Two weeks of being a bum and a couch potato has ended. Bid good bye to the Telenovelas you’ve religiously followed, the long chats over Facebook you’ve had until morning, and the unlimited texting and calling subscriptions you’ve registered with to make the telecommunications networks rich. Now we face the time to refresh our minds and start anew with the second semester. Make yourself rich and expensive with knowledge and skills. Now we’re back to school, back to reality.

This may be a dreadful dream to students but reality is actually a good thing. Every once in a while, we have to be knocked down for us to appreciate what we have – one of which, is the gift of education. The question is, how can we really make this time of our lives productive?

Let me share with you three things that may come in handy whenever you reflect about your study habits.

Organize your schedule, organize yourself.

When the coaches give you the requirements, make a list of to-dos per subject along with their deadlines. In this way, you can keep track of the things you need to submit and even do them beforehand. Keep a journal or a calendar where you could write your planned tasks for the day and make sure you check what you have accomplished at the end of each day. This will keep you reminded and at the same time, will serve as a training for you when you go to the corporate world. Trust me, workers, employees, and even businesspeople do the same. If they won’t, they would have a hard time doing their tasks.

Follow your schedule and never procrastinate.

Once you have done plotting your schedule, all you have to do is to follow it. Do whatever has to be done as how you scheduled it. Now I know what you may be thinking. You will schedule everything the day before the deadline. If you do that, there’s no sense in doing this entire thing. You might as well prepare yourself for getting stressed, having sleepless nights before the final examinations, and eventually becoming ugly. It’s up to you. But if you don’t want to become ugly, never procrastinate. Never postpone to tomorrow what you can do today.

Imagine this scenario. Before the final examinations, all your classmates are stressed, having sleepless nights, and are little by little becoming ugly. But you, who had finished doing the tasks ahead of time, are relaxing and feeling complete and gorgeous. Funtastic, isn’t it? You could even check your work many times to see if the quality is worth a high grade.

When you organize your schedule, you organize yourself. When you follow your schedule and never procrastinate, you improve your academic performance.

Reward yourself.

The tips I have given you may look tedious. But one think you can do is to set a reward for yourself that can motivate you to finish your tasks as scheduled. Eat out, watch a movie, go to the mall, play sports, buy yourself new clothes or gadgets or whatever may satisfy your wants! This will make you be inspired to do the same for the next semester. Nevertheless, you have to make sure that you reward yourself only after you have finished your tasks. Don’t claim your reward in advance because it will only ruin your plan.

These are some refreshers that you could follow as you go on board to the second semester. Again, make yourself rich and expensive with the knowledge and skills you may have in the next five to six months. When you follow these tips, you can make yourself feel more important.

Just a final remark, appreciate your coaches, your school, your learnings, and most especially, appreciate yourself.