Best ways to manage school, home life

Many people right now don’t know how to manage their free time during this difficult time. There are many things that I have learned to help this situation that I decided I could share with other people to make their lives a little bit easier.

I don’t usually start my work right as a wake up, and I don’t normally wake up at 6 a.m. like I would for school. That just makes me want to do school work less. What I do is set an alarm for 9 a.m. and get up. I get dressed, like I normally would, and go eat breakfast. I go back to my room for about two hours, relax and watch some TV. This makes it less stressful for me when I finally do my school work.

The first thing I learned early, when we started online school, was that I needed to eliminate distractions while I did my work. For me that was turning off the WIFI on all of my electronics: phones, tablet and playstation. If that is still not enough and there’s still some temptation, give those electronics to a parent so that there is no way to get them back until all school work is done and completed.

Another tip I use to manage my school time is to do all of my work in the order I would normally do it. Since I would have had Algebra first period, I do my math work first. After that, since I had biology second period, I do biology second.

When I get to the point where I would have normally eaten lunch, I get up, take a half hour break, and get lunch, or a snack if I already had lunch. I do this so that I don’t feel so overwhelmed and I can get a little bit of rest. During this time, I still keep my electronics off and spend a little time with family. I do this so I won’t get drawn into anything and lose motivation to get things done.

When I am done with school work for the day, I turn the WIFI back on and relax for the rest of the day.

On weekends, since there is nothing else to do, I hang out with my family, do some art and just hang out. If I decide to do art, I’ll sit and paint or draw. Normally I just make a line somewhere on a page or canvas and see what I can make out of it. Sometimes I sit and watch Netflix, and other times it’s Hulu or Youtube. Some shows I recommend are Outer Banks (Netflix), Blindspot (Hulu), Wynonna Earp (Netflix), Manifest (Hulu), Marvel’s Runaways (Hulu) or Supernatural (Netflix) since there are 14 seasons on Netflix, which makes it a good binge show. Something fun to do when done with school work is to learn something new. Sit down and learn to knit, sew, paint or play an instrument that you have in your house.

One thing I make sure to do is eat at the time I normally would. I try to eat lunch at the time I normally would and eat dinner at the time I normally would. I do this to keep a balanced and normal schedule so that I didn’t start eating dinner at about midnight because I forget.

There are many things to do over this unforeseen “break”, but if you look hard enough you can find something to do. Before doing anything else, get the things you need done (school work) out of the way before doing things for yourself.