The transition from your parents house to your own place in a new city can be an exciting adventure, or it can be an overwhelming year full of emotional rollercoasters and feeling like you're always one decision away from a completely different life. While you've set out on the voyage and were so excited to traverse the world in the high seas, there are some moments when you are tempted to plot a new course and steer that boat toward land. Here are some tips on how i try to stay motivated:
- Watch Study Vlogs. This one might seem counterintuitive in that rather than studying, you're watching someone study, but I find that by looking at other people who seem to have their life together share their experiences with college or medical school, it almost reminds me of what my goals are and where I could potentially be in a couple years if I just studied right now. It's nice that modern technology offers things like live study sessions with youtubers because it's like you actually have a study buddy when in actuality, you're alone in a closet. You chose this life. This closet to study in. You can also always find people to study with. You don't have to be close friends or anything, but if you're cool with you and they also have a test the next day, why not? Maybe something good could come out of it. Maybe nothing comes out of it. Either way, it's good that you put yourself out there.
- Take up bullet journaling. There's something about looking at stacks of neatly hand-written notes that just is so satisfying that it makes one want to recreate that same studious aesthetic in their own lives. The art bordering the pages, the diagrams that were well-thought out, and outlines made by a borderline OCD student after much deliberation- detailed, immaculate, what's more attractive than the intelligence of someone who has their life all planned out and wrapped in a perfect bow? Things you can write in your bullet journal include some short term goals that you might have. It's better to put things on paper and have a plan than try to sort through all the mental chaos and anxiety. I also personally find it rewarding to write down something that I accomplished that day. It can be as small as emailing an academic advisor while sippin on a refresher at starbucks at a window seat. On a final note, your journal doesn't have to be neat. Mine is just a bunch of words on plain white paper.
- Get out of your room. Find a quiet public space, lay out all the work you have to get done in front of you, and sit there. Let me give you an analogy: when i was trying to start going to the gym, i cool piece of advice I got was to just wake up and go to the gym. Like just drive there. Even if you end up sitting in there and sleeping for another hour. Just force yourself to do it every day. Mind over matter. Sooner or later, you'll end up walking in because your body had made it a habit to drive to the gym every day. So if you have your book laid out in front of you opened to the page you're supposed to read for lecture tomorrow and a highlighter sitting right next to it, sooner or later you're going to stop staring at the page and highlight a couple sentences from a paragraph. Then that paragraph will turn into a page. Then two pages, and any movement is good movement.
- Talk to yourself. The best motivator starts and ends with yourself. So tell yourself you just need to read these sections for lecture and do this problem set so that you can pass out tonight, or reward yourself by drowning out your sorrows in alcohol this weekend. That's usually what i do: think of how wild i'll unleash the beast that's been patiently waiting between five hour labs by the end of this week just as long as I get everything done. Also, be honest with yourself too, sometimes you have to ask why you're not feeling motivated, and it goes beyond just temporary fatigue or procrastination. Sometimes you really do need to take a good nap or exercise to be in a healthy mindset to study. Be kind to yourself, there's nothing wrong with taking a break. You can't expect yourself to constantly be doing the right thing or be studying every moment of your life. If there's something bigger going on, talk to your professors. Recently, I've been seeing a therapist for emotional issues I've been having with school and family. I've just been doubting whether I even have what it takes to pursue my major. I would have taken the summer off to mentally recuperate, but i had to take this class as a prerequisite for the classes I'm taking in the fall. Luckily for me, my professor was very compassionate about the emotional level of stress i was in. I'm glad i talked to him early on before i failed a second exam in his class. Often times we're so overwhelmed by the class- the difficulty of the material, the impartial nature of the way the class is taught, the pace, how dumb you feel when you're the only one who doesn't understand anything- that it paralyzes us and that's why it's so hard to stay motivated to keep up when we've fallen even slightly behind. It becomes a parasite of procrastination that we let fester because we keep telling ourselves, "tonight, I'll pull an all-nighter and catch up on the reading, then i can come to office hours and ask questions since i can't come into office hours and ask him to just reteach the chapter, I should read the entire chapter first- and also the chapters he just introduced to the class." Doom, destruction, demolished, no coming back from that gambit. Rather than trying to convince yourself you have superpowers and it's up to you to pick up your slack, just as for help. Ask the professor what they think you should do to optimize your studying to catch up. What I find I get the most out of the conversation, not the content of what the professor said, but the reassurance and motivation I feel from talking with the professor. I've put it out there, and talking to a professional authority you look up to kind of leaves you with that feeling that everything is alright, and you want to work harder so as to continue that raport that you had just built by that one conversation.
- It can be hard to start living the way you want. Maybe you really do want to be that person who can wake up, go to the gym, eat a healthy breakfast, then go somewhere nice in the afternoon while wearing a button-up and studying. My advice is to just do it. Motivation is a feedback loop, which kind of goes back to what I was saying in point number 4 where motivation starts and ends with you. Once you get into the habit of pushing things off, of feeling insecure and self-conscious while scared to ask questions in class, of feeling like you're so far behind that you start beating yourself up over it, it can turn into something that lasts longer. In order to break that cycle and "find motivation," you just have to start. Once you start, that little amount of progress will itself turn into a feedback loop and you'll start to accomplish more. So in actuality, there really is no "how," there's only "what."
