Being young is exhausting, isn’t it?
For some, spring break meant studying for midterms and eating too much Easter candy while relaxing on the couch. We would wake up a week later completely ready to take on the rest of the semester.
Others seek the adult joys of travel and leisure, if travel and leisure mean getting in your jalopy and driving six hours to crash on your friends’ couch in San Francisco with the engine maintenance light glowing red on the dash board and a beer at Zeitgeist calling your name. And by crash, I mean nap for 10 minutes a day.
Break was most exhausting for the students who picked up extra shifts at work all break, went hard all week long, studied until their eyes felt raw, worked on a special project or did all of those things and then some.
Chances are, you finally checked your email or BeachBoard on Sunday night and realized that the semester wasn’t as close to over as you had thought.
It’s going to be a long week.
If you want to turn that frown into a slightly smaller frown, follow these tips.
Detoxify.
Some people say that gentle yoga is the way to go. I say gentle yoga is where grandmas go. You need to work all of that Easter candy, liquor and road food out of your body. It’s all about boot camp and kick boxing. Working out may seem like a horrible way to recover, but if you do this more mornings than not, you will feel energized and ready for anything professors threw at you over a month ago that you just hadn’t look at until last night.
Retrench.
Go through all of your syllabi and make a to-do list for the next couple of weeks with dates, using different colored pens, highlighters and even some doodles. Look at how happy and inviting your to-do list is. Look at it every morning for the next several days until you get the hang of this school business again.
Sleep.
The party is over. Go to sleep. You spent all of your money anyway, so stop looking through all the jackets in your closet and beneath the seats of your car for beer cash. Tell your friends you can’t go out this week or even this weekend because you’ll be too busy catching up on your homework and reading every issue of the Daily 49er that has ever been printed – ever. That way, they won’t think you’re ditching them to sleep like a grandma at the end of a gentle yoga class.
Re-toxify.
When you need an extra kick in the brain to stay awake or make it through the day, drink light roasted coffee. It has more caffeine than dark roast does, and it actually tastes like something instead of what it would taste like if you cleaned out your car, made a bonfire with the junk, and soaked that trash in hot water for a while. If you don’t like coffee, try black or green tea. It’ll give you more of a nudge than a kick, and actually inhibits your body’s ability to absorb too much caffeine, according to a knowledgeable barista – myself.
Breathe
Don’t forget to set a little bit of time aside for yourself every day to do whatever you want. Read a book for fun, play videogames, go hiking or watch an episode of your favorite series. Or if you liked the bit about sleeping, just do some more of that.
