It’s almost December 31 and another year is winding down to a close! While you’re getting ready to celebrate ringing in the new one, take a little time look ahead to the new year and decide how you’d like it to be.
You don’t need “resolutions”, but a goal or two and a way to figure them out will help you get more out of the new year. Here’s an updated version of a post that’s a team favorite because it is so simple and works for pretty much everyone!
Look Ahead
At this time it is most important to Look Ahead to the Future!
While you may reflect on the past (see below), don’t spend too much time dwelling on it. It’ll just tie you down to a time that’s gone.
Look ahead to where you want to be, not just for the next year, but maybe a year or two further. For example, if you’re a junior in high school, start thinking about senior year and college so you can make sure you’re taking the steps to get closer to your goals and dreams.
Reflect
Take a few minutes to reflect on the year that is just ending:
How was your last year overall: great, good, so-so, horrible?
What made you feel happy?
What made you sad, or angry or worried?
What accomplishments made you feel good about yourself?
Looking at the previous year will help you figure out what is really important to you. And it will help you narrow your focus to a small, manageable number of goals, and that makes it more likely that you will succeed in meeting them.
Review
Now that you’ve identified your experiences in the last year, dig in a little bit to see what you can learn from them.
Is there a pattern or common thread?
Can the things you liked be repeated through your efforts?
And can the things you don’t want to experience again, be avoided through your efforts?
What aspects of who you are would you like to see more of next year?
How did the events of the past year affect your “look ahead” goals?
Knowing what worked and didn’t work for you last year, and knowing what you want further down the road, will make it easier for you to figure out what to aim for as you set your goals for the new year.
Renew
Renew your commitment to the outcomes you want. Whether it is getting better at math, or starting your college planning, or improving your personal best time in cross-country running, or enjoying more quality time with your family, just commit to them now. You can fill in the details of how/when later.
Most importantly, regardless of how the past year was overall, there must have been a few times that made you feel good. Take a few moments to feel grateful for them. A little bit of gratitude can put you in the right frame of mind to look ahead to another brand new year!
Best wishes for the new year from the gang at Meemli!
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Yes, it’s that “most wonderful time of the year”! Well, maybe. There is the unavoidable holidays and the year-end stress as everything happens in a few short weeks, even if some of it is fun. For most students, the season becomes enjoyable only when school commitments are done and the winter break has begun.
Relax. It is possible to manage finishing assignments, writing reports and handling finals and still find it possible to enjoy the season with friends and family. It just takes a little planning and self-care – we’ll show you how!
Take Deep Breaths
Too many things to do? Just breathe. Start by inhaling slowly and exhaling deeply. It’s a scientific fact that deep breathing helps you relax. Best of all, you can do it anytime, anywhere, without any props!
Limit Junk Food
Hey, it’s the holidays. There will be tons of sugary, fatty goodies wherever you go. Go ahead and enjoy – some of it. Don’t overdo it and remember to balance it with good healthy food when you can. Your body will thank you with less stress!
Get Enough Sleep
If you feel tired, you’re really not going to do so well taking exams, turning in papers, or even playing video games with your friends. According to this article, lack of sleep drops you into an unhealthy spiral. When you create your schedule, put in time for sleep!
Set Priorities
As noted earlier, this time of year is full of things to do – what you must do, and what you want to do. Take time to figure out what is most important to you and your family (school work is pretty important too!) and feel free to decline invitations or postpone unnecessary work.
Make A Schedule
As with almost anything, a schedule is a must to help you stay on track and also make you feel you’re on top of things and consequently lowering the holiday and year-end stress. Whatever is your favorite planner, use it to list everything – school work, extra curricular, family and friend gatherings, personal time – it’ll help keep you on top of things.
Get Moving
You’ve heard this before. Exercise reduces stress, helps you sleep and helps work off the calories from those holiday goodies! It can be fun too, especially if you go play a sport with a team or go for a run with friends.
Take Breaks
Self-care is critical. Having some downtime to listen to music, watch a favorite show, hang out with friends or bake cookies, will help keep your mind feeling refreshed and your whole self a little more relaxed.
Create An Inviting Study Space
Yes, you have to do your school work though the holidays are here. Go ahead and have some fun decorating your space, however you like it. Your space will make studying feel a little merrier!
Study Socially
If you can, take a break from solo studying and do it with your classmates. Prepping for a history test can be less stressful with friends (unless group-study doesn’t work for you). You can gather together for some holiday goodies and then bust out the books, or if you can’t meet in person, gather online for a little study-and-chat time.
Ask For Help
It it gets to be too much for you, and you’re feeling overwhelmed, ask for help. Your family, friends and teachers can help you with the academic challenges. And ask for help if your stress is getting to be more than you can handle – your family and teachers can give you the guidance you need.
Notice something about these tips? They could be useful for anyone who’s juggling a lot of to-dos and is being crushed under the holidays and year-end stress, so feel free to share.
The Meemli team wishes you happy, stress-free holiday season!
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(Please share this with the college-bound teen in your life!)
Many high school seniors go into panic mode during college applications time because they have to face writing the dreaded personal statement. After all, supposedly it is the most important part of your application and will determine if you get into the college you want. Is it even possible to think about the “personal statement” without the stress?
Relax. You don’t have to stress out about college admissions. Every year more than 2 million students enroll in college, and if they can do it, so can you!
Also, the personal statement is only one of the ways that colleges know who you are, and writing it can be made easier. The Meemli team has a few, easy-to-follow tips to help you dial down the worrying, so take a deep breath, and let it go – you’ve got this!
Enjoy It
Think about your favorite high school experiences. What did you love most about high school? What are you most proud of? How did these great experiences help shape you as a person?
You’ll most likely never do this again, so take the time to discover who you are, and what makes you special, and enjoy the process. Remember, this essay is a chance to showcase your best self!
Be Authentic
The personal statement is supposed to be “personal” – it’s about you. What is important to you and why you would be a great fit for the college, and it has to be something that you believe in.
So make sure it is about the real you, not who you think the admissions officer wants to read about. They are highly experienced and are very good at spotting essays that are inauthentic.
Remember Must-haves
College essays have some requirements. It is not just answering the question asked or sticking to the word limit, but also taking into account your tone, voice and more.
Take the trouble to find out the dos and don’ts for writing your college essay and make sure you follow them. For an easy way to keep track of the must-haves, get your free copy of the Meemli College Essay checklist here!
Get Help
While the college essay is all about you, and yes, you have to write it yourself, you don’t have to struggle through it on your own. It is perfectly acceptable to get guidance from helpful sources if you’re having difficulties with your essay or if you just want to make sure you have written it the way you want it to be.
When you get advice, make sure you get it from the right people who have the skills and experience to help you. Usually your school will offer resources that may be useful to you, if not, you can look at other options.
Meemli has some great, affordable, and very convenient options that might suit you.
- Need active help in writing your essay? Check out these options.
- Want an expert review of your draft? Send it in for detailed, personalized feedback from our experienced teachers.
So make a commitment to yourself to reduce your stress about the personal statement and remember to enjoy the process of writing about your awesome self and showing the colleges why they should admit you.
Do you have some ideas to share about college essays? We’d love to hear from you!
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With the seemingly endless projects, homework and tests at school, you may feel it’s impossible to manage it all. But it’s not quite that bad. Adopting effective study habits can help you get and stay ahead of the curve and achieve better grades. (Parents: these will help your younger children too!)
Here are our top recommendations for study habits that can help you win at school, college, or anytime you have to, you know, study.
Have Goals In Mind
Think about what you want to achieve this school year. Clearly defined goals, both big and small, will give you something to work towards. Make them realistic, but don’t be afraid to dream big either. Also, don’t burden yourself with too many goals. Keep them short and easy to remember and have them somewhere handy whenever you need a motivation boost.
No Distractions
Find a quiet place with as few distractions as possible. Mute your phone, turn off the TV, and if you’re sharing the room with someone else, limit your conversations. If you like to listen to music while working, choose mellow music with no lyrics. Working without distractions will help you focus on the task at hand and get into your zone.
Use A Planner
Keeping a day planner is the most important thing you can do to improve your study habits. It’s easy to lose track of all the things you’re supposed to do, especially if you’re also juggling extracurricular activities or other commitments.
As soon as you find out the due dates for your assignments, projects, tests etc., make sure to write them down. You can write down your scheduled tasks in an actual hardcopy day planner, but there are many digital calendars that can keep you on track too.
Food For Thought (Literally)
If you can’t live without chips and cokes, cookies and milkshakes, this suggestion might make you groan, but give it a shot anyway. Studies show that eating healthy foods like whole grains, fish, vegetables, and nuts will help you think more clearly and give you more energy for those long study sessions. On the other hand, junk food will leave you feeling tired, lethargic, and with a cloudy mind. Some suggest drinking green tea and taking daily supplements like multivitamins and Omega-3 capsules can also help boost studying performance – but as with all things dietary, check with your doctor and/or your parents first!
Work At Peak Times
Are you an early bird or a night owl? Some people tend to get their best work done first thing in the morning, others seem to get be at their best late at night. Start to become aware of what time of day your brain feels most “alive”. You’ll get your work done more efficiently and you’ll understand the material better during these hours.
Handwrite Your Notes
Instead of typing them down in your laptop, write your class notes by hand. Writing each word one by one forces you to process and remember the material that you’re covering. If your instructor goes through the lecture too quickly, feel free to type out your notes in class, but make sure to spend some time to write them down in your notebook later. Also, if you think of any ideas, write them down immediately. Once those thoughts leave your head, they’re gone forever.
Persist
Most importantly, don’t give up. Fully commit yourself to your studies. If you lose some motivation, focus on the goals you set for yourself. Hold yourself accountable and keep on grinding. You’ll see an improvement in your performance at school. Once you see the results of all of your hard work, you’ll be glad you stuck with it!
Doing well in school isn’t an easy task, but since you’re reading this post, you surely have the motivation within you to do it. By adopting a few good study habits, you’ll see some big improvements in your academic life. What techniques have helped you succeed in school? We’d love to hear about them!
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The end of summer break is like a ‘reset’ button, immersing students in the ‘new’: new teachers, new classes, new locker combinations, new peers – and new school year challenges.
The challenges can seem daunting but a little awareness and prep can help your child zip past them and get on track for success. Here’s how.
The Structured Life.
No more “What shall we do today?”. The school year brings structure back, and it helps if you build routines to keep life running smoothly. By the time your kid is in middle/high school, you know the drill and are geared up to have The Plan up on the fridge (and on everyone’s online calendars!). But school demands, your child, and life, have changed in the past year, so here you go again.
Build a new routine for this year, paying attention for what’s needed now.
Make sure your child is the primary creator of the routine, not you as she has to own and follow it.
Leave enough time for sleep. Lack of sleep affects your child’s physical, emotional and brain health and, of course, performance in school (teachers can attest to that!).
Help your child block out time every day for some feel-good activity. Relaxing for little while shooting hoops with friends or watching a favorite dance show on TV helps keep stress levels down.
Don’t expect everything to work from Day 1! Both your child and you should prepare to roll with it and adjust as needed.
Expectations, with Due Dates Attached.
School also brings deadlines for book reports, weekly quizzes and voluminous homework. Switching from the easy, lazy days of summer vacation to the constant demands of school is difficult for most students, but these three simple coping techniques will help.
Schedule the Work
Three words: use a planner. Schools usually provide planners/agendas for all students, get one if your child’s school doesn’t. Generally, successful students keep track of deadlines. I have never had a student who was diligent about due dates fail my class.
Using a planner is a very useful life skill, but initially hard for most adolescents. Help your child in developmentally appropriate ways. For a middle schooler this might mean a daily check with the planner, while high schoolers may only need a weekly conversation or a monthly review to make sure academics and extra-curriculars are all balanced.
Teach your kids to pace out assignments. When I’ve done this with students, I can see the light bulb go on: “You mean, I have to read 10 pages every night to finish this 200 page book in three weeks?!” Exactly. But then they get it and feel more in control.
Ask the Teacher
Successful students do not hesitate to ask teachers questions. Most teachers love it as it signals to them that a student is interested in learning, but many students are diffident, especially with new teachers. Encourage your child to start with simple questions early in the year (“Ms. Jones, could you point me to room 112?”) so he’s comfortable asking for guidance whenever he needs it.
Provide Support
If your child is struggling with any part of the academics, it is best to address it as soon as possible. Maybe you and your child already know that she’s comfortable with science but struggles with writing. If so, acknowledge it early on, and offer to assist her. If you can’t do it yourself, get outside support. Your child will be much less stressed knowing that if needed, she can get guidance from teachers, peers, outside tutors or online resources.
The Social Jungle.
Adolescents are busy figuring out identity: Who am I? Who will I become? And there’s the desire to belong, to fit in, and the inevitable concerns about popularity. There is no way to “save” your child from these social pressures, no way to prevent them from having to make hard choices. But you can help them run the social gauntlets relatively unscathed.
Communicate
Teach your child to talk through issues, if not with you, with other trusted adults, older siblings, or the best friend now at another school. Your child should know that she’s not alone.
To keep your child communicating with you, stay involved and most importantly, tolerate minor changes. Chartreuse hair? Incomprehensible music? As a teacher, I’ve seen that when students feel accepted, they tend to behave more acceptably and push back when they feel judged. As a parent you should help reduce your child’s stress, not contribute unduly to it.
Maintain Perspective
Even if schools are doing more to help students adjust, transitioning back to school, especially a new one, can be overwhelming. Help your child understand (and you should too!) that this is normal. Reassure them that in a few weeks, the unfamiliar and uncomfortable may seem boringly routine. With a little nudging, they may remember times when they dug into their own resilience and survived and feel confident they can do so again. Fights with friends and “OMG! I’m so embarrassed!” moments do fade with time.
Get Help
Also, it helps to remember that every child is unique and what is easy for one may be anxiety-inducing for another. Be patient, but if you notice that you son or daughter is not doing better, don’t hesitate to speak to the counselor or seek professional help – it may not be possible for you or your child to resolve on your own.
Change creates challenges, but they don’t have to be crushing. And your child is learning a valuable life skill by dealing with them.
How do you and your child approach the new school year? Let us know!
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The end of summer break is coming soon and that might cause many students to be bummed out. Don’t despair! You can make an effort to squeeze the most out of the last few weeks/days of summer so you start the new school year feeling satisfied, energized and ready to go. Here are a few tips to wrap up summer with gusto – just don’t forget to take care of any assignments that you may have to get ready for school!
Visit Places
The school year gets busy and it is hard to get to cool places, even if they’re close by. So before summer fades away, try to get away for a bit! Take a day or whatever time you have available and visit someplace nearby that you’ve always wanted to visit. Hit up a nearby city, park, or maybe even discover a new spot in your own town. If you don’t know where to start, we’ve got plenty of tips right here to help. Take some friends and family with you on your adventure and make some memories. Wherever you decide to go, make it fun!
Do Things
Not just anything, but those that are on your “summer bucket list”! You probably spend some time each school year thinking of things you would love to do if you had the free time. Well, now is the perfect opportunity to check some items off that list! You could read that book you’ve been meaning to read, hike that beautiful trail you’ve seen all over Instagram, or hang out with that friend you don’t see very often. Make a plan, organize your time, and finish the summer with a sense of accomplishment. However you choose to spend the remaining days of your break, make your time count!
Nurture Relationships
Before school starts and time gets tight, make a list of the people you want to get in touch with and maybe spend some time. It could be your cousin on the coast, your buddies from middle school or the friends you made at summer camp that you want to keep in touch with – the people you enjoy connecting to but may not see much during school year. Spend some extra time with your best friends as it is not only fun, but is good for you too. Finally, make sure you carve out some quality time with your parents and siblings before you find yourself too rushed with school to hang out with your family!
Have Fun
An end-of-summer party is a great way to wrap up the break with a bang! It doesn’t have to be big or fancy – remember the more time you have to spend planning and getting ready for it, the less time you have to relax and have fun! Focus on gathering a few good friends, pick a place, date and time, get some food, create a playlist ready, plan to play games or dance (or not!) and celebrate! Whatever you choose to do, you’ll make some good memories and taken the time to chill before the school year starts.
The end of summer break approaches as it does every year. But you can make every bit of it count doing things you enjoy to make it memorable and launch you into the new school year refreshed and ready. What are your favorite end of summer activities? Let us know below!