The festive period is a brilliant chance to unwind from university work, to spend some quality time with your family, your home friends and eat properly for a few weeks. It can be so lovely that it becomes easy to forget about pending January deadlines, or it may simply be difficult to
juggle family engagements with your university work. This blog aims to give you some ideas about how to juggle university work with your Christmas plans.
Planning, planning, planning!
One of the hardest aspects of balancing university work and Christmas plans is simply working out when you’re going to be free to sit down and do the work. I would recommend, if you haven’t already, working out exactly when you intend to be spending time with family and friends and planning your university work around this. Write off any times you expect to be busy, this will give you a realistic sense of how much time you really have. One of my personal favourite ways to do this is by time-blocking on Google Calendar. You can find out about time blocking here.
I would also recommend working out exactly what you need to do by breaking down every essay or process of revision. Work out roughly how long this will take in total. Try to organise this across your time off from Christmas plans so you have an idea of how much university work you need to be doing each week to get the work you want done, done. Ensure you know which tasks are priorities and which would just be ‘nice’ to do and make sure your priority tasks are completed first. I also recommend working in a good few days’ worth of wriggle room in case you have any spontaneous plans, burnout, or an unplanned hangover!
Work efficiently
I would also recommend ensuring you’re working as efficiently as possible and not doing any unnecessary work. Reflect on revision and essay-writing techniques which have been effective
for you in the past and try to replicate these.
Stop scrolling
Much easier said than done! Scrolling is a huge killer of time, and at this time of year your priorities are likely to be your friends and family and your university work. You don’t need to cut out your social media usage, but maybe set some alerts on your phone to notify you when your usage hits a certain level so you’re aware of the time you’re spending on certain apps. If you find yourself unable to limit your social media usage, I find it useful to delete the apps, even just for the day whilst I complete my work, and then re-download them again in the evening. This would mean that if I fancied an Instagram scroll, I literally couldn’t have one unless I was willing to cave and redownload the app.
Local library
To create some separation between home, where you spend time with your family, and a space where you complete your university work, I highly recommend visiting your local library. Not only does this give you the chance to get out the house and have a walk, but it gives you a set
location where you solely do university work. If you have a spare day wherenyou’re not doing anything, it is a wonderful way to get some of that work out of the way whilst still feeling like you’ve got out of the house and been productive.
Enjoy the time you spend away from your university work
Because you’re likely to expect to spend a lot of time socialising over Christmas, ensure you fully take advantage and enjoy this time. Fully immerse yourself and be present when you are enjoying time with others. It gives you a break from work which you can look forward to.
Try to stay off your phone and being half-hearted when it comes to enjoying the company. Most importantly, do not feel guilty for switching off and enjoying this time fully. These assessments are likely to only make up a small percentage of your overall degree and one family engagement is unlikely to change your entire degree class, so allow yourself to enjoy them, trusting that you’ll do the work later. Even if you don’t get everything done, it’s okay, if you enjoyed spending quality time with your family, it won’t feel like a waste. At the end of the day, you’re on your university break for a reason, and you do deserve to have a break from your work!
Take time for yourself!
Constantly spending time with your family/friends and doing university work are tiring, you’ll do both to a better standard if you give yourself the time out to recharge and replenish. Ensure you’re consciously taking breaks and doing things for yourself; in whatever form this works for you! This might mean a walk, the gym, a relaxing bath, cooking, reading a book or watching a film. Anything that allows you to fully switch off.
Hopefully this blog has given you some ideas about how you might manage your university workload alongside your Christmas plans this December.
