Coming back from Spring Break is hard. It’s cold. You’re dreading class. All of the energy has left your body. It seems like there is no hope of maintaining your GPA, or sanity, for the next 2 months. Here are some tips to make it slightly easier:
1. Realize where your shortcomings are.
After midterm grades are out, evaluate where you struggled the most. If you had a particularly poor test grade in a certain class, make sure to adjust your study schedule and spend more time with that class.
2. Make goals and establish rewards.
A lot of people tend to set unrealistic goals at the beginning of a year or semester. My unrealistic goals were studying three hours a day and working out four times a week (haha). Coming back after midterms, I decided to reset my goals to something I knew I could manage. Having manageable goals makes you feel much more accomplished than falling short at unrealistic expectations week after week. If you meet your goals, use the tried and true reward system. Let yourself have a movie night, order pizza, or get your nails done.
3. Get a head start.
If your classes are slow to start back up again after the break, get a head start on homework, projects, and paper the first few weeks back. Look ahead in your planner to figure out your busy weeks and make sure you don’t leave everything to do until then. It seems unnecessary until you have 3 tests and 4 papers in the same week and haven’t started writing or studying.
4. Use the friends you made in class the first half of the semester for studying.
If there’s a class you’re particularly struggling with, try reaching out to your class friends. if you have someone saved in your phone as “Ashley from Chem”, hit her up to study. It seems weird but she’s probably in the same boat and would welcome a study buddy.
5. Start new habits or restart old ones.
Reestablishing your routine is the key to keeping up grades after a break. If you had a brilliant idea for studying but failed to execute it, try to start now. Since the content you are starting is likely on a different test/unit than the content before break, it’s a perfect time to try a new strategy. This could be rewriting your notes after class every day or adding study terms to a Quizlet every week after classes.