No matter how focused a student you already are, or how hard you’ve worked to improve your focus along with your other study skills this school year, winter can be a very hard time to keep yourself motivated. This winter, I imagine, must seem longer than just about any other you’ve ever experienced, since it has been so very different from all those that have preceded it. So much has already happened that has upended your lives, and so much uncertainty still remains about just when life might return to anything even resembling normalcy, that you might be finding it difficult to believe that spring will even come, let alone that it will bring the signs of new life, hope, and normality that you are craving. Even if this spring does not turn out as you are hoping it will, doing your best to remain focused and to push through what remains of the winter will make the spring better than it would otherwise be, and someday, you will look back on this longest winter and realize that if you were able to persevere through it, you will be able to persevere through hard times you may face in the future.
No matter how you feel about winter weather, and no matter whether you live where harsh winters are expected or where they are rare, winter has always been the longest part of the school year for several reasons. In addition to the possibility of cold weather and storms, there is the lack of sunlight to contend with as well. Even though this affects some people more than others, it affects everyone to a certain extent, and no matter the extent to which it affects you, it can have a negative impact on your ability to focus on your schoolwork. No matter how your grading periods are structured, winter also tends to be the time when both the difficulty of your courses and your teachers’ expectations reach their peak, both because you have covered the material meant to prepare you for new challenges and because the time between winter break and spring break is the longest uninterrupted teaching time that remains to your teachers (unless, of course, there are snow days!), since the time after spring break is usually filled with various end-of-year schedule interruptions. Many curriculums are also structured to peak in the winter when it comes to skills that build on each other in order to better prepare students for standardized tests in the spring. Even though you may not all have standardized tests this year, it is important to remember that building skills is important for future coursework as well, so whether you are struggling to understand the course content, to stay focused, or both, now is as good a time as any to ask for help.
In addition to the factors listed above that make winter the longest time of any school year, you are all facing many things that make this winter seem longer than ever. Anticipating spring as you normally would is particularly difficult, not only because so much of what will happen is still unknown, but also because last year, the beginning of spring arrived just as everything you were anticipating started to be ripped away from you. Spring sports and performances, proms and graduations, and whatever else your schools do to make the end of the year special were either canceled or drastically changed. As hard as you may have found accepting that to be, I’m sure many of you consoled yourselves with the belief that this year would be different, that certainly by now, life would be back to normal and whatever you had missed last spring would be restored to its former glory. If realizing that that is not the case is as much or even more to blame for your flagging motivation than the winter weather is, it is okay to acknowledge how unfair it is, even if parents and teachers try to convince you otherwise. Staying focused at a time like this is hard enough, even if you do acknowledge it and are able to vent about it, but it is infinitely harder if you don’t acknowledge what has you down, because if you don’t acknowledge it, you can’t work through it.
Once you’ve acknowledged whatever it is that is making this your longest winter, it is time to consider what you will do about it. You have probably been told many times over this past year that you should try to make the best of a bad situation, and though you may be tired of hearing it, it is good advice, so I will echo whoever has said it to you and say it again. In addition to talking about what’s bothering you so you can acknowledge it and move to work through it, it is also important to realize that whatever you do to get through this winter and the remainder of your school year, it may not turn out as well as you’d like for it to. After such a long year with so many unexpected and seemingly never-ending challenges, it is important to remember that as long as you don’t give up, the best you can do really is the best you can do. In addition to venting your frustrations and asking for help, keep doing whatever you can do to improve your study skills, not just through the rest of the winter, but through the rest of the school year, too. Every day you take a positive step with your study skills is a day that not only gets you a step closer to the end of this school year, it is also a day that gets you a step closer to your future – a future in which you will once again be able to enjoy and appreciate everything about your life, both in and out of school, that you have missed for so long, while also reaping the benefits of your improved study skills.
Though winter is traditionally the longest time of any school year, there are many, many ways in which the pandemic has made this winter seemingly the longest of all. As hard as it may be to believe right now, spring is coming. Even though it may not be the spring you were dreaming of when last spring was so completely and irrevocably changed, try to look forward to anything and everything about it that is positive, so you don’t let what remains of this longest winter get you down and keep you from persevering with your work. Throughout your study skills journey, your academic journey, and your life journey, there will be ups and downs, and there will be times when focusing on and persevering with your work seems nearly impossible, but if you refuse to give up during this longest winter, you can look back on it during other tough times and remind yourself to refuse to give up in the future.