Eliminate Your Bad Study Habits This Summer

By Kaitlin Hurtado on June 24, 2017

When you don’t have to suffer through summer school, your studying habits (both good and bad) may very well be the last of your worries when there are vacations and lazy days filled with Netflix on the top of your list of priorities.

However, summer is the best time to fix any bad studying habits you have picked up and have been practicing. You can go through the trial-and-error process without facing serious repercussions that could happen during the regular academic year (like falling too behind in a class in favor of being too ahead in another class). Here are four ways to eliminate bad studying habits this summer.

1) Make a schedule and stick to it 

One of the worst study habits you can have (or life habits in general) is not making a schedule for your daily life. You don’t want to go through your daily life and hope that you are completing every task or fulfilling all of your time commitments off the top of your head. Things like a traded shift or a deadline can easily slip your mind when you are overwhelmed or stressed by everything you already have on your plate.

Plan out what you need to do — summer school, summer internships, a part-time job, vacations — in a planner or even your phone’s calendar application. Life is so much easier when you can make new plans and refer to your already written plans so that you never have to worry about conflicting schedules.

It’s easy to drop any routine you had during the academic year over the summer, especially when you have little to no responsibilities to plan for. However, try to adopt at least a little bit of a routine into your life, whether it be putting aside time for exercise, meal prepping, cleaning, or other tasks.

2) Fix your sleeping schedule 

It’s easy to push sleeping down your list of priorities during the school year when you have two papers due in one night and you have only made significant progress on one. However, summer is the perfect time to fix your sleeping schedule.

Try to not spend all of your day sleeping; push it off until night. Instead of spending the late hours of night and early morning playing video games or watching Netflix, sleep like you should be doing. If you are back to a relatively “normal” sleeping schedule, it’ll be easier for you to get a good night’s rest when it comes time for school again — you won’t be sleeping through 8 a.m. classes as much and won’t find yourself taking naps at odd hours to meet your sleep quota.

3) Learn when to say no and when to say yes 

When it’s summer and you have a lot of free time, you can lean more toward saying yes to every offer inviting you to hang out for a movie or lunch. While spending the summer out with friends seems ideal, it can have you falling behind with sleep (it is important after all) and any other time commitments like internships or part-time jobs (not to mention, a big hit to your wallet).

Summer is the perfect time for you to practice and gauge when to say yes or no. Think about what you are expected to do already and if the new plans will impact them. If yes, figure out different ways to go about the plan. Can you get a shift covered or trade someone? Can you reschedule the group lunch?

4) Get a part-time job

This tip does not directly apply to studying habits, but getting a part-time job has great value and the perfect time to start one is summer. You may have been wary of taking on a part-time job during the school year and the busy schedule that came with it, but during summer, you are bound to be freer. Instead of wasting your summer away indoors sleeping, playing video games, or watching TV, be more productive with your time by getting a part-time job.

A part-time job will allow you to pay for all the excursions with your friends over summer, and also allow you to save up for the upcoming year, especially if you do not plan on having a part-time job when school starts up again in the fall.

You might not necessarily be looking for a job to continue into the school year or you may have been hired by your employer just for summer, but if you do well enough or like the job environment enough, you will be asked to continue working or asked to extend your employment. This saves you the trouble and time of looking for another part-time job when school begins, or will at least give you the experience to make the search for another job easier.

A part-time job will also teach you time management — it will force you to adapt to a schedule given to you (shifts) and plan your other activities (mainly social plans) around it. Once you have a job, downtime is much more valuable and it will translate when school starts up and you start thinking of times you can be studying and not wasting.

Image via pexels.com

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