This is it. With only four weeks of classes and one week of
finals standing between us and summer, the next month is going to both fly by
and crawl along at the same time. Before we know it, reading period (or
apparently reading day now? Thanks snow…) and finals will be upon us, but in
the meantime we will have to struggle through preparations for the upcoming
tests and papers that we all definitely started over spring break. I for one did
nothing but study over break – see the picture below for proof.
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| Hard at work staring out at the open ocean. Okay, I may have been on a cruise all week. |
Unfortunately, part of me (most of me) wishes that I had
actually done more work over break, considering I had three tests last week,
but what’s a college student to do?
With the end so close in sight, it can be hard to stay
focused in the coming weeks. Around this time last year, I almost signed up for an online class
to become an ordained minister as an attempt to put off studying. But no
matter how ridiculous your procrastination efforts become, the year will end,
and you’ll have finals to take and (hopefully) internship/job offers to
consider and accept. Here are a few suggestions for making the home stretch of
the school year just a little more bearable:
Stop checking your email. For many of us, emails will come
throughout the next few weeks bringing news of our internship applications, and
we will have to officially make summer plans. Although the wait will be
nerve-wracking no matter what, the worst thing you can do to yourself is check
your email every 10 minutes to see if anything new has been delivered. Give
yourself the gift of freedom from email for a few weeks, and wait patiently. The
emails will come; obsessing over when they’ll come or what they’ll say will do
nothing but stress you out and distract you from your daily life. Limit yourself
to your usual number of email checks, and focus on the right-now instead of the
what-if.
Don’t settle. If you haven’t gotten an internship offer yet
and you think it’s too late to find anything interesting to do over the summer,
you need to drag yourself out of your Eeyore-level melancholy and keep
searching for something! Check JumboJobs or read the Career Center’s weekly
emails for constantly-updated lists of jobs and internships available. If you
truly can’t find any deadline that you can meet, try to create your own
internship. Reach out to people and organizations around campus or back home
and ask if there’s any possibility for them to take on an intern for a few
months. This is how I found my internship last year, and I not only gained
valuable career experience but also had the opportunity to set my own hours and
create a personalized, flexible weekly routine. There are so many opportunities
out there and people willing to help you – it’d be a waste to not even look.
Plan accordingly. You might not be sure about where you're spending the summer just yet, but you might still want to plan ahead to ensure that your college-to-summer
transition is as smooth as possible. If you’ve applied to internships
exclusively in the Boston area, take some time to find an apartment to sublet
or a friend to stay with. If your internship is unpaid, look around for sources
of income that can make your summer living (meals, rent, etc.) a little more manageable.
The Career Center can be one such resource – if your internship is unpaid and
off-campus, consider applying for a summer internship grant! The second
deadline is April 13th, so if you have an internship offer already,
there’s still time to get funding. (You can learn more about the Career Center’s
Summer Internship Grants and other sources of funding here). Even
if your summer plans don’t work out the way you want them to, doing some of the legwork now as a precautionary measure will
make your life a lot easier in a few weeks, when you’ll have finals to worry
about.
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| "What are you up to this weekend, Sean?" |
The home stretch is a tough time for everyone. It’s
stressful. It’s grueling. It makes you want to hide under the covers and
pretend that homework and job interviews and responsibilities don’t exist. But
if you take the time to relax and plan ahead, you’ll be much better off in the
last few weeks of the semester. Stay motivated, and think of how rewarding it'll feel to finish the year on a positive note!
As one last piece of advice, I recommend taking a break from
work and watching a Disney movie once in a while as a destressing technique. Nothing soothes you quite
like regression into the animated wonders of childhood. Once you’ve watched
Simba take over the pride or Prince Phillip slay Maleficent, you’ll think you
can do anything.
Until next time,
Sean Boyden
Class of 2017
Class of 2017
