In my last post, I wrote about the fresh start a new school year provides, and the opportunity it gives you to make changes that can help you see greater success than before. Since I hadn’t done so at the beginning of the previous school year, I focused on the beginning of the first grading period, and how starting the year off as positively as possible is the best way to make sure you won’t spend the remainder of the year playing catch-up, especially as your coursework gets more difficult later in the year. If you took or plan to take my advice in that post about hitting the ground running and putting your best effort forth right away, so you have good early results to fall back on in case you face struggles as the year goes on, that’s great, but it is only the beginning of what you should do to make this school year the best it can possibly be. In this post, I will focus on what happens when the newness of the year starts to wear off, and how you can keep your focus on the positive changes you are making. While it is tempting to make all sorts of new plans and goals at the beginning of a new school year without thinking about the effort it will take to sustain and build on them over time, the much better course of action is to remember what I have said in many previous posts about the development of good study skills being a process that takes time and needs to be focused on and nurtured throughout the year. While it is inevitable that the fresh start feeling of the new year will wear off as you settle into your new classes and routines, it doesn’t have to be inevitable that you lose sight of the plans you have made to improve your study skills.
Taking the fresh start you are making with your studies and your teachers and turning it into something you can sustain as the year goes on might seem daunting at first, but it can be done. No matter the circumstances you find yourself in regarding the pandemic or anything else that has a significant impact on you, staying positive and believing you can find your way through it is easier said than done, but is nonetheless crucial to making this year as successful as possible. Once the newness of the year wears off, the next feeling that often kicks in is the feeling that the end of the year is a very long way away. When this feeling hits, the last thing you might feel able and willing to do is to keep your focus on your goals, but the way to do it is to remember to take things both a day and a class at a time. Take the goals you’ve set for the year and apply them again and again as you need them. Keep them where you can constantly refer to them and adjust them, and remember to make them manageable. As I wrote in my series of grading-period posts last year, there will be a lot of times throughout the school year when you will have a good opportunity to adjust your goals and/or set new ones, but that doesn’t mean you should put them out of your mind the rest of the time! Referring to them often, whether to celebrate and build on successes or to recommit to them when you face challenges will make them seem more helpful, which will in turn lead to them becoming more attainable. Believing in and working toward attainable goals and making them a consistent part of your studies will also keep them fresh, which will make working toward them easier to sustain throughout the year.
In addition to your goals, another important thing to focus on as the newness of the year wears off is how you plan to manage your time. When you make plans and set goals at the beginning of the new school year, they are often easy to follow through on at first, not just because you are determined to do the best you can with your fresh start, but also because you have plenty of time to do what is expected of you. As you settle in to your classes, the amount of work you will need to do will start to increase, test preparation will be added to assignment completion, and any extracurricular activities you participate in will be in full swing. As these things begin to happen, the fresh start you were so determined to carry through the year will naturally become harder to sustain, but if you focus on managing your time, either as well as or better than you did last year, you can find the right balance between your studies and your other commitments.
Just as managing your time as you settle in to the new school year is an important part of sustaining the positive start you made, so too is continuing to build your relationships with your teachers. Making a good first impression on new teachers, a fresh start with repeat teachers, and a renewed commitment to your studies can go a long way toward building relationships with teachers that can boost your chances of success in their classes, but it is another thing that is easier said than done once the newness of the year wears off. Putting your best effort into what they ask of you and asking for help when you need it throughout the year, no matter how challenging it becomes and no matter the issues you may face, and doing so respectfully, will increase their respect for you, which will only make them more willing than they already are to do all they can to help you succeed.
Approaching your studies, both new and repeat teachers, and whatever circumstances you find yourself in in the most positive frame of mind possible will give you the best possible chance for success in the new year. As the newness of the year starts to wear off and you settle in to your classes and routines, you might find that all the positive changes you have made will be challenging to sustain. Taking things a day at a time, focusing on your goals, managing your time wisely, and continuing to build mutually respectful relationships with your teachers are all ways to increase the chance that when you look back on the year, you will find that rather than settling in to old patterns, you have created new ones that you can continue to build on in the future.