Blog: How to Prepare Yourself Emotionally and Physically for School

Introduction

Many students, despite age or location, all have one upcoming similarity: school. As the season of summer commences, and the new academic school year arises, it can seem daunting trying to prepare and navigate towards success. Along with these challenges, adjusting to a new sleep cycle, schedule and lifecycle balance can cause anxiety and stress. Today, we are going to address the best approach when trying to set yourself up for success academically and personally.

Academic Lifestyle

When approaching a new academic season, adapting and managing to your new workload is key, and can be the door to gaining higher or better grades. By picking up better study habits, you can relieve procrastination and stress, and train your brain to learn material differently.

• Study Techniques

  • Podomoro: Set a timer for 25 minutes on and 5 minutes off. Intense study for 25 minutes and take a break doing something unrelated to school. This trains your brain to work under pressure, work faster, and acts as a reward system to boost productivity

  • Feynman Technique: Start by learning a concept in-depth for 10 minutes. After gaining understanding, teach it to someone else/ stuffed animal. If you get stuck, return to the original material and review and repeat this process. This technique allows you to simplify concepts that may seem hard and focus on the necessary information.

  • Blurting: Read a section of your notes/ text. After doing this for 10 minutes, close your notes and write down everything you can remember. With the topics or terms that you couldn’t clearly define, review them and repeat until you understand everything. Like Feynman, this technique can help to clarify tricky topics, and prioritize certain information.

• Plan & Prepare

  • An organized schedule It may seem tedious to list out every single detail of your tasks to complete, but it helps when you feel unmotivated and need to see all of your tasks at hand laid out.

  • Planner: Invest in a good planner to stay on top of assignments, ec’s, and upcoming due dates. You can either get physical ones or online ones on notion, good notes, or notability

• The Earlier the Better

  • Do assignments as early as possible! I cannot stress this enough! Doing or starting a project the day before it’s due doesn't allow for your best work to be displayed. Though many people, including myself, work well on procrastination; it creates more anxiety and stress to complete a task in a shorter amount of time. Beginning something the day it’s assigned can allow you to develop ideas and possible ways to expand on your project.

  • This motto can even apply to the summer before your academic year. Getting ahead with course readings, AP work, and SAT/ACT prep work can prepare you before actually starting said course, and put you ahead of your classmates.

Personal Health

Amidst times of stress, studying, and worries, it’s very common that students lose control of their mental health, and push aside their social priorities. During the months between September to May, the stress levels of teens are astronomical. 75 percent of teens face some sort of school related anxiety and stress, making many teenagers choose unhealthy coping mechanisms, which are displayed on their school ethic. When one feels lost in the endless stream of school, it's important to take breaks and focus on yourself. Take these steps when prioritizing your mental health during the school season.

• Step Back

  • As humans, we all reach a breaking point. When our life is affected by a situation, in this instance school, one's breaking point is when this situation affects aspects of our lives that were perfectly fine before. Some common indicators of a breaking point can include losing appetite, sleep, friends, relationships and even yourself. In these circumstances, it is best to fully step away from your school responsibilities until you return to your normal self. This step away can be as small as going on a walk alone to spending quality time with those around you. Pushing yourself to work through burnout can be extremely detrimental to your health, both mental and physical; ultimately worsening those indicators we mentioned before.

  • But what if I can't just drop all my school work to prioritize my mental health? Follow the next couple of tips.

• Off and On Days

  • Creating a healthy work environment for yourself can sufficiently increase your productivity and decrease your procrastination. Forcing yourself to work and work without breaks is never the right solution, and only sets you farther behind. Having a healthy work balance and allowing a day of rest for yourself is the first step to work more efficiently. For example, spending Friday and Saturday grinding out all your work and Sunday to rest is more effective than spending the entire weekend working, regardless of completion of assignment.

• Healthy Relationships

  • As previously mentioned, a healthy relationship with school and social life is a very essential part of prioritizing your mental health. Just like our physical body can’t be overworked and needs rest, our mind needs a rest from constantly learning and retaining information. If you constantly feel burnout and stressed, the root of your problem might be because of your brain and body’s disconnect. Some ways one can create healthy relationships with school is by..

    • Romanticizing your school environment

    • Study in groups & take frequent breaks

    • Study between the hours of 7-9pm and 5-9am; these are the hours your brain is more active and able to retain more information

    • Find which Study Technique works best for you

    • Get 7+ hours of sleep every night

    • While studying, eat brain power foods (blueberries, nuts, dark chocolate) and cold drinks (water and coffee)

Conclusion

Preparing to go back to school can include back to school clothes and supply shopping, but there is so much more to it. By preparing your mind to take on the academic and social struggles that come with the worries of school, you can be ready for anything.