- January 31, 2012
- 11:09 am
- Rebecca Lowery
- no comments
Disease Without a Cure
As January presses on and the weather becomes more treacherous, there’s one thing you can bet on. We are ALL going to get sick at one point or another. The kind of sickness I’m talking about, however, cannot be remedied with a flu shot or over-the-counter medicine. The illness I’m speaking of is feared by students everywhere. It’s the dreaded “Senioritis”. If you’re not quite sure what I mean by Senioritis, here’s a definition found on Wikipedia.com.
“…the decreased motivation toward studies displayed by students who are nearing the end of their high school, college, and graduate school careers.”
Now that you know exactly what I’m talking about, I’m sure you realize that you’ve experienced Senioritis at one point or another. So how do we fix this academic malady? Here’s a few tricks I’ve learned that have helped me persevere through my academic career. Hopefully you’ll find them handy in your fight again Senioritis.
1. Join a study group. Find one person or several that are all working on similar projects or assignments and make arrangements to study together. When you have a commitment not only to yourself but to other people, it boosts your motivation to get things done. After all, you don’t want to look like the class clown in a group full of over-achievers.
2. Use a planner. Making a weekly schedule of assignments, tests, and due dates is one of the biggest favors you can do for yourself. This will help you set good goals without becoming overwhelmed. You’ll also be able to, dare I say it, work ahead if the fancy strikes you!
3. Schedule free time. One of the biggest downers to my motivation during college was knowing that I would have no time to do anything fun because of all the work and commitments I had to take care of. So what did I do? I joined a club, a choir, I planned a coffee date. Making sure to plan some “you time” is much more vital to success than anyone usually realizes.
4. Visualize your goals. As cheesy as this sounds, it really does work. Often we find ourselves feeling overwhelmed, and we decide to “do it later” in favor of relaxing, hanging out with friends, or doing whatever activity sounds more enjoyable than homework. But, predictably, we also find ourselves regretting our decision to procrastinate as deadlines pass and tests start seeming impossible. We don’t consider the alternative: failure. We owe it to ourselves to achieve our dreams, but sometimes we lose sight of that. So take some Post-Its, a note card, anything you want and write an encouraging word…to yourself. Put these messages up where you’ll see them all the time…your bathroom mirror, on your desk, on the wall by your bed. Constant reminders of what we want to achieve will keep us going even when we feel like we can’t.
