Greetings, Bobcats! And welcome back!! For some of you, it might be hard to get back into the swing of things after having off for more than a week, and it can be a struggle to wake up early, do homework, and prepare for midterms coming up in a few weeks. The first couple of days back are the most difficult for me, but I have found a few ways to ease back into the new school year.

One of the best ways to get back into the daily grind is to wake up early one or two days before school continues. Whatever time you normally wake up for school, let’s just say 6:00 a.m., the day before you come back just wake up then. Not only does it prepare you for the next day, but you get a couple extra hours in your day since you woke up early. And if you are a coffee type of person in the morning, since you don’t have school that day, you get a chance to maybe make your own, or try out a different place you’ve always wanted to go to.

Another way to prepare is to do the homework you’ve had over the break and do it a few days before you get back. I know it’s not really that good to leave all your work till last minute, but if it is a simple worksheet, or just reading a couple of chapters, it really shouldn’t take that long to complete and it makes your brain prepare for the upcoming school day. If it is a big project that you’ve had months to complete and its due right when you get back from break, it’s probably not a great idea to leave that untouched until the day before you go back.

If you do struggle with time management on a big project, my biggest tip is to divide it into segments to complete on certain days at certain times. What I like to do is write down on a sticky note all the problems that I can think of. Then I divide them up to do at different times. For example, if I have to read five chapters, make two journal entries for each chapter, and write an essay on how I felt about the book so far, I will read all the chapters on one day, but only read one every few hours. Then the next day, I would do one entry every hour, and on the day before it’s due, write the essay. Now I’m not saying that I’ve done this for that exact example, but I’ve done it for sure before on much bigger projects ☺.

I hope you all have a great rest of the year, and I hope my tips helped you out in some way. Third quarter is right around the corner, and after that, there is only a couple more weeks until spring break. Fourth quarter after that, and finally, summer break! Enjoy the rest of your year, Bobcats!!