As I mentioned last time you’ll probably have lots of additional university work to do whilst on placement but this year away isn’t all about working! After all, you do need to make sure you take breaks and give yourself some time to let your brain reset so you don’t just burn out.
When it comes to studying I’ve always found that if I try to sit for hours on end and churn the work out I find myself getting distracted, I lose my focus and in the end, I don’t really get anything productive done at all! If this sounds familiar to you then that’s because it happens to pretty much everyone and here’s what you can try to do to fix it…
It’s been suggested by various scientists that we work more efficiently with regular breaks. Now that doesn’t mean you should read one page of a textbook and then watch TV for 5 hours, the key to everything here is moderation.
In the last blog; I suggested using the 11-8-5 structure which is 11 hours work, 8 hours sleep and 5 hours relaxing, one of the most important things with this structure is that you don’t need to do each section all at once! You can split those 5 hours of relaxing into lots of little chunks and use them to separate those 11 hours of work into more manageable pieces. For me I’ve found that my brain starts to switch off after an hour or so and I need to take a quick 5 or 10-minute break to recharge. So, after listening to a lecture or reading some notes, I take a few minutes off to just listen to some music or grab a drink and let my brain reset.
What you choose to do in those 5 or 10-minutes is up to you but there is one thing I’d definitely recommend avoiding and that’s watching something on TV or Netflix. It’s really easy to lose track of time and before you know it a few hours have flown by, you’ve watched the first 2 seasons and it’s time to go to bed! If you’re planning to watch a TV show or a film I’d save it for your lunch break or the end of the day when everything else is done.
The other great thing about letting your brain reset with a break, for me at least, is that it can help to give me a fresh perspective. Sometimes, a quick break can be all that’s needed to help solve that tricky question or find the right wording for that big report.
To help keep me on track with my breaks I find that setting an alarm on my phone makes sure that I don’t take too much time off! I do this to time my work sessions too but it’s important to not bind yourself too tightly to that alarm. When the alarm goes off at the end of a work session don’t just leave the textbook where it is and go for a break! Make sure you get to a logical end point first like the end of a page or the end of a section and that way you’ll be able to start straight away again when you get back without spending 5 minutes trying to remember where you’d got to. If you do find yourself forgetting how far you’ve got when you come back from a break then that’s probably also a sign that however you’re studying isn’t working too well and it might be worth a rethink before you carry on because if you can’t remember what you’ve read 10 minutes ago then you’ll never remember it after a few weeks!
Living away from campus can be really daunting so join me next month as I run through some of the accommodation options available to you on your Year in Industry!