I would like to first apologize for my 2 month hiatus. Perhaps I should have taken some of the advice that I am going to give you right now.

Most of you are in the midst of the yucky, sticky, ooey, gooey end of term stage. We all know it’s coming, yet when it arrives on our doorstep, we never really seem to know what to do. How inconvenient. I am no expert, however, as a student who has experienced this ever dreaded time, I surprisingly have some tricks up my sleeve.

Now, I am going to go a little hippie on all of you. But hippie never hurt no one. Before you start to study, write that paper, draw that picture, or tackle that Stats assignment, get yourself in a comfortable state of mind.

You need to prep your mind before the battle, put it in its best armour because it is going to receive a beating. Go for a run, have a green juice, have a cold shower, or get down a give me 20. Everyone is different, everyone has a different way to get pumped and ready.

Your mind is ready.

Now lets go.

First things first,

1. DON’T PROCRASTINATE.

I know Netflix is tempting but Netflix isn’t going anywhere. However, you only have one chance to pass your Physics exam. No re-runs on that one.

2. Chip away little and often.

This is one from mumma’s books. And mumma knows best. We all seem to look at everything as one big huge impossible heap, and our destination is the top. However, this is where we all fail miserably myself included.

SCENARIO 1:  Say you have 3 essays, an exam to study for , a presentation about Mrs Warrens Profession and a cook book you have to write for your culinary school application. You are feeling extremely overwhelmed, and you know that you cookbook has to be finished first. Therefore, you spend 2 weeks working purely on your culinary school application. When you finish you go to make yourself a cup of tea and put your feet up, and catch up on Mad Men. Then you realize  you only have two days to work on your 3 essays, study for your exam, and create your presentation. Mad Men and a good night sleep will have to wait.

SCENARIO 2: Say you have 3 essays, an exam to study for, a presentation about Mrs Warrens Profession and a cook book you have to write for your culinary application. You have two weeks to complete all of this. You know that even though your culinary school is due 2 days before everything else, you must chip away little and often at everything. Therefore, you dedicate a small slot of time for everything everyday. Whether it is 15 minutes or 2 hours; it doesn’t matter. As long as you do a bit of everything, everyday.

Scenario 2 is progressive. You are multi tasking and moving forward, instead of working on 1 thing, finishing it and then going back to the beginning for something else. Scenario 1 is stressful. And maybe your culinary school application is killer.

Whenever you ask yourself that questions, where do I start?

Start with a little bit of everything.

3. Look at the Big Picture.

You are studying and everything is swell. You are looking at how nuclear fission works. You are trying to understand it in your head, which seems really small. You get frustrated. You try harder and harder to understand it. You grab your hair and pull it out. You read it again and it still doesn’t make sense. You google it. It still doesn’t make sense.

DAMMIT GOOGLE.

You start to go very red in the face. You are breathing heavily and exuding anger. You start to grow very large, veiny muscles. Your skin turns a pea green. You are the Hulk.

Take a step back: It is just physics, it is just nuclear fission. Scientist took years to figure this stuff out themselves. I am not dumb, I am not stupid.

Take responsibility for the situation: I signed up for this course. So I have to roll with the punches. I need to stop blaming google and my professor for not giving me the answers. I got myself in this, and can get myself through. There are plenty of other people who would die to be stressing over a question on their Physics assignment. I am lucky to be in this situation.

Take the next step: I am going to come back to this question, maybe I will gain new perspective as I go through the rest of the assignment.

Whatever you do, don’t push, and don’t press. Just sit back and relax, scan over the situation, and then re insert yourself.

4. EAT and SLEEP.

The way I look at this, is that what you don’t do today, you will pay for tomorrow.

Didn’t have time to eat breakfast today because you stayed up too late last night writing your paper, and now you have to print it and your bus comes in 3 minutes? Thats all and good for now. But later, will suck.

Your body is a ticking time bomb. You may think you can survive without food and sleep, and just survive on coffee and tic tacs.

However, sooner or later, your body will hate you a lot. And will reduce you to a lump on the ground, where you can do nothing at all.

So respect the vessle that carries you around.

5. How to deal with a case of Scenario 1.

So we are all silly humans whose brains can get a bit like scrambled eggs.

If you follow the above advice, you should never get here.

So lets say its 10:50. You have 2 essays to write; one of them on Quantum mechanics, and the other on the Importance of Being Earnest. They are due tomorrow

First step.

DONT PANIC.

In these situations, you need to have faith that you are going to get this done. You have done it before, and you can do it again. You don’t know how, but you will finish.

Remember that mind prepping we did earlier? Do this again. Maybe it is just a few breaths or maybe it is Child’s Pose.

In conclusion.

Start early. Prep your mind and body for battle. Relax. Don’t panic. You will get it done, somehow. If you start late, that sucks, but you will still get it done somehow. Eat, sleep, repeat. Netflix isn’t going any where.

Mad Love.

Bells