Summer Vacation

Are you taking summer classes? Studying abroad? Teaching yourself something new? Trying to get through a mile-long reading list? These are all great feats, especially for a three-month break from school! However, taking a break from things that require high levels of brain power is really important! Blending together high-level and low-level activities during the summer time is important to give your brain a break. If you spend your summer busy and frantic, you might go back to school in the fall feeling like you never even got a break! Here are some tips to keep yourself grounded and balanced during the summertime, while still being able to feel productive.

1. Know your limit when it comes to summer classes! Summer classes are far more fast-paced than regular college courses, and they expect to fit in an entire semester’s worth of work into 4-6 weeks. The classes are typically scheduled Monday through Thursday for hours at a time, or they are only twice a week in huge four-hour chunks. In either case, they take up quite a bit of time! Make sure you keep this in mind when filling your cart with cool classes because before you know it, you won’t have any free time left! Consider taking just one class during the four-week session and one during the six-week session. This will spread out the workload and let you have a life outside of school. It will also help your mind and body realize that you are actually on a break from school and that it’s time to relax a little!
   
   
2. Try to plan fun, easy activities! A lot of people, students especially, want to plan huge road trips or international vacations during the summer just to get out of town and away from everything that they associate with school. While this is a super fun idea, it might make your vacation a little more stressful than you’d like! With traffic, plane tickets, hotels, and time management, these types of vacations often feel like more work than your typical school day. Try not to fill your summer with stressful vacations, and consider planning smaller ones. One or two big vacations won’t hurt, but travelling one place to another will only leave you feeling more worn out than when the school year ended. Taking a day trip to the beach or mountains is far less stressful and might even help clear your mind! It’s important to balance your summer activities between the light and the heavy so that you don’t find yourself exhausted at the end of what was supposed to be your vacation.
   
   
3. Keep your brain active, but don’t overwork it! Remember that this should be a well-deserved break for you! Keeping a reading list is a great way to keep your brain active, but try not to overdo it. Don’t pressure yourself to finish your reading list, and make sure you’re reading for the fun of it. If you set a goal to finish a reading list of 1,000 books by the end of the summer, you will more than likely feel stressed and pressured to meet that goal. Set easy goals and remember that you aren’t obligated to meet them if anything comes up. Be easy on yourself, you deserve it!
   
   
4. Chill out! Remember to have fun! Don’t stress about the fall semester, financial aid, or your books just yet. Those are future problems for future you. Do what you can now, but don’t spend every second of every day worrying about what you can’t change right this second. Spend your break focusing on things that make you happy and help you relax. If you have a job, try to balance it with fun activities and relaxing activities. Summer is all about balance and making sure that you prepare yourself for the new year. What better way to prepare your brain than by giving it a needed, and deserved, day by the pool? Don’t spend your summer worrying, spend it being grateful that you survived another year and spend it being confident that you will survive the coming year as well. You can do this!

Written by Sydnee Appel, Fresno State Student, WRC Tutor