February 2012

Now that we’re a couple of weeks into second semester and the thrill of new classes with new people has worn off, it’s been getting a lot harder to motivate myself to do homework and study.

There are some nights where all I want to do is go to bed and after I do the bare minimum of homework, I give into that urge and let myself sleep.

Then the morning after, I regret it. I think to myself, ‘If I had just gone to bed an hour later, I’d have more homework done and I’d still be just as tired as I am now.’

But then the next day I’d do the same thing and my motivation slowly declines throughout the week until it’s Thursday night and all I want to do is sleep.

The senioritis seems to be kicking in for mostly everyone, no matter whether he or she is a senior or not. It’s just that time during the school year when there isn’t much motivation to do anything; it’s not close enough to finals to be panicking about grades and the material just seems to be getting harder and longer.

It doesn’t help that AP tests are coming up in a couple of months and soon we’ll need to start studying for them or that the ACT is in three weeks for juniors. Worrying about studying for these just adds the extra stress on and sometimes it just seems easier to say you’ll worry about it later and get the extra hours of sleep instead.

But soon all the works starts to pile up and you still find yourself hopelessly behind, scrambling every day to finish all of your work and still find time to study for the two tests you have the next day.

If you find yourself starting to get behind on work or feel overwhelmed, take some time to plan a study schedule and don’t let yourself stray off it. Give yourself little rewards when you stick to the schedule.

But most of all, don’t let yourself go just because you’re feeling stressed. It’s only the beginning of second semester and even if your grades aren’t so hot right now, they’ll improve over time if you just put the work in.

Don’t put all your assignments off until the last minute, spend a little bit of time working on them every day. You’ll probably find the finished product will be higher quality and you won’t have had to stress out about it as much.