Photo by Julia M Cameron from Pexels, CC0
In this second blog of our “Keeping the Spark Alive” series, I will continue to give you some advice based on my own personal experience (as a 3rd year UBC student who has had 10+ months of online studying) to keep your spark alive in your interest to university learning this year.
Online Studying
Online studying can be tiring and unmotivating for some, especially when you are in a phase of missing in-person schooling so much. After spending over ten months in the online environment, I have realized that it is totally normal to feel unmotivated and lost interests sometimes in this new environment. The key is that you know how to overcome those moments and move on.
Below are some of the advice that I have to overcome burning out in the online environment:
1. Find a good balance between working and playing
I am the type of person who wants to get things done quickly and on time, but the fact that everything is online sometimes makes me feel like work is coming non-stop since there are no specific boundaries between my work and home space. Over time, I have learned that it is just as important that you set a time in your schedule for your own breaks to make sure you do not put too much pressure on yourself on a workday. For example, I learned to find the joy in taking breaks to cook myself a good dinner instead of jamming in extra work at the end of the day. Everybody has their own specific way to have fun and relax after a long day of work. Make sure that you understand the daily things that bring you joy, and fit that joyful activity into your schedule- this is more important than squeezing in a task that you think might make you feel more productive. 🙂
Tiffany’s Tips: The Chapman Learning Commons has a recurring workshop on how to find a good balance between life and learning online, where we place a strong emphasis on self-care and productivity. Be sure to check out upcoming workshop offerings; you may find other helpful advice for a healthy and balanced lifestyle.
2. Set up a study space
Our Chapman Learning Commons Assistant Lina has a blog where she guides you to set up a study space and study-pace here. I personally have found this blog to be helpful, specifically with the advice about set-up of your study space. UBC has a great resource for us to set up our workstations here.
Tiffany’s Tips: A study space can affect your productivity. Every time I clean my desk before studying, I always feel more productive and fresher to tackle my assignments.
3. Attend real time lectures
Attending real time lectures not only helps you to stay up-to-date with the course materials, but it is also a good way for you to connect with your lecturers and classmates. From my personal experience studying online, most of the courses that I had in my faculty require students to keep their videos on. At first, I was not comfortable doing so because I found it was awkward to show my face in front of the whole class. However, after one term doing this, I have realized the benefits of this act. By having my camera on and seeing my other classmates’ faces, I feel more connected in the class, and the experience of online learning somehow has become similar to in-person learning.
The Keep Learning website has excellent resources for you to check out regarding online studying tips, such as planning your time, attending real time lectures, and working in an online group. Be sure to check out this resource for more online learning tips! The Chapman Learning Commons also has a page for Online Learning that you can seek advice to maximize your online learning experience.
Tiffany’s Tips: If your class does not require your camera to be on, you can also choose to do so. Ask a buddy in your class to do this with you, and who knows, others might also do the same thing. Professors always tell me that they feel much more engaged with their students in the online learning environment if they are able to see their students’ face.
4. Create a morning routine
Five months into studying online, I started to get used to the comfort of studying at my own place. I began to wake up 5 minutes before my classes started, and sometimes came to class late because of that. Skipping breakfast soon had become a habit, a bad one that I was not proud of for sure. I became tired of studying in my back-to-back classes because of that. I knew I needed to change this habit.
It was not an easy task to change from waking up at 10am to waking up at 7:30am everyday. So I did this step by step. On the weekend, I tried to wake up at 9am instead of 10am. Then, during the week, I started having my alarm from 5 minutes before my 9am class to 30 minutes before class. The week after, I tried waking up from 1 hour to 1.5 hours before class started. Soon, I became better at it. It was great not having to rush to open my Zoom meeting and having trouble turning on my computer 5 minutes before classes.
Tiffany’s Tips: It was challenging at first, and I admitted that I gave up some days. However, I found that it was helpful to set some fun activities to motivate myself to wake up early in the morning. For me, I personally looked forward to making my strawberry banana smoothie in the morning. I had also just started a new part-time role at a social media agency, so there were some new tasks that I needed to learn and I was excited for that. I chose to wake up early so I would have time to do these things.
Everybody has their own exciting things that wake them up every day. Find yours and you will see that waking up early in the morning is not a hassle anymore!
5. Write reflections at the end of the day
What I find from writing reflections at the end of the day is that it helps me to acknowledge myself and the hard work I put in every day into my work and courses. I try to spend at least 10-15 minutes before going to bed to write down at least 3 small wins every day, regardless if it is about my coursework or everyday moments. For example, a small win that I wrote down last week was that I raised my hands twice in a live class to ask questions – things I usually found really challenging to do before. When writing these small wins down, I could track my progress and how I improved over time. This sure helped me to feel more grateful and recharged for my online classes the next day as well.
Tiffany’s Tips: Writing a diary is easy because you can write whatever you want and you know no one would read it. However, writing a diary can be hard to maintain as a habit, especially when you are swamped with many other duties at the end of your day. What I do to maintain this habit (although it is still a work-in-process one) is that I would think of this activity as a “task” I need to accomplish every day and put the same weight on this as my other duties. I tell myself to write whatever I want, for however long I prefer. There were days when I just wanted to write “I am so tired” and go directly to sleep. You know what’s amazing about getting started with writing? Once I started holding up my pen and writing, ideas just flowed out and there were so many things I wanted to write about.
TLDR: Just start getting your pen out and write whatever you want in your diary; 5 minutes is enough. Just do it!
I hope these tips were helpful! How about you? How do you keep your spark alive? Please share your own experience with us below.
