By Jessica Brondo
Memorial Day Weekend is upon us and while for most people it signifies the unofficial start to summer, for high school juniors (and their families) it is the official last weekend before the last SAT of this school year (and thus a super important study weekend). A lot of families will end up staying home for the weekend to allow their junior to maximize his or her time studying, but some just can’t let their Memorial Day plans go. Soooo if you’re one of the lucky juniors who gets to study while on vaca with the fam, here are some tips to actually getting stuff done.
1. Make an itinerary for the weekend
~I know that summer means easy living and lollygagging so an itinerary might seem a bit-anti summertime, but it will really help you get in some time study time. For instance, if you know you’re spending the afternoon at a BBQ and will be there until after dinner, then you need to plan to wake up and get a ton of studying done in the morning. Or if you know you want to play tennis and go to the beach in one day, you should plan on doing a little studying at lunch and then spend the night studying before and after dinner.
2. Bring notecards
~You know you’re not going to want to lug around heavy textbooks while traveling, so this is the time to bring your study guides and notecards. Notecards are great for the times that you’re traveling in a car because you can have another family member quiz you. The have them make separate piles of the topics you know and the topics you don’t know.
3. Don’t aim to accomplish too much.
~Everyone always has big plans of getting tons accomplished on vacations, but for some stranggggeee reason those plans never materialize. When you’re away, you’re not going to want to seclude yourself from the group to study at all times of the day and night, so you’re never going to be able to accomplish everything you hoped. So set your sites small! And do a TON of prep work in advance.
4. Don’t you DARE try to take a practice exam/do problems at the beach (or outside).
~This is a bad mistake. For starters, it’ll probably be slightly windy, so you’ll be struggling to hold your papers down. There will be cuties walking by and people trying to talk to you so forget about timing yourself. Sunshine and sweat will undoubtedly turn into a ridiculously large number of careless errors. Instead, do the test in the morning (or before you go) and plan to do reading/highlighting while outside.
5. Do problem sets/tests in the AM and review/read/study in the PM.
~If you’re trying to get an accurate score on your practice exams, you want to take them when you’re fresh (not weary after a day of fun in the sun), so you should just plan on banging it out as soon as you wake up, enjoy the day, and the review it at night.
I hope you all have a glorious Memorial Day weekend wherever you might be spending it…..let me know how the studying goes.
