How to make your bedroom your own
Every university student across the country has been made to pack up their desks and start studying from home, whether it’s on their mums kitchen table or at a tiny bedroom desk. We have been faced with a new way of living and a new way of studying which has left a lot of us feeling unmotivated. As students, our bedroom is normally a safe haven for us. Our bedroom is where we come to relax after a day of lectures and commitments, a place where we take time for ourselves. But now we are faced with a challenge to integrate our personal space with our working space. But fear not, here are some tips on how to keep yourselves engaged and prepared for at home learning whilst having some well-deserved me time!
New space, new you
Firstly, take a look at your bedroom. How does it make you feel? Your bedroom should make you feel relaxed and reduce any stresses you may be feeling. For some, plain white walls might work for this although for others maybe a wall full of posters, memories and fairy lights is what they need. Find what’s right for you. A global pandemic is a very good reason to revamp your bedroom, this doesn’t have to include drastic measures and lots of money. Perhaps all you need is to re-organise your furniture or cut some nice pictures out of a magazine and stick it on your wall. Dedicate an afternoon to it and enjoy it! Making a new space means you're prepared and ready for this new living style. This will give you the confidence boost you need to feel optimistic about the semester to come.
Making a study space
It is always important to have dedicated times for both studying and relaxing, this is the same for the spaces in your bedroom. Don’t work on your bed if you can help it. If you’re in a tiny room that only fits one double bed inside then be creative. Tell yourself that you will only use the end of your room for studying and maybe make some sort of study space out of a shelf on the wall. If you have more space than this then dedicate different areas of your room to both studying and relaxing. Wherever your desk space is, make sure all of your notes/pens/books are only in this space and are not thrown around your room. You can even make this study space to look separate from your relaxing space, for example your relaxing space will be minimally decorated (just a few nice fairy lights and a cute picture) whereas your study space will be full of motivational posters/ images and notebooks. Whatever works best for you.
Take a break This is maybe the most important point of them all, take a break! When you have assignments to do and exams to revise for it is easy to forget about taking time to reset. But you will thank yourself for taking this me time. This can easily be done by just closing your notebook or your laptop and ‘closing down’ your study space. By closing down I mean giving your desk a clean and put items that remind you of studying out of sight, this means putting books back on a shelf or even hiding your laptop under your desk. This will automatically transform your room into a stress-free zone as you won’t have any items visible that can remind you of deadlines/workload/essays etc. It is so important to be able to relax in your room without thinking about work, your brain needs this rest!
Routine We all benefit from routine to some degree. Some more than others but we all need to have some sort of routine in our lives. This is one of the reasons why people are struggling during this pandemic, our normal routines have disappeared or changed dramatically. But we still have an opportunity to create a good routine, we just need to adjust it to this new reality. This means setting goals for ourselves and making sure we are making some sort of progress towards them, however little that may be. For instance, our goal for the week may be just to finish the book you’re reading or it might be to cook a new recipe. However big or small it is, if you have set that goal and you accomplish it you will feel proud. Just remember, be kind to yourself and talk to someone where it’s safe to do so! We may feel, at times, like we are stuck in a rainstorm but there will always be sunshine on the other side!
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