Thank goodness for mid-semester breaks. A four-day weekend is nice - think of all of the work you can catch up on your upcoming papers and projects without having to read for class or make your way to campus each evening. Wait...what? What happened to the "break" part of fall break? Are you among those who look forward to fall break not as a mini-vacation but instead as a good chance to get some work done? Welcome to the club. For many grad students, "breaks" take on an ironic purpose.
Before you spend the next several days holed up in the library with the Cultural Studies Reader and a can of Red Bull, remember that adequate rest is just as important as hard work in any activity, school included. I encourage you to designate one full day for rest and relaxation. Sleep in, go for a bike ride, watch reruns of Seinfeld all day. What you do does not matter - just don't even think about schoolwork for at least one day. "No time for that," you say? "I need to catch up!" Of course you do. But...
As a MALS student, I quickly learned that rest days were vital to my success. Sure, I might have risked setting myself up for a heavier workload the next day, but in the end, I was more productive during my study if I periodically took a "mental health day." Otherwise, I'd just get burned out and resent my work - getting much less done in the long run.
I know what some of you are thinking - isn't this just procrastination? Not really. Planned rest to rejuvenate your mind is not the same thing as putting off work because you don't want to do it. The key is to plan these breaks ahead of time - schedule a break the day after you turn in a paper, the day you have a family event, or even during this fall break.
No comments:
Post a Comment