Should I Study Over Christmas?
With the Christmas holidays approaching many 6th year students wonder whether or not they should study over the Christmas period. Unfortunately we cannot give you a straight ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer to that one. Whether or not you need to study over Christmas depends on how you feel your studies are going so far.
The break is the perfect time to look at your goals for the year and see if you are on target, look at how you have been doing in your class tests, and if you had
Christmas exams, thinking about how they went. If you feel you are behind then the holidays are a good opportunity to catch up. The lack of school and homework will give you time to focus on subjects you may have been struggling with or neglecting thus far.
If you feel like you are on top of things, then by all means don’t open a book for the two weeks. Enjoy the festive season, you deserve it. Students have attained 625 points without doing any work over Christmas, so you shouldn’t feel guilty for taking a deserved rest.
If, however, you feel there are certain areas that could do with some work, Christmas provides a good opportunity for you to focus on these areas and here are our tips for doing just that:
1. Do absolutely no work for a few days.
Even if you do feel like you need to catch up, you have just come through the first half of an extremely difficult year. Give yourself a break, take a few days to soak up the festive spirit, meet friends, eat, and sleep in. This break should be completely guilt free. Everybody needs some time off. This break will make you feel recharged and should improve your focus when you do reopen the books.
2. Have a clear plan
You should have a clear plan of what you are trying to focus on. First, decide exactly where you want to be when you go back to school. Next, divide up the work needed to achieve this, across your study days. Remember to take into account family activities or any other Christmas activities and leave space for these in your plan. Study should be a small part of the break and should leave room for you to have a good time.
3. Don’t try to take on too much
Don’t try to have the whole course covered in every subject by the time you’re back in school. It’s not possible and you will just end up frustrated with yourself when you don’t get it done. Take those clear goals of what you want to have done and commit to doing a few hours per day on them. We would strongly recommend, doing these hours in the morning. Getting up in time to start studying at 9 and having your work done by lunch time will give you plenty of time to relax. Also, having plans later in the day can help you to stay motivated to get your work done so you can go and enjoy yourself.
Whether you plan to work over Christmas or not we would recommend that you take advantage of the break to look at your CAO or other 3rd level options. It is also a good idea to make a plan for when you go back to school. Make sure you know what you are aiming to achieve and figure out how you are going to get there. Plan out how you how you are going to prepare for the mocks and make sure you are aware of when you have language orals and how much time you need to set aside to study for those. By the time you are back in school there will be around 5 months until the Leaving Cert is underway. It will be a very quick 5 months, take our word for it.
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