How to manage workload over Christmas
by Kate Stevenson
The Christmas season shouldn’t be something to stress about. Seeing family and friends, giving and receiving presents, eating delicious food, watching Christmas films and listening to Christmas music is all a part of what Christmas is about. But as a university student, these activities can often be ruined by looming deadlines and exams in January. Over the Christmas break, it is important to find a good balance between university work and Christmas festivities, as well as always prioritizing mental health. Below are some of my top tips for managing work load over Christmas and avoiding stress working just before the January deadlines!
1. Set goals
Setting realistic and achievable goals is so important to ensure consistent motivation. setting yourself up for failure with unrealistic, almost impossible goals is never going to encourage you to work. Instead try small, simple goals and be flexible with yourself on when they have to be achieved by. You never know when a long lost auntie is going to appear at the door and demand your attention for the day.
2. Don’t be too harsh on yourself
Continuing on from this, make sure to give yourself lots of breaks. You made it through the first semester of this year and you deserve a reward for that. Don’t be too hard on yourself if you don’t reach one of your goals or things don’t go to plan! Refresh and start again tomorrow and most importantly; be kind to yourself!
3. Prioritize Christmas
For most of the year, we prioritize university work over most other things but over this festive period, its important to make sure we don’t let the stress of university ruin the holiday period. Spend time with your family. Put your work to the side for Christmas eve and boxing day. It often helps that at the end of the festive period there are lots of yummy leftover chocolates ready to get you through the final push.
4. Find a workspace that works for you
A lot of students will be going home for Christmas, and adjusting to an environment that you are not used to studying in can be difficult. Its important to find a working environment that works for you and keep it consistent. It can be difficult in a family home to find places however ensuring you have some form of working environment and routine is crucial to maintaining good mental health over the Christmas period.
5. Plan your time
I’ve always been a sucker for a list, and a timetable! Planning your days and colour coding it can be really helpful to ensure you are prioritizing your time. Of course it is important to plan when you are going to study, but don’t forget to schedule in time to see family and friends, as well as time just for you to have some down time doing whatever you love most. For me, over Christmas there is nothing better than cuddling up with blankets, a hot chocolate, and left over Christmas food to watch some of my favourite films.
6. Make a start before Christmas
My final tip is to make a start before Christmas! The more you get done whilst you still have access to lectures are libraries, the better. For the first 2 years of my undergrad degree, I often didn’t start looking at assignments that were due after Christmas until January. I have, however, found that starting work before Christmas can really help to alleviate a lot of the post festive season stress. If you do manage to make a start on those essays before Christmas, make sure you organize and out everything away before Christmas eve so that when you get it out to resume the work, you aren’t having to start from scratch because you’ve lost all of your references or cant remember what you were trying to say.
I hope that this has been useful for those of you with deadlines and exams in January. The past four years of my university experience has involved a lot of trial and error but these are the techniques that have worked for me! Remember that the university support services are there if things become too much!
Look after yourself and have an amazing Christmas break!
Kate Stevenson is a current student on the MSc Psychology & Education at The University of Sheffield.
