Habits For This School Year

By Timothy Hayes on September 3, 2015

School’s in full swing again, but unfortunately, not all of us are. Many of us are still longing for the long summer days of fun and hoping for some reprieve this Labor Day. Alas, we are in school and now is the time for work.

We’ve had our time for fun and now it is time for work. Your mind and body however, might not be so keen to follow. You’re just not in the habit of school.

Habits are an interesting psychological phenomenon. It’s sort of like a natural saved file on the “computer” of our brains. These naturally repetitive cycles in our neurological pathways allow us to fulfill tasks that take up much needed time in our lives.

If you had to think about your habits every day, you’d take a little longer to do each of these rituals. These habits let your brain perform tasks without processing them in the rational regions of the brain like the prefrontal cortex.

(image via www.jamesclear.com)

Bypassing conscious thought, the necessary process is sped up and that helped early humans. However, nowadays habits can have negative implications too. Your summer wake up schedule was likely much more lax compared to what you have to regiment yourself for school.

These habits and others like it can be detrimental to our social life, grades, and even our health. Some research has suggested that habit formation may actually be an early stage addiction or better put, that addiction is simply our brain getting really intense habits.

Since habits form like addictions in some respects, they will take time to break or pick up. The ritual of habits for some is actually quite difficult to produce. According to research published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, the average length of time that it takes for people to form a habit is 66 days. The study did make note that the range of data was enormous, from as little as 18 days to 254. So habit forming must first be a conscience process. Then automatic responses begin to take place for most healthy humans.

While habit forming is largely about positive reinforcement and time, there are ways to make the process simpler for you to get into. Reminders posted everywhere are one of the best ways to artificially form a habit. These reminders allow you to coast into your habit. Post-it notes on the fridge or door of your dorm or apartment are excellent ways to ensure you don’t forget things. Phone reminders are even better, being active rather than passive ways to ensure that you remember to go study for an hour.

An even better active reminder to help you form habits is simply a nagging friend or family member. Do you have homework every day for a particular class? Ask your significant other to ask you when you talk if you’ve done your homework. Need to ensure you study at least once a day? Ask your friend to set up a time with you. This process will allow for better accountability for yourself throughout the semester.

So this semester, what habits should you be forming? So glad you asked.

The first and most important habit is getting enough sleep. Students everywhere self-report under-sleeping chronically during the school year. This is detrimental to your physical health, mental health, alertness, comprehension, and grades. Students who are tired have trouble regulating emotions and according to this study, have trouble recognizing it. Getting to bed on time is crucial. Set hard bedtimes and get in bed by them or earlier.

The next habit to get into is getting to class. There is a secret that some students choose to share with each other. If you don’t go to class, you won’t pass. Shocking, right? Even if the class does not take attendance, the class has the material you’re going to cover on the test so it makes no sense to not attend class when the answers are given to you.

This habit is of course harder to form if your classes start at 8 a.m. This is where the above habit comes in. If you’re in bed by at least midnight, you’ll get between six and seven hours of sleep which is considered adequate, but not perfect. So set an alarm, lay out material you need the night before, and streamline your morning routine, but above all just get to class.

Remember to get into a habit of studying. This is something that needs to happen every day. Every time you get an hour or so off of class just sit somewhere quiet and work on something. This can be going over notes, reading your textbook, doing a reading assignment, or doing homework. My uncle told my father and in turn my father told me, “if you do all the homework and go to all the classes, you’ll at least get a C.”

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