It’s that time of year again. Every ad on TV has a new spin on Santa or the perfect gift of the season. Even though it seems far too warm (for my East-coast self) to declare it the holidays, the houses decked in golden twinkly lights and pop-up Christmas tree lots have decided otherwise. My Spotify has started suggesting the ‘Holiday Hits’ playlists again, but it feels hard to get into a festive spirit when I glance at my planner.
Every day that my countdown-to-home calendar ticks down, my stress levels rise as it means one day closer to home, but one day fewer to finish the remaining mountain of papers, projects and finals. The more I stare at my planner, the less and less plausible it seems that there enough hours left to get everything done. Along with thinking about internships, study abroad and staying on top of extracurricular commitments, I’m sort of searching for the “pause” button on the world (and cursing the evil-Kermit inside me who thought it would be okay for me to take a break over Thanksgiving).
Me: You should start getting ahead over the Thanksgiving holiday. Me to me: “You’ll have plenty of time after break. Ignore it all.”
Not gonna lie, I reached that time of year when I found myself in a professor’s office, reaching for the blurry outline of a Kleenex box through barely-suppressed tears. Partially because I was confused about the assignment, but mostly because I had let myself think about everything due for the rest of the semester at once.
Seeing page after page of inevitable work stack up and loom over me at once is a great recipe for me to curl up in bed in the fetal position, scrolling through BuzzFeed until I’ve mindlessly absorbed every article and Tasty video published in the last week.
New plan. As unreliable as Post-It notes may be as an agenda, I needed to break down projects into smaller parts. A tip slightly stolen from my wonderful roommate, I took a sticky for each project so I could see it on its own, and broke the project down into smaller parts. Smaller blocks makes it a little easier for me to see progress without drowning in everything all at once.
If online is more your thing, Trello is also an awesome tool to make due dates seem less daunting. It allows you to create cards or checklists for each element of a project that you can color code and “cross off” your list each time you complete a part of the list. Something about the fact that it’s an app makes the agenda look more fun and less-frenzy inducing than my planner sometimes does.
Breaking everything down into bits helps, but not nearly as much as being surrounded by a supportive environment. The positive Post-It notes scattered around Toll are a tiny reminder that it’s all going to work out, and that I am truly lucky to be in this space, as stressful as it feels in this moment. Friends and bosses at work have made sure to remind me that grades do not define you, that the majority of campus is also in a similar state, and that it will be break very, very soon.
We’ll make it through the next few weeks, even if it’s just one little step at a time. In the meantime, I’ll trying to play a few Christmas carols to try and channel that positive holiday spirit (maybe interspersed with my serious studying playlist?).
https://open.spotify.com/user/spotify/playlist/7CG7k1hXjVmeYMdt8lQRa7