My best tips for handling summer school

Summer was always a three month long break from school, giving me much needed time to recover from nine months of hard work during the year. In grade school, Summer meant pool parties and long days filled with video games, sports, and friends. Once I got to high school, I began taking Summer courses to help me get ahead during the year, granting me a free period throughout the upcoming school year.

At my high school, Jesuit Dallas, the courses were three weeks long, met five days a week, for three hours, with two very generous breaks. Back then the courses were easier and I had less moving parts in my life to focus on. Once I got done with my first semester at Fordham, I decided it would be a great idea to take a Summer course or two to help me finish the core requirements faster and hopefully make my next semesters easier. Alongside school, I also got a job at my local bike shop, Richardson Bikemart (best bike shop in the nation btw).

School takes up my weekdays and work takes up my weekends, which I know is nothing new to some people my age, but to me, it took some adjusting. I have found that the hardest part about the Summer is the Summer school, not because it is hard, but because I have no drive to do the work.

I thought that Summer school at my local college would be a breeze compared to the classes that I take at Fordham, but they presented me with a unique challenge of taking place during Summer. I know that I can do the work quickly and then go hang out with my friends, but for some reason, I find myself putting off doing homework or studying for a test until late into the night after I've finished doing what Iwant to do during the day. This has resulted in worse grades in classes that I know should be no problem. All that I need to do is put in the work. The fact that these classes won't appear on my Fordham transcript as grades, but instead completed credits does not help my work ethic either.

So how am I helping myself retain my drive to do homework and study for tests? I have a few methods that have helped me to this point in the Summer.

My first tip is to get one's friends involved. When my friends tell me that I can't go out with them until I've finished the work I'm supposed to do for the next day, it forces me to finish everything I need to do before I do the things that I want to. It's like when parents tell a kid to finish dinner before they can have dessert. They know it's in my best interests for me to do my work before I do anything else, otherwise, I'm likely to stay up later than I need to, or even worse forgo doing the work at all.

My next tip is to remove distractions. I usually implement this tip during the school year, but when I'm at home I find that it's harder because I have come to associate my house with vacations that I take from college. For almost a year, my house has been a safe haven from homework, so trying to revert it back to the way it was when I did homework in high school is tough. A smart person would go to a different location entirely to do work, but if you don't want to do that, you can always go to a room that is dedicated to doing school work.

Summer school is never as easy as we think it is. I always think that because I have so much more time, the work will be easier than it is during the school year, but it is that increased amount of time that makes me procrastinate and works against me in Summer school.