I have been called a studyholic on numerous occasions. During semester time I do focus on study and it is my number one priority.
However, during the holidays I forget about study, schedules and assignments. I know lots of people who study during the holidays, read prescribed text books and get ahead.
While I think this is a great idea, I think that some of your holidays should be dedicated to none other than pure genuine fun and relaxation with family and friends or your dog or horse, anything but study.
Three months of summer is a long time, so I will generally take the middle month off as my holidays, but I will study the first and the last month. This is an ample amount of down time for me to recover, revive myself and get back into it. Why is it important to do this?
Stress
Many of my articles mention the S word. It is one of the worst things that comes from being a tertiary student.
We stress about finances, we stress about being out of home, we stress about due dates, marks and placements. At some point our minds and emotions need a break, we need to press the reset button and forget all the stress of the past year.
Mental Overload
This is not a myth. Your mind takes in about 400 billion pieces of information PER SECOND! Obviously your mind does not remember or use most of the information that it processes because it has a limit.
Similarly, it can’t hold every single equation or fact that you learn during the semester or during exam prep. You will need to let go of much of this information to take in all the new stuff in 2020.
To help your brain do this, you can relax and keep your mind blank of anything related to uni for a couple weeks.
Fun
It’s hard to have fun if you keep remembering the dissection of a rat that you did in Semester 1 or thinking about the difficult assignment you have next year.
Taking a break
It makes sense that to have fun and truly enjoy making memories over the holidays, you need to distract yourself from all of that. Which leads back to the key message from this article, take a break.
Taking some time off is so beneficial for your mental health because it gives you time to enjoy things, see some positivity, relax and calm down.
So while I fully cheer on the studyholics and support a dedicated study schedule during the semester, it is equally important that you rest and give yourself some TLC.
