By Anu Dev
The new year is well and truly underway. Many of us marked the New Year with resolutions to change some of the things we weren’t quite happy with last year. Unfortunately, (but most likely) most of us haven’t managed to keep all of our resolutions. The mind is willing but the flesh is weak!
I know I usually have the habit of being overly ambitious in my goals – planning to complete huge amounts of things in one day that realistically, I probably won’t be able to complete in a week. It’s like stacking the odds against you and setting yourself up to fail. I hereby resolve to ease up in this department!
I know most schools have opened and homework’s being hurled at students from all angles. But it’s really not too late to sit down and methodically plan out how you want to use your time for the new semester. Better yet, for university students, the semester hasn’t even begun yet. We still have a couple more days to plan out our semester. If anything, our grades from the first semester that are slowly filtering out (osmosis?) should pretty much be enough motivation to spur us on to want to do better than last semester.
For my high school readers, I know from (bitter?) experience, that in fifth form, being on this (wrong) side of January 1st, you’re kind of propelled faster and faster to your first exam date. Somewhere between the mounds of SBAs, past papers, and frantically trying to cover what’s left of the syllabus, time slips away. And before you know it, it’s the morning of your first exam. So take the time now, before you get swept away in the whirlwind of the days up ahead and plan, set goals, get more organised than you were last semester.
It’s going to take some time, a lot of thinking, and a lot of self-evaluation to make sure your goals are realistically achievable. But it’ll be worth it, because a couple of months from now, you won’t be in a panic over not covering everything, or not working enough papers because you would have already covered those things according to your plan.
Panic is probably one of the most dangerous emotions to have during exams. Your mind can literally go blank and you can find yourself unable to remember things like the names of the 20-something poems you covered for English B. Deep breaths and taking some time to collect your thoughts can prove to be incredibly helpful. It’s not for nothing panicked persons are advised to take a deep breath – it actually works! Oxygen getting to your brain and all that!
Don’t let procrastination get the best of you this year. We’re all guilty of procrastination at some time or the other, some of us much more than others. And it’s usually the crushing regret afterwards, when we realise we could’ve done so much better (if only!!!) that brings us to our senses.
So don’t end off 2014 with regrets, it’s early enough to make realistic goals. Stick to your goals and don’t give up on those resolutions just yet.