Ah, April. The birds are chirping, the flowers are blooming, and school is back in session. As we head back on campus for classes, the inevitable question follows you around – from your friends, from your peers, during the dreaded icebreakers. So, what did you do over spring break? With this question constantly haunting you during the first few weeks back on campus, it’s hard to leave behind that glorious week of traveling, visiting family, sleeping in. With school back in full swing, it just won’t do to be reminiscing about the alarm-less good old days. It’s time you got over the Spring Break Slump. Learn to recognize the signs, get over the symptoms and recover from it.
Your alarm just isn’t working.
Ok, maybe it’s not so much a problem of the alarm but more about your reaction to the alarm. For some reason, sleeping in heavily for a week has just made you immune to the thunderous noise of the alarm. It might wake up the rest of the building, but you’ll certainly sleep right through it. You’ve simply grown immune to the alarm – or maybe your sleep just takes over so strongly now that nothing can wake you.
You can’t focus in class.
For many of us, spring break mainly consisted of going out and moving from place to place. Sitting still for 1 or 2 hours now just feels so confining and impossible in contrast. You constantly feel distracted, jittery and find yourself longing for the next break in schedule.
You’re always hungry.
In addition to sleeping in and traveling, one of the luxuries of spring break is all the food we get to devour. Whether you’ve been going out with friends, or indulging in junk food for a week, the lack of these things is making your stomach growl.
FOMO
Our spring break might be over, but many other colleges and universities are still in the midst of their spring break or are anticipating their week off. As our social media feeds fill with photos of our friends in flower fields and having the time of their life, it’s easy to long for a break of your own. The Spring Break Slump comes with its characteristic lack of motivation, inability to focus and a keen longing for your week of break. But now that school is back in session, it’s important for all of us to focus and work hard for these 10 weeks before our summer break.
Go to bed earlier.
Getting accustomed to going back to classes and going to lectures every day can be draining, so it’s important that you get your sleep. You might be tempted to stay up later to catch up on some Netflix or to scroll through your Instagram feed, but that is a decision you will come to regret the next morning. Save yourself the pain and just climb into bed a little earlier to avoid feeling tired and sleepy the next day.
Go to your lectures.
Your inability to focus in class, paired with your constant tiredness, can seem like pretty good reasons why you should skip class. But going to lecture and attending class are good ideas – you’ll learn some valuable lessons from your professors that might even inspire you to continue going to class. Going to bed earlier and getting some more sleep will definitely make you more alert in class the next day, and learning some tips for staying awake in a lecture hall will help as well.
Go to the gym.
It’s no secret that working out and exercising releases endorphins that make you feel happier. All that junk food might seem tempting, but forgoing junk food for real meals and trips to the gym will likely make you happier and more inspired as a student.
Talk to your friends and family.
Even though coming back to campus might mean you don’t see your family and some friends as often, you can get over that homesickness and FOMO just by calling them or doing a Skype. You might feel swamped with school work and want to reserve all your time for your assignments, but talking to friends and family will definitely improve your mindset and make you more inspired to do work.
As we are caught in this middle ground between an extremely brief spring break and a tempting and much longer summer break, the Spring Break Slump seems more real and more dangerous than ever. But as long as we learn to recognize the symptoms of the Spring Break Slump and how to get over it, we can become even stronger and more motivated students.