Thanksgiving Break and How to Spend It the Right Way

Thanksgiving is a long-awaited holiday break that many students consider to be as a week of freedom, rest, and time to spend with your family. Though it might be partly true, in reality having such a break in a full might badly affect your productivity at the end of the semester.

So, is Thanksgiving a time to rest and reboot or the time to pull yourself together and make the final push toward studying? We think that the right balance between the two is the most desirable option. However, how can one achieve it? Let’s find out!

Avoid Overeating

It might be a hard thing to do with all the delicious meals cooked for holidays, but you should avoid overeating as it is one of the things that really affect your productivity and your well-being. When overeating, you make other processes in your body except for digestion much slower. It affects your memory capability, brain activity, concentration, etc. It also might cause sleepiness, sickness, and other symptoms. 

So, it means, that even if you try to study for upcoming exams or finish your larger project during the break, overeating makes it much harder and less effective. 

Avoid Shifting Your Sleep Schedule

We all want to sleep as much as we can when we are on a break. However, when you still have a part of your semester ahead with all the final exams and assignments due, it’s not the wisest thing to do. The best way to stay productive during the break and make it easier for you to get back to studies is to keep the same sleeping pattern. Going to bed at around the same time as you would during the semester and the same with waking up. You can give yourself an additional hour to sleep but waking up in the middle of the day is not effective at all.

Finish Your Assignments

A lot of students see Thanksgiving break as a chance to rest and forget about all the assignments for some short time. However, it’s only a temperate relief and might have some bad effects on the future studying experience.

If you want to ease your life at the end of the semester, use the time you have over the Thanksgiving break to finish all of your projects and time-consuming assignments. If you have any term papers, research papers, or other types of assignments that are due in the upcoming weeks, you should better work on them during the break. This will definitely give you time in the future to concentrate on other tasks, for example, studying for exams.

Study for Your Finals

Studying for your final exams takes a lot of time and effort, thus, the earlier you start, the more effective your studying will be. If you want to pass your exams without too much struggle, start studying during the Thanksgiving break instead of putting it aside. 

There are a lot of various tips that might help you out to get ready for your finals quickly and easily. For example:

• Avoid pulling all-nighters. Create a study plan for each day with breaks and designated time for study blocks.
• Include practice-testing into your daily study routine.
• Make notes while you are reading with the key information – this way you will remember it better.
• Start with the material that definitely will be on the exam – you might remember your professor talking about it or facing it when looking through the instructions that your professor sent you, syllabi, etc. Then, move to the things that can possibly be on the exam, and the rest leave for the final round of studying.
• Eat healthily and don’t skip your workouts, especially cardio – training helps to boost your brain activity.

You might have your own study technique that works for you, for example, memory palace or something like that. Don’t miss an opportunity to train your memory during the break to keep yourself focused and productive all semester long.

Get Positive Emotions

It’s well known that getting positive emotions affects your well-being in a great way. It helps you stay organized and concentrate on important and challenging tasks, as well as avoid burning out when everyone around you is stressed. Try to spend your holiday break with your family and friends, plan your day to avoid procrastination, and treat yourself to something that you like. Even a chocolate bar sometimes can make your day and get you through all the studying sessions.

If you feel like you need to do nothing to really get rest and reboot yourself before the exam season, you can also do that – just plan your day in a way that allows you to have a free evening or another part of the day. Laying down on a sofa, watching Netflix is also something that every one of us needs from time to time. But it feels so much better when you know that you have previously finished that essay that you couldn’t complete in a long time. You can also send us a request and we will help you with your assignments so that you have some free time to spend with your family on a holiday evening. Have happy and productive Thanksgiving!