How to start the period the right way!

Maybe last period didn’t go as well as you hoped, maybe it did go well and you just want to improve even more. Whatever your situation is: starting your next period well prepared, will help you to study better. In this blog I will give you some pointers on how to get a head start.

Relax!

You have studied hard for your exams, so the first step is to do some selfcare. Do the things you enjoy to relax. Watch a movie or a Netflix series with your friends (corona proof of course). Pathé offers a free movie every day until November 18th. Get some exercise too, as it can make you feel better and reduce stress. Read this blog for some exercise ideas. Most important of all: catch up on your lost sleep, so you will start your new period well rested. Put on some white noise and snooze away!

Get organized

Locking yourself up in your room for hours on end to study, probably has left your room a little messy. So start with cleaning your room when your exams are over. Save the notes and handouts you want to use later and throw the irrelevant stuff away. Get the vacuum cleaner and get rid of all the dust on the floor. A clean room equals a clear mind!

After you cleaned up your room, it is time to clean up your desktop. Your laptop/PC is probably (a little) cluttered after your last period. To make sure you can start with a clean slate, declutter your laptop/PC. Start with deleting the files you don’t use and won’t be needing anymore. After you’re done with this you will be left with the important stuff. You can create different folders to organize these files. If you use short and clear names for your folders you can find them back really easy. Make sure your files also have short, clear and relevant names. It will save you a lot of time and stress when you need to find one of them back.

Get all the supplies you need

To go through your period smoothly, it is important that you have all the materials you need for your studying. So if you are out of notebooks, get some new notebooks. Out of pencils? Get some new pencils, etc. Make sure that you order your textbooks in time too, as it can take some time for your books to arrive. An extra tip: if you are an Aureus member you can get a discount of 10-15% at the VU bookstore! 

Read your syllabus

Reading a syllabus can be very boring, so maybe you tend to skim it really quick, or you just skip reading completely. But the syllabi are full of important information! Make notes of the most important stuff and put the deadlines that they give you immediately in your agenda. That way you know when to finish your stuff, so you can divide the work in small pieces. A tool I like to use is Google Agenda. It is free and very accessible. You can color code the different appointments you put in and it can give you reminders if you want. The easy thing about an online agenda is that you can access it from both your phone and laptop.


Hopefully these tips will help you to prepare! Try to implement them and give your own spin to it. Get that head start and ace your next exams!