Hell weeks are part of students’ lives, since they teach us how to deal with everything piling up at the same time. However, students, especially those in Senior High and College, tend to be overwhelmed by the amount of work they have to do during hell weeks. Despite this, the amount of work has nothing to do with being overwhelmed.
This is because the ultimate cause of being overwhelmed in hell weeks, assuming that mental health is normal, is poor life management skills. Managing one’s life involves setting priorities straight and making sure all commitments are met. Here’s how you, dear students, can properly manage your lives and survive Hell Week.
Prioritize
The first thing you need to do to practice proper life management is to prioritize. Jot down all your deadlines so you know what to finish first. Prioritize easy requirements and those with immediate deadlines. Once you accomplished all these, then you can devote your remaining time to harder requirements and those whose deadlines are still far away. Just remember to avoid procrastinating, OK?
Learn to Decline
The next thing you need to remember, dear students, is to learn how to decline certain things, in order to focus on your requirements. For example, if a student has an oral exam tomorrow, and his organization has an activity today, then what he should do is forego his org activity to prepare for his orals. This is because a student’s main priority should be academics, while org activities are secondary. So, please know when to decline org commitments, since being active in organizations is purely voluntary, while academics are necessary.
This goes for varsity athletes as well. After all, they are still students, before they are athletes.
Avoid All-Nighters
The third thing you should remember in order to survive hell week is to avoid all-nighters. This is because staying up all night will negatively affect the quality of your work. For example, I once worked on a paper until 12 midnight, and it turned out to be the worst thing I had ever written. This is because we need sleep to make sure our brains are working normally. Also, staying up all night to cram is a sign of poor life management, since you could have removed some unnecessary activities to make sure you get enough sleep. After all, that late-night game of LoL or Overwatch can go, but your sleeping time shouldn’t.
However, if you do have to pull an all-nighter due to emergencies, it’s fine. Just make sure to sleep at night if you can help it.
Do Your Requirements in Installments
Finally, one thing you can do to manage your life properly is to do your school work in installments. This means that you do bits of your requirements everyday, even on slow school days. For example, you do a page of your paper every day, but you can do more if you feel inspired. This is helpful because you learn how to stay productive, and avoid getting overwhelmed by all your requirements. However, please start early, so you have enough time to spare.
Hell Weeks Don’t Have to be Hell
In the end, even if all the work is piling up, dear students, it doesn’t mean that your hell week should be hell for you. All you have to do is properly manage your life and follow these simple tips, so you can turn your hell weeks into purgatory. After all, having to do many things at once is good training for later life, so learn how to manage your lives. So, the only person who makes your week a hell week is you, but you can change it!