Tag Archive for: organization

Drew M. Hodis
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How to Prevent Academic Burnout: 9 Actionable Tips to Maintain Good Mental Health

How to Prevent Academic Burnout - 9 Actionable Tips to Maintain Good Mental Health. Image of a boy being overwhelmed by his homework on his computer.

Sometimes students find themselves working really hard in all of their classes, studying at all hours, and aiming for straight A’s and perfect test scores. But after a few months, students often find themselves feeling tired all the time, irritable, disinterested in school, and unmotivated to do anything related to classes. In fact, these situations may devolve to the point where students no longer meet important deadlines, lose confidence in their academic abilities, and fall into bad habits like overeating or nail biting. This process is called academic burnout.

It arises from devoting too much time and energy to school and neglecting other needs and desires. So how do you prevent academic burnout? It really all comes down to self-care. The following list offers actionable self-care items to prevent academic burnout or to shift out of a state of burnout.


(1.) Make Time for Activities That Bring You Joy

Taking a break from studying and doing something fun like going to the movies or taking a trip to the beach can help students reset before they get back into their studies. It is helpful to block out time in your schedule for leisure activities.


(2.) Make Time for Social Activities

Along the same lines as the first suggestion, social activities provide a mental break from studying. Hanging out with good friends not only helps students feel supported and accepted, but also relieves stress and anxiety.


(3.) Exercise Regularly

Sitting all day is not good for students’ minds or bodies. Experts recommend that people get at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise or 90 minutes of intense aerobic exercise weekly to improve cardiovascular health, reduce stress, and boost mental health. This may look like going on a run three times a week for 30 minutes at a time or going on a brisk walk five times a week for 30 minutes at a time.


(4.) Go Outside

Being in nature has been shown to reduce stress and boost mental health. Going on five or ten minute walks in the neighborhood during study breaks is an easy way to check this self-care activity off your list for the day.


(5.) Make Good Connections with Teachers and Peers

Feeling connected to your teacher and peers will make class feel more like a welcoming environment instead of a purely stressful one.


(6.) Set Reasonable Goals

You’re likely not going to get 100% on every single exam. Set goals that are reasonable within your time and energy constraints. Respecting your needs with reasonable goals will actually help you perform better by giving you more energy, motivation, and peace.


(7.) Work on Your Time-Management Skills

Managing time wisely is a skill that will reduce stress and create more peace throughout your entire life. Creating to-do lists and blocking out specific times for your activities in a calendar are two excellent yet simple ways to manage your time. Managing your time well will prevent procrastination.


(8.) Refine Your Study Skills

Many students who experience burnout tend to study hard, but may not be studying efficiently or effectively. Learn how to develop your study skills by reading our Building Strong Study Skills Series (see our study skills Roadmap) or by meeting with one of our expert tutors.


(9.) Ask for Help When You Need It

There’s nothing wrong with needing help. If you’re struggling with cultivating the above self-care skills, ask someone who you trust to help you. Or if you’re finding a concept or course to be challenging, ask someone who you know will be able to help and who won’t feel burdened by your request. You can always hire one of our expert tutors to guide you through any challenging course.

Self-care is an invaluable skill that will help any student succeed in academics and in all other aspects of their life. Begin utilizing these tools now to prevent yourself from burning out. And be patient with yourself – it may take time to learn these tools and successfully apply them to your life.

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Rachel Hodis
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End of Term Checklist for Students

Congratulations, students! You’ve almost made it through another school year, and a year that hopefully felt more exciting, comfortable, and, well, normal than the previous two school years.

With the end of term approaching, so too are final exams and projects. Here’s a quick checklist for you to follow before you end the year.


1. Check your Grades

This is to ensure that you won’t be surprised when final grades come in. This is also a great opportunity to see if you can make up any work or see what you might need to do on your final assignments to get the best grade possible.


2. Talk to Your Teachers

If you’re behind in a class, missing assignments, or just want to make sure you’re prepared for your final exam or assignment, check in with your teacher. Talking to them now will allow you adequate time to catch up on assignments and prepare without needing to rush. Your teacher will also appreciate hearing from you earlier rather than right before or after the final assignment. Read our guide on talking to your teacher.


3. Create a Timeline

Create timelines to help you approach studying or complete those last assignments for the term. Breaking down your studying will help you retain information better and won’t feel as overwhelming. This same method will help if you’re trying to complete a final project or paper. Trust me, spending just 30 minutes writing every day to finish an essay will be much better than trying to write the whole thing right before the deadline!


4. Book a Tutor

Tutoring sessions will be much more effective and helpful if you have a few weeks to work with a tutor rather than just the day before. Plus, tutors aren’t just for studying or academic classes– book someone to help you write or edit your final research paper, or find an educator who can help you prepare for a year-end musical performance!


5. Plan for Summer

If you truly feel like you might have fallen behind in a class this year, it’s not a bad idea to think about scheduling tailored sessions to help you catch up before next year. You can also schedule summer activities that aren’t academic! Consider music lessons or art instruction, or even a portfolio workshop if you’re looking to take your art skills to the next level.

We wish you the best of luck as you approach the end of another school year!.

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Rachel Hodis
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Spring Cleaning for Students

Spring Cleaning for Students. Picture shows students walking across campus.

Flowers are blooming, days are longer, pollen is swirling through the air, and for students, the end of the school year is in sight! But don’t start slipping in your study habits yet! If anything, now is a great time to tidy up your study and school routine so you can finish the semester strong. Below are tips for spring cleaning up your school habits:

Clean out your backpack:

Okay I get it. If you’re on spring break, the last thing you want to do is touch or even look at your backpack! It’s probably been stuffed out of sight under your bed or in a corner not to be thought about until Monday morning after break.

But may I gently suggest– perhaps Sunday night, as you sadly set your alarm to wake up early for school the next day– take your backpack and clear everything out of it. All those papers, food wrappers, books, anything else that you’ve left in there. I recommend setting a timer for 15 minutes to just clear everything out.

Set aside the books, binders, notebooks, and anything else you’ll need for the next day of classes. Throw away trash or anything you don’t need. Set aside past assignments that you think you might need for finals studying.

This physical act of cleaning serves a couple purposes. First, it might help you feel productive and slightly more organized for the start of classes. Additionally, you can start to think about what you need to finish the semester on a good note. Do you see an assignment you didn’t do well on? Instead of throwing it away, hold onto it so you can discuss the assignment with your teacher.

Check your grades:

Perhaps you avoided thinking about your grades for the last couple of weeks. However, now is the time to really take a look at where you are in your classes and what it will take to improve your grades, if that’s something you need to do. Are there any large assignments coming up at the end of the term? Perhaps your last graded exam will be the final, which you need to ace. Start planning and preparing for what you need to do to get the best grades you can. Set a S.M.A.R.T Goal, hire a tutor, or prepare to use the study skills described in this blog series.

Use a planner:

If you have a planner that you’ve diligently been using to track assignments and due dates all school year, keep it up! If you haven’t or if you’ve fallen off of using your planner, now is the perfect time to start or get back into it. Start tracking your assignments and activities. Block out study times and plan which days you’ll be doing your work. Now is the time to stay on top of your assignments and it’s certainly not the time to fall behind on due dates because there are limited opportunities to make up that work.

Evaluate your habits:

Finally, take a bit of time to reflect on your study and work habits from the past semester. Were there things you were doing that didn’t really help you or made things more difficult? If so, think about how you can take action to change those habits. Perhaps you were regularly going to bed way too late, which made you consistently late to school and tired in your classes. Commit to going to bed earlier during these last few months of school. Did you only study the night before a test? Set a study schedule for yourself, or talk to a teacher or tutor about how to best study before your next exam.

Schedule a session with one of our tutors today!

Check out our tips for staying productive over Spring Break!

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Drew M. Hodis
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Shine Bright & Start Strong: 3 Small Steps to Be More Organized & Efficient

Shine Bright & Start Strong: 3 Small Steps to Be More Organized & Efficient

Some issues we see often with our students is a lack of organization and smart studying. It’s challenging for a student who already struggles in a subject to do well if they aren’t keeping track of assignments or aren’t efficiently completing homework or studying. This is why our expert tutors teach our students to be more organized and work more efficiently, which we’ll also share below:

1. Use a calendar to track homework assignments & tests

With many teachers now posting assignments online, students might think they don’t need to keep track of homework because they can just look it up. But a calendar or planner where you have all homework and test dates listed for all classes is more effective than looking up each class assignment page.

For one thing, you have all your information in one place and you can use the online assignment page to double-check or see updates. Second, hand writing things is proven to help people retain information better than typing it or simply reading it.

And finally, it puts a level of responsibility on the student, which they will need, especially as they advance in their education. A high school student will be expected to be more responsible and autonomous than a middle schooler, and so on.

student in a tutoring session with her tutor.

2. Put your phone on do not disturb

HLM’s next-level tutors always ask students to turn their phones on silent and physically put them away or move them to another room during sessions.

The phone, especially one that buzzes every few minutes, is distracting for our students and makes it difficult for them to concentrate on lessons.

You can swear you’re the best multi-tasker in the world, but it is proven that notifications can and do adversely affect our ability to focus on tasks.


3. Set a timer

Homework can be daunting, especially if you’re looking at seemingly endless pages of reading or writing an entire essay.

To break the paralysis or “I don’t know where to start” mindset, set a timer and do as much work as you can within that time. You’d be surprised at how much you can get through in just 30 minutes!

This works well especially if you have lots of work to do for different subjects. Instead of getting overwhelmed, or wasting hours slogging through one assignment, a set time-frame anywhere from 30 minutes to 1 hour will force you to be efficient.

Reward yourself with small breaks between work, but make sure you set a timer for those too, so you can get back on track.

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These may seem like small things, but they can make a big difference in how organized and prepared a student feels and how efficiently they work.

Our tutors and educators aren’t just professionals in their field of study, but are also skilled at teaching organizational and key time management skills. These skills and study habits will benefit your student far beyond the classroom.

If your student is struggling in a subject, or just wants to get ahead, book a session with Hodis Learning & Music today!

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Rachel Hodis
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Shine Bright & Start Strong Series: Setting SMART Goals

shine bright & start strong series: getting smart goals

The start of a new year often inspires us to commit to new habits, practices, and ways of life to improve ourselves. However, studies have shown that resolutions often fizzle out after a month, or sometimes even in a matter of days or weeks.

Our Shine Bright & Start Strong Series will provide content all month long focused on how to set goals, improve organizational skills, and create better study habits so our students can start 2022 on the right foot and find lasting momentum to carry them well beyond January.

scrabble letters for English tutoring

Make SMART Goals: 

For any goal that you’re setting, it’s best to create goals that are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant/Realistic, and Timely. These can be New Year’s Resolutions, or goals you set for yourself each week or month. And while SMART Goals work in any area of life, we’re going to explain how they can help you in your academic, music, language, or artistic pursuits.

Specific: Make your goal as specific as possible. Many people have a tendency to make general goals or resolutions like “I want to learn a new instrument” or “I want to get better grades.” These goals are hard to accomplish because there are no specifications. It’s fine to start with a general idea like the ones listed above, but then dig deeper and define your goal more clearly.

  • “I want to learn a new instrument” becomes: I want to learn how to play guitar
  • “I want to get better grades” becomes: I want to get better grades in my math and science classes

Measurable: A goal is more easily accomplished when there are metrics. Metrics give you a number or place to work towards and a point of comparison. To explain this better, we’ll use our goals from before.

  • “I want to learn how to play guitar” becomes: I want to learn how to play one song on guitar. Suddenly our general goal is even more specific! We can see an outcome- learning one song. If you’re a beginner who has never played guitar before, this goal is realistic and possible.
  • “I want to get better grades in my math and science classes” becomes: I want to get B’s in my math and science classes. Now, you’ve defined the subjects you want to get better grades in and the grades you want to achieve.

tape measure for math tutoring

Attainable: Make sure your goal is attainable. If your goal isn’t realistic or attainable, it might be discouraging if you aren’t able to achieve it. For example, if you have never played guitar before, you probably shouldn’t expect to play guitar like a rockstar in your first few months of learning the instrument.

If you struggled in math and science classes last semester and you don’t remember the previous lessons, it might not be attainable to achieve A+ grades in those classes.

It doesn’t mean those things aren’t possible at some point, but be realistic about your progress and starting point in order to set goals that you can actually accomplish.

Relevant/Realistic: It’s worth asking yourself at any stage of the goal-setting process if your goals are relevant and realistic to you, your stage of life, and your lifestyle.

The way to answer those questions and to get to the heart of your goal reasoning is to ask yourself, why. Why do you want to set this goal? Why is this goal important to you?

If your answers have more to do with other people, is it really a goal worth pursuing? For example, if your goal is to learn a new instrument because you want people to be impressed with you, that might not be sustainable motivation.

That could be one reason you want to learn a new instrument, but maybe you also dream of joining a band. Maybe you want to challenge yourself and learn something new.

Those are perfectly good and relevant reasons, but just be clear in your intentions because those will drive you to keep working towards your goal even when it’s challenging.

If you are a student and reading this, you might feel like some of your academic goals are determined by your parents. You might think because other people want you to improve your grades the goal isn’t relevant to you.

If you feel this way, I encourage you to think about how improving your grades might help you achieve your own goals. Do you want to go to a specific college? Do you have a dream job?

You also have the power to determine if the goals are realistic. Maybe your parents want you to be valedictorian, but you know you would be adequately challenged working towards a 3.0 GPA. Talk with your parents and set a realistic goal that will challenge you and allow you to work towards your own dreams.

Timely: The final step in making a SMART goal is setting a time frame in which you can reasonably achieve your goal. Be realistic and honest with yourself about your starting point. Also be realistic and honest about how much time you’re going to spend working towards your goal each day and each week. So let’s make our original goals timely:

  • I want to learn how to play one song on guitar by June 1, 2022. Make sure you also set a reasonable timeline for how often you will practice, and how frequently you’ll meet with a guitar teacher who can help you learn the song.
  • I want to get B’s in my math and science classes in the spring semester. This is a great goal! Again, make sure you are putting in time throughout the semester to achieve this goal. Schedule regular sessions with a tutor early in the semester to start working towards your goal right away.

clock for timing tutoring sessions

Additional Tips to Make Your SMART Goals Stick:

  • Tell someone about your goals: Telling a trusted friend, tutor, coach, teacher, parent, or mentor is important when setting your goals because they can keep you accountable. They can provide motivation when you don’t feel like working towards your goal and remind you why you set your goal in the first place.
  • Evaluate your progress regularly: Use a calendar, journal, or spreadsheet to track your progress. Check in regularly to determine if you will be able to achieve your goal within your set time frame. Your goal and time frame can help you determine how often you assess your progress, which could be every day, once a week, or once a month.
  • Don’t be afraid to adjust your goals: Regular evaluations will help you determine if you’re on track to achieve your goal within your set time frame.
    • If you haven’t been practicing guitar regularly, perhaps you need to set a new completion date. Again, be realistic about your time and also make the necessary adjustments to achieve your goal. Perhaps you need to commit to practicing more often in order to learn the song on guitar. Set new practice times and stick to them.
    • Adjusting your goal is also important if you find you can exceed it or reach it in less time than you thought. Maybe halfway through the semester you realize you’ve gotten A’s on all your math and science exams. Don’t be afraid to change your goal of getting B’s to getting A’s in those classes. Write it down, tell your friend, teacher, or mentor, and track your progress towards that goal the same way as before.
  • Reflect on your goals after you achieve them: After you’ve achieved your goal, celebrate your success and reflect on it! Writing down your thoughts in a journal can be helpful. How did you feel working towards your goal? How did it feel to achieve your goal? If you had to adjust your goal, how did that make you feel? Do you want to expand upon your goal, and use it to set new ones?

Our series continues with how to be more organized and efficient and cultivating a better mindset to achieve success.

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