Don’t waste your university summer holiday!
As you go off on your summer break and leave university behind for a while, how can you ensure that when you come back next semester, you are not only rested and relaxed, but ready to have your best academic year ever?!
Follow my 5-step process:
(1) How do you want to feel?
Fast forward to the start of the next semester, envisage that you’re back at college or university, stop yourself at the door and ask yourself these questions:
How do you want to be feeling when you’re back on campus? Do you want to feel calm, in control, excited about the new semester, ready to try some new things, ready to get to know some new people?
How do you NOT want to be feeling when you’re back on campus? Think about how you’ve felt going back to college or university before. What have you been worried or concerned about? New classes you’re doing? Anxious about doing group work? Stressed about money, wondering how you’re going to survive the academic year?
(2) Choose one thing you want to change.
Now you know how you want to be feeling and the kind of things you don’t want to be feeling, you are going to identify one thing to work on over the summer to change that.
You need to identify the single most important thing that will make the biggest difference to how you’re feeling and work on that.
Don’t create too much work for yourself by setting a load of goals and trying to change lots of things because realistically, you aren’t going to get that all done. You will come to resent working on those things and you’ll start next semester exhausted and generally a bit annoyed at yourself having wasted your summer overloading yourself with work.
Choose that one thing which is going to make the biggest difference to you.
For example, you might start off each semester feeling overwhelmed by all of the new classes you’re taking. One thing you might be able to do to help ease that is to get ahead of the curve by going and downloading the class handbook or syllabus, looking at what the assignments are, when they’re due, getting really organized.
So, spend some time thinking about this. What is the one thing you can change this summer that will make the biggest difference to you next semester?
(3) Develop your summer shift statement.
Come up with your summer shift statement using words and feelings around that one thing you want to change.
Your summer shift statement will be worded as follows…
This is going to be the summer where I go from ______ to _____ so that I can ______.
For example:
This is going to be the summer where I go from worrying about money to feeling financially secure so I that can concentrate 100% on my studies next semester.
This is going to be the summer where I go from anxious about my new classes to prepared and ready for them so that I don’t dread going back to college.
Spend some time thinking about this statement, because it’s going to be your mantra for this summer. Your summer shift statement will keep you motivated in terms of making that change because it reminds you of why you’re actually putting the work in, how you want to feel and what that will enable you to do.
Write it down somewhere you can see it regularly to remind yourself that this summer is going to be the summer in which you achieved that goal!
(4) First three steps.
Identify three things that you can do to get this process underway.
The first thing will be something you can do today, right after you’ve finished reading this blogpost.
The second thing will be something you can do within the next week to progress this further.
The third thing you’ll do is to identify a regular block of time each week in which you’re going to work on achieving this goal and identify the task you’re going to do on the first one of those days.
Take the example of feeling more financially secure. Today, you could do some research online about money advice for students and see if there is free course you could sign up for or a podcast you could subscribe to. Something you could do later this week is to do lesson one of that online course or listen to an episode of that podcast. Then you might decide that every Friday morning between 1000am and 1200pm will be your timeslot to work on your goal and next Friday, you’re going to do lesson two of that online course or implement something that you learned in lesson one.
So now you have identified some tangible, achievable things that you can start working on. These are little mini steps towards that bigger goal and with every week that passes, every small step you take, you are getting closer to how you want to feel at the start of next semester.
(5) Go enjoy yourself!
Step 5 is to actually go and enjoy your summer. Yes, you’re going to have those time blocks where you’re working on the things you want to transform and change, but for the rest of the time, you need to go and relax, spend time with friends and family, do whatever makes you happy. It’s called summer break for a reason!
And there’s reason that college and university holidays are long – because doing a degree can be tough, intense and draining, so you need some time to rest and recharge.
So, go enjoy yourself safe in the knowledge that all the hard work you’re doing in your small timeslots will enable you to hit the ground running next semester!
Feel free to share your summer shift statements in the comments below – it would be great to know what you’re all working on!
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