going into spring a pain.
For myself, I’ve created an outline of things to be doing before everything catches up with me and I think it would be helpful to someone else who might not be aware yet of the winter break bumps.
- Spring Cleaning
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Technically we aren’t in spring yet, but why do we put a time schedule on cleaning? Spring cleaning is a time to do the deep clean that people don’t want to discuss. Decreasing your material items and keeping what is necessary is the key to getting on track. Maybe even changing the setup of your furniture — and when was the last time you mopped your floors?
This is a great time, even if you take the weekend, to go through your whole home and have things organized and in place to make your life easier by the time spring comes around. You might even find things you didn’t even remember you had. This can also turn into cash because places like Buffalo Exchange and Plato’s Closet will exchange your clothes for cash. So even if you’re losing, you’re actually winning.
- Getting a Job
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I know, working sucks. However, having a spring cushion of money is better than worrying from paycheck to paycheck. For me, I can’t work as much during the semester as a full-time student at UCF as I can over winter break. Classes always come first, but still having money to survive and have a social life is amazing. I plan to work as much as I can to build my savings for the future, but also to have some money on the side. Two separate savings accounts is a great way to manage what money goes where, if you’re anything like me (aka a shopaholic). Use your time to work hard while you can because real life will be ready to sneak up on you any second.
- Advancing Your Career
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Going to school isn’t going to be the only way you get a job. Sometimes you need to do some hard work to get places and in my career, you need to become your own manager. School isn’t all you need, but each career has different requirements to get to where you’re trying to go. Looking into growing your resume is a great start whether it be with jobs, internships, volunteering or going out there and getting the experience needed for your career.
Even light reading can impact in a promising way when you catch up on things you didn’t even learn in your classes. Trying to get where we want to be in life can lead to working even when we don’t want to, and doing it while we’re young is best.
Trying to balance all three might not be the best move for everyone, but finding one that fits you best and focusing on one of them might help you make a better transition to spring. Having something you didn’t the semester before that you would be able to work. Also, the discovery of something new could be brought into your life, especially if you pick up a new hobby that could lead you to do something you love or find a new skin routine that is the one for you.