So you’ve made it through the first term of the new year, and the holidays have come around again. Awesome work! 🥳

As you know, holiday periods offer a great time to recuperate and rest, but you can also use them partially to consolidate what you’ve learnt or get ready for the next term. These Autumn holidays can be really important before you embark on the second term of the year - so how should you approach them?

Remember that everybody is in a different situation and has different contextual factors, but here are some ideas you might like to consider.

1. Actually rest

The first tip, I’m sure you’ve heard before. School is a marathon, not a sprint etc. That’s true, but it’s perhaps worth taking a moment to think about what that actually means, and what that will look like for you.

There’s theoretically no reason you couldn’t spend the entire holiday period reading ahead, self-teaching all of the content to come for all of your subjects, and going into the new term smugly with the knowledge that you’re a step ahead of the game.

But would you be a step ahead of the game, really? If you go too hard, too early, it’s logical to conclude that you’re more likely to ‘burn out’ through the year - and that’s absolutely not a place you want to get to. There’s a reason school doesn’t go non-stop throughout the year. If nothing else, it’s just hard to keep focused without breaks, and these holidays give you the opportunity to take a bit of time to yourself to refresh.

More broadly, you might like to consider that high school - even Year 12 - isn’t just about the marks you ultimately receive. There are a lot of experiences to be had and, by virtue of not going to school every day, holiday periods can throw up a lot of different opportunities.

Trust me: if you rock up to day one of the new term completely exhausted from studying so much over the holiday break, it’s going to feel like a long, long term.

2. Review what worked

But that’s not to say that you shouldn’t think about school or your school work at all over the holiday period.

Each school year is a little bit different, and your circumstances from Year 7 probably aren’t the same as your circumstances now. A lot changes year on year, so it’s logical that perhaps your study efficiency and practices will, too. A bit of time off school means you might have the opportunity to take a step back, think about your study habits in the previous term, and work out what you might tweak in the future.

The benefit of doing this (you could even make it a habit each holiday period) is that you stay on top of your own study behaviours. Maybe you work out that you tend to spend way more time than necessary on chapter summaries because you’re also using your phone at the same time. Maybe you realise your study tends to be way more efficient in the morning than in the evening, so change the time you typically study to reflect that.

Without this type of reflection or review, it can be really easy to fall into habits that might not be that helpful - and I’m speaking from personal experience, here. Checking in with yourself from time to time really helps highlight practical changes you could make to improve your study routines and habits. If you’re not sure where to start, I recommend setting up a basic “what I do well/what I could improve” table! Perhaps you'd then like to convert those traits into aims or goals for the new term.

3. Get sorted early

As we all know, holiday periods can fly by pretty quickly - particularly the back half. Investing a small amount of time early on to work out what you need to get done, and roughly when you plan to do it, can pay dividends later on. It’s super tiring spending all of your time thinking about the stuff you need to do, so having a bit of an action plan can help divide your “rest time” and your “study time” quite effectively.

Some people like to set up basic study timetables across the holiday period, chunking out certain times where they decide they’ll focus on holiday homework or revision. I personally didn’t like that, because I felt confined by those times, so I just made a big list of things I needed to get done, then trusted myself to get them done as early as I could when I was in the right mood. Different things work for different people in terms of time management, but making a start early on should help to avoid the dreaded final-Sunday-night-before-school-goes-back cram session.

4. Consolidate the term just gone

In terms of actual content, there are probably three major things you could do: get through any required holiday homework that has been set by your teachers, review content you’ve finished, or get ahead on new content for the new term.

Speaking anecdotally, I think the least appealing of these usually would be consolidating what you’ve already covered. The holiday homework is obviously necessary, and getting ahead is appealing for other reasons, but content consolidation might be ignored more regularly.

If you have the time and if you feel inclined, though, I think consolidating past work can be really useful, particularly if that content is assessable for the end-of-year exam. Doing little bits of revision throughout the year when you have time - like through holiday periods - might lighten the load for your eventual end-of-year exam revision. It means that instead of getting to the end of the year and revisiting concepts for the first time in ages (and spending time re-learning that content), you can focus more on things like exam timing and strategy. Even using something like flashcards can be great just to keep concepts fresh.

5. Try something new

The Autumn holidays are still early in the year, and there are months before end-of-year exams. If you’re feeling a bit bogged down, the holidays can be a low-risk time to try something new. One study session, why not try a new study technique?

You never know - you might uncover something you love, and something you use heavily for the rest of the year!

6. Prepare yourself for the new term

And the last tip is one of practicality. You might have found in the first few months that your study setup wasn’t optimal. Maybe you forgot to get a specific type of notebook, or you think things would feel a lot more organised if you used folders for each subject. The time to act on that sort of thing is now - it won’t get any easier through the year, and you’ll probably have more time now than through school periods to bite the bullet.

Between these things, covering rest, content, and strategy, I hope you go into the next term feeling confident, prepared, and refreshed. Best of luck for the holiday period and for the term ahead!