Tips for Returning to School

Back-to-school season serves as a time of anticipation, excitement, and at times, also worry and stress.  Whether you are preparing to transition from middle to high school or gearing up for your long-awaited senior year, going back to school means going back to the long hours of homework, stressing about big tests and assignments, and worrying about how to get all of it done in a timely manner. The most important thing to keep in mind as the school year starts back up is that setting good habits early on will help you in the long run. 

Half the battle of schoolwork is time management and organization. Keeping track of all of your assignments, projects, and big exams coming up will make you feel more prepared and at ease while handling seven classes. One helpful strategy for managing schoolwork is purchasing a planner to keep track of all of your homework and tests. I personally prefer using a physical planner as opposed to online software because I find it helpful to be able to physically see all the dates coming up and I can write down all of my assignments for my different classes. The planner offered by Needham High School is especially helpful because it has all the blocks of the school day and timing written into it. This makes it super easy to write down the due dates of homework assignments and projects as well as the dates of quizzes and tests. You can purchase this planner through My School Bucks, but you can also use your own planner or explore other options to find what works best for you. 

Now that you have your workload organized, the next step is to set yourself up for long-term success by establishing a study time and management system. Procrastination is a student's worst nightmare, but if you establish a daily routine that works for you, you won’t feel the need to put off your work. It is imperative that you remember that your brain needs fuel in order to work productively and prevent burnout. If you’re going to feel overwhelmed with schoolwork, it is much better to feel overwhelmed at three in the afternoon than at three in the morning. Get a head start on your work whenever possible. If you have some extra time on the weekend, use it to get ahead on your work for the week. Save yourself ample time to sleep and relax so you can fuel yourself.  You need to learn your own limits and recognize when it is time to stop and recharge. For example, I always cut myself off at 11:30 pm, but that is actually much later than I recommend. Taking three AP classes a year and balancing my dance team, job, volunteer work, and time to spend with my friends and family takes up a lot of hours in my day. However, when the clock hits 11:30, I stop working and go to sleep. If I have more to do, I might try to wake up a little earlier the next day to finish whatever I am working on or do some extra work during lunch if I feel behind. 

Another struggle of being productive and finishing your assignments has to deal with how efficiently you’re working. There can be many distractions surrounding us when we are trying to study and we must do our best to limit those distractions. I think that the biggest of these distractions is a little three-by-six-inch gem we carry around everywhere: a phone! The absolute best thing for your productivity is keeping your phone out of eyesight and arm's reach while you’re studying. I like to keep my phone in my living room while I study in my bedroom so I do not hear it or think about it. I know how tempting it is to just take a slight pause and deviate from your homework to check social media just for a moment. However, a minute ends up turning into much longer, which leads to you wasting so much time that could have been spent studying for an important test or finishing math homework due tomorrow. 

Our brains are not good at multitasking. We cannot invest fully in any important task at hand if we’re thinking about doing something else, like watching a show or singing along to a song. Music can help or hurt us when we’re studying. In my experience, listening to music with words will harm my productivity. If I’m listening to my favorite Taylor Swift song, I’ll start singing along. Thus, if you listen to music with words in it, your brain won’t be able to focus on anything else (especially homework that includes reading or writing). To find an alternative, I created a playlist of familiar piano and instrumental music without any words in it so I’m still listening to songs that I like, but can’t feel tempted to sing along and lose my concentration. I personally do not like to do homework in silence because my mind trails off and I won’t stay concentrated. I recommend searching “pop piano covers” or finding any kind of instrumental songs to listen to instead of other distracting music. 

I know how difficult and overwhelming it can be to navigate all of your classes’ course loads while also being under the pressure of being a teenager. Remember to only focus on yourself and the progress that you’ve made and will continue to make as a student and learner. In the wise words of study icon Rory Gilmore, “Come back, refocus. Remember the goal.” Rory Gilmore also always recommends a cup of coffee when studying, just saying (but I would limit myself to one a day). 

 I know that you can do it. Happy back-to-school and good luck!