Things to Do a Month Before School Reopens

With less than a month left till schools reopen, it’s a good time to start preparing yourself mentally and physically for the changes you’ll be facing this year. This is one of the first posts I thought of when I made my first list of ideas last year before this website went live. At the time, I had a different sense of what I would write; I hadn’t imagined talking about online classes, because, up until this March, I’d never taken one. So, I’ll be speaking from a little bit of experience and a little bit of logic.

First, I’ll list things I think you should do, regardless of the method/delivery of instruction your classes choose to have; things I’ve done every year since the beginning of high school.

1) Start getting good sleep: Sleep is such an important factor in learning better and retaining more information, yet it’s the first thing we compromise on when we “don’t have enough time.” For a better year of being educated, try figuring out how many hours of sleep your body actually needs. I can run on 30 minutes of sleep when I have to, but to feel fresh and have a good day, I need at least 6 hours and 30 minutes of sleep. 8 hours has always felt too much (although 10 hours seems like a blessing), so during the week I give myself 6-7 hours time to sleep. And as a teenager sleep is not one of my concerns on the weekend. But I do try to wake up only when I feel fresh. There’s no point in waking up groggy and sleeping in the afternoon and then not being able to sleep at night. So, understanding your sleep before you start the academic year will help you a lot when the chaos of midterms and finals takes over your thoughts and actions.

2) Start waking up around the same time as during the school year: Condition your body to wake up at that time you would for school, because, after a whole summer of having a messy sleep schedule, your body won’t like waking up at 8 AM all of a sudden. It also helps to go to bed around the same time as during the year but focus on fixing one part of your sleep schedule at a time; the rest will just fall into place gradually. My classes this year are all over the place when it comes to timings. I don’t have a fixed time for the start of my day. Some classes start at 9, some at 10, and some days, I have one class at 1 or 2 PM – nothing for the rest of the day. And, knowing myself, I know I’ll be a mess if I don’t stay on a strict schedule. This is why I’ve decided to wake up at 9 AM every day, except the day I have Physical Chemistry at 9 – I’ll wake up at 8:30 AM for that ( and maybe go back to sleep after the lecture XD).

3) Start doing something productive for longer intervals: My least favourite part of going back to school is sitting on hard chairs for longer than I have in the past two months. The aching butt doesn’t pair well with the efforts to concentrate more in class. My classes in Dubai used to be about 45 minutes long and in Toronto, about an hour and 20 minutes, both of which were longer than the amount of time I spent out of bed during the summer, at least in one go. I know I said I’ve been doing these things since the beginning of high school, but I didn’t say they always worked perfectly for me. I mean, training myself to stay out of bed longer did help keep me from feeling tired and sleepy during the school day, but my butt still hurts in class. If you have a cure for that, let me know. I just do that awkward dance of shifting from left to right until that was more painful that just sitting still.

4) Try finding textbooks you’ll be using online: And read/work through them. This one has helped me a lot in the past. Knowing what will happen helps you come up with questions you want to ask, beforehand. You don’t have to understand the content, that’s what a teacher helps you with, but knowing what your confusions are or what’s new gives you a chance to do better in class. When your teacher goes over topics you’re confused with, you won’t have to spend any more time thinking of what you want to ask. You’ll have had enough time to think, maybe even look it up on google, and then ask her/him if you’re still not sure of what that concept means. It basically saves you the time you would spend being confused after the lesson and have to wait till later to ask your teacher, risking not being able to ask because they’ve moved onto another topic. So, if you find an online copy of the textbooks, or if a senior student is ready to generously donate theirs, definitely do a read through.

Moving onto tips to deal with the changes that are bound to come this year.

1) Designate a space to work: With a lot of learning happening online this year, it won’t be wise to study in bed. Your body is bound to feel tired in it – that’s what it’s been conditioned to do. Try finding a table or nook in your house where you can study, undisturbed and undistracted. Condition yourself to be productive in this space. If that means turning your phone off for a few hours or instructing your family and friends to not disturb you for a while, do it. Being new to studying at home all day, it was hard not to talk to my parents or get up to get a snack every two minutes or switch to Netflix. I thought I was disciplined when it came to my education but studying at home definitely requires much more of that than studying at school. So, if you think doing something will help you work better, do it. I got myself a new study table by using that argument.

2) Make online study groups: In high school, you get a tentative timetable of when you have which class, so it’s a good idea to ask your friends if they have those classes, or at least those teachers, and form a study group to discuss homework, assignments and tests. Keep these groups separate from your general chat groups; keep them strictly class-related if you can – that promotes productivity. In university, you can do the same thing: find people in the same lecture or lab or tutorial as you and form study groups so you don’t feel alone. I have two study groups already and the year hasn’t even started yet. It’s not necessary that everyone taking a certain class is in the same stream, so you’ll even get to make friends you wouldn’t have considered talking to in person. I know I was looking for life sci students to be friends with but now I’m friends with people in comp sci and social sci because of the online classes and study groups.

3) Make a tentative timetable: When classes were in person, you knew you had to get up at a certain time, leave at a certain time, and come back home at a certain time. But with classes being online, you don’t have to commute much, nor do you have to get ready much if your camera stays off. This might make it hard to get in the flow of working and being productive. So, make a timetable, designating time for homework every day, or asynchronous classes, or self-care time etc. That will help you keep a little bit of routine in your life, which I have found is quite helpful right now. I said 'tentative' because things are bound to change. You might find that you need more than an hour to do math homework or that your asynchronous classes are very slow and watching them at x2 playback speed cuts the required time to 1.5 hours instead of 3. Be okay with changing things once you’ve figured out what works for you. But definitely make a timetable beforehand, so you have something to work with before you figure everything out. And be conscious of the changes you need to make. You know yourself best, and no one will come and tell you what your timetable should look like.

4) Start utilizing your calendar app: I cannot begin to explain what a blessing my calendar app has been during this summer. I signed up for a bunch of things to help make the transition to university smoother, and, even though I wrote them down in my planner, I forgot about them until my calendar reminded me. I’ve been figuring out what features the app has, and my favourite one is the repeat function. I can make a certain event repeat on the days I want it to without doing manually. That was a blessing to figure out. Get into the habit of using your calendar to remind you of important dates ( basically get into the habit of checking it regularly) because, if you don’t see people every day who could remind you of deadlines or due dates, it might become hard to remember everything on your own. You can stick to a paper calendar or a planner but get into the habit of checking it every day.

There is so much more I’ve been doing to make sure I won’t procrastinate or slack this year, but it’s my first time doing a lot of it so I want to wait and see what sticks before I share them as tips here. Until that happens, I hope you have a good time preparing for the new academic year. Hopefully, these tips and your own tricks make it easier for you to get some work done at home. Don’t forget to have a lot of fun before the hustle starts again. Till my next post, toodles. – Aarushi