Doesn’t looking at this BBQ chicken pizza make your mouth water?
It happens to the best of us – we have the best intentions to spend an entire day studying and even plan out a course of action to achieve these studying goals, but after twenty minutes of sitting hunched over a huge textbook, your mind wanders to all the other things you could be doing. There is delicious food to be had. There are addicting shows to be watched. There are breath-taking sights to be seen. Why are you sitting in a dingy library basement wasting your youth?! Well, because we want to be doctors… but humor me.
Usually I am able to keep my urges to not study at bay, but when it becomes futile, I just give in and do the following:
Eat
Trying new dishes or returning to familiar favorites is probably my favorite thing to do instead of studying. After all, we are human and need an adequate intake of food in order to survive! In general, I try to avoid eating in front of a textbook or while studying because doing so really taints the experience. Plus, feeding time is a great excuse to give your brain a break from trying to organize the seemingly endless causes of jaundice (can you tell that I’m learning about the liver this block?).
Watch television shows
Yes, I follow Grey’s Anatomy and I hate to admit that I am also anxiously awaiting the return of Hart of Dixie. But sometimes medical dramas make me feel bad about not studying. Often, I tell myself that I’m sort of studying since they say medically-related things in these shows, but this doesn’t always work so I turn to my non-medical shows like How I Met Your Mother or Mad Men. I only recently discovered Mad Men – I cannot believe I’ve been missing out on this show!
Facebook/ Blog
When the above fails to sufficiently entertain me, I turn to my social media outlets. In reality, I usually have a tab already open to Facebook in my browser so that I can quickly access the latest news on my long lost high school acquaintance that I have only encountered maybe once in my life. Or to find out if one of my classmates has some helpful tips for studying. Or to post more Instagram photos of my notes that I took in the twenty minutes I was actually able to focus on my textbook.
As for blogging – well, I’m doing that right now instead of studying, aren’t I?
Exercise
In order to counter the massive amount of eating I do, I force myself to go to the gym most days of the week. I find that this is the most productive not-studying thing I can do because I usually return from my work out re-energized and ready to take on the world. It’s too bad that this “high” doesn’t last longer than hour!
Nap/Sleep
When all else fails and I just can’t seem to focus on anything, I take a nap or just call it a night. I’ve been known to crawl into bed at 7PM on painfully unproductive evenings. Sometimes, a good night’s rest is all I need to actually do something productive the next day.
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All of the opinions expressed here are the author’s and hers alone, and do not represent necessarily those of Kaplan or its employees.
