BACK TO SCHOOL: HABITS TO DEVELOP
hi guys! i’m back with a masterpost of sorts, and a positive one since my posts haven’t been the most optimistic recently…
for some of us, back to school is right around the corner. for others (including me), we have a month left, and the realisation that school exists and we should probably start preparing is beginning to settle in.
start waking up earlier: wow, wow, wow. the most generic ‘tip’ ever to exist. but it’s true - if you keep waking up at 12pm, you’ve already lost most of your day and don’t have all that much time to do stuff. so, wake up earlier. i wake up naturally between 7 and 9am anyway (9am is a lie-in for me, thank you body clock *eyeroll*) so this isn’t a huge thing for me, but goddammit if you want any chance of not being an angry teenage monster when you have to go back to school, start waking up earlier a few weeks before summer ends.
follow your school routine: i saw this tip recently (i can’t remember who posted it, i’m so sorry! credit to you!) where you follow your school routine every morning, which can not only normalise it so you don’t associate that routine with school (that made no sense, i’m sorry - it just reduces the association with school, and when school comes around, you’ll hopefully associate it with summer break) but it gives you some kind of purpose in the morning so you don’t end up in bed all day with a jar of nutella for company…. i see you.
journal: this doesn’t have to be a perfect bullet journal like the ones you see all over tumblr, or a planner. i mean a journal, to write in and press flowers in if you wanted to, and just sit and feel like those girls who sit under a big window with books and a handwritten inky journal with no technology in sight that you see on tumblr in the lead-up to autumn. (phew, that was a long sentence). this grounds you, but KEEP IT PERSONAL! not school related! as a person who’s brain works on associations, it’s important to keep potentially stressful environments and aspects of my life completely separate from places of solace (in this case, the journal, where i go to write and say everything i need to).
have a ritual: yes, i’m a witch, so this could be a witchy ritual. but no, i’m talking about something you do weekly, whether it’s a friday night, a sunday or a mid-week pickup on a wednesday. this is an evening where you, for example, finish all your work by 8pm and then devote the rest of your evening to chilling. the fuck. out. put your books away and get your bag ready for the next day, and get up from your desk. draw a bath or take a shower. a long one. preferably a bath, so you can sit with bubbles and a book and chill out completely. then, make a cup of tea and sit in bed with a book or your journal, or an episode of your favourite netflix show. then go to sleep feeling really calm and at ease.
do your work as soon as you get it: every year - every term (okay sorry, semester. jeez, i’m a brit. anyway.) for that matter - we say to ourselves that the second we get homework or a project, we’ll do it immediately. do we end up doing that? no. should we? yes. set that same goal this year, and at least try to do it. okay but seriously, this is important if you want to keep up, all jokes aside.
check who you’re surrounding yourself with: are these people motivating? positive? do they lift you up, and keep you on the right path? or do they drag you down with their own woes that they drown you in, or do they belittle you, or make you feel like school is dumb and ruin the motivated mindset you had ten minutes ago? if so, leave. find new, better people who tick all the boxes. in school, you need a support base of people who help you academically, and listen to you - but remember, you need to be returning that. you need to listen to them when they need it, and help them in return.
eating breakfast: i suck at eating when i’m not at school - in the three weeks i’ve been on summer break, i don’t think i’ve eaten lunch once. but school reminds me to eat, and i come v close to dying if i don’t eat breakfast before school, but i know that suddenly eating in the morning after six or seven weeks of… not… can suck and can make you feel pretty shit, so start doing it a week or so before - if you haven’t noticed, these habits are all things to start before school, so they’re already habits by the time summer ends!
make a study group (chat): i’m kicking my social anxiety in the ass and i posted to my snapchat asking for people to message me if they’d be interested in being in a study groupchat on snapchat, which hopefully could turn into an actual study group when exams get closer. i’ve never done this before, but it seems promising so i highly recommend you try this as well! it doesn’t have to be a post-on-story-and-wait-for-applicants, it can just be your friends, and have that chat be strictly-study related, not just a groupchat. i had one like this last year, and we had strict rules that you weren’t allowed to talk about non-study stuff, since it was a group with my best friends and we had two other groupchats (i take things way too seriously lol)
okayyyy that’s all i have! feel free to reblog and add on any tips you think of (we gon need all the help we can get next year, studyblr gotta stick together yknow)
