It’s that time of year.
Family that you never cared for keep coming into town, asking you millions of questions about your life, while their lives are in shambles. You refuse to check Blackboard because finals week has killed your vibe four times over. Worst of all, you’re still fat from on-sale Halloween candy, Thanksgiving, life, or all of the above and then some.
Regardless of the bad, you are given a fresh start. After Dec. 11th, are in the clear for at least three weeks (if you’re in pre-session, six if you aren’t). After Dec. 11th, life starts to look clear up. You look up at the sky and actually believe that the procrastinating ways you have developed over the past two decades will vanish over these blissful three weeks, and you will finally be the magic word: productive.
Despite the powerful urge you feel to be productive, you spend three weeks eating Cheetos and watching everything on Netflix, Hulu, and Prime.
Well, my friends, I’m here to help. I got your back. Follow my tips below and you will (finally) be able to say that you did something over break.
Step One: Establish three – five main goals.
This gives you a few key things to master during your time of solace. Here are my four goals:
- Get a healthy workout schedule
- Dedicate two hours a week to self-therapy (reading a book, making art, taking luxurious bubble baths)
- Keep my room as my niche (keep in clean, but in style)
- Stop sucking at life and do the things that I love
Step Two: Keep a few things in mind.
Be reasonable -- If you know that you will be working 40 hours a week to maintain your standard of living, or just to stay out of poverty, don’t make one of your goals “work less”. Rather, make your goal, “Get more out of work,” in effort to make those 40 hours more meaningful. Make a goal to hate one less thing about your job.
Be responsible, but give yourself a break -- make small goals that are productive and accomplish-able. Clean out your Inbox, stop leaving Taco Bell all over the place, make it a habit to put your keys in the same place every day, keep a coin jar for the road trips that you think you will never be able to afford. Do not use your winter break as a time to be harder on yourself, view it as a time to finally focus on some of the thing you neglect while in classes. Be sort of adult-ish, just a little.
Have some fun! If you spend all of your time working and being super productive, what makes winter break so different from school? Here are some affordable things to do in Wichita:
- Go to the park and people watch while drinking cheap coffee from Quik Trip
- Check out a Final Friday art showing -- on the last Friday of every month, go downtown and check out the art.
- Go to the Oldtown Warren and watch a $5 movie on Wednesdays
- Go to Cheddars and gorge on the croissants
- Hit up the Dollar Days at Target (give yourself a $10 limit)
- Have more ideas? Comment below!
Step Three: Spend at least 72 hours not thinking about school.
I spend a lot of my time overthinking and wishing I was more of a perfectionist and trying to master the art of college. Rather that propelling me to conquer the world, I just end up depressed and feeling like a waste of space.
Take three days in a row to remember why you are a human. Enjoy being a human. Save the stress for a day that you can handle it. Don’t make that day during winter break. When you graduate and become a real adult, you won’t have a winter break to look forward to.
