Beth Flavelle completed her Year 12 in 2016.

In a general sense, there are two main ways to spend your holidays: taking a break, or not taking a break. Both have their benefits. Here’s an outline of each to help you decide on how you will get the absolute best out of these valuable two weeks.

BREAK TIME: HOW NOT TO REGRET IT LATER

Let’s get straight to the point. Taking a break should not be two weeks of doing nothing; you’ll be just as stressed returning to school as you were crawling out of it. There are plenty of things you can do to have a good break without turning into some kind of slug. Hanging with the crew, getting a job, cleaning your room. Really, the possibilities are endless for things you can do during your break. You just need to find something productive and not life-threateningly stressful to do, and you’ll feel pretty good when you get back to school.

Of course, it’s not quite as black and white as ‘break or no break’. For one, you probably have at least a little holiday homework. There are two main approaches to address it: do it before you forget everything in the first few days of the holidays, or do it in the couple of days before school goes back. Alternatively, you could do both – there’s no one saying you can’t do your holiday homework right now and then check it before school starts!

STUDY TIME: HOW TO MAKE THE BEST OF IT

Studying is tough. How many of us have gone to study only to sit down and wonder, “what am I actually meant to be doing?!” Or smashed through half the textbook only to realise you haven’t actually learned anything new? I can’t tell you what you’re meant to be doing (unfortunately), but I can suggest some ways to organise it all: study timetables and to-do lists.

A lot of people find timetabling pretty intuitive – that’s how everything is organised at school, after all. You have an hour for Legal Studies, a break, an hour for Software Development, and so on. Easy peasy, right? Many just follow their school schedule during the break – honestly, it’s just easier, because it’s already been made. But there are inherent problems with this. If you’re already an ace at Health & Human Development, you might not need to spend five hours per a week studying it. That time could be better spent wrapping your head around the Chemistry work you’ve been avoiding.

I block in the essentials first. The visit to the vet on Wednesday isn’t going anywhere, so that goes in before anything else. Can’t study while I’m sleeping, either! The goal is to decide when you definitely can’t study, so that you know when you can. If you want more advice on constructing a study timetable, check this out.

Then there’s the to-do list. I like this because it’s more goal-directed than timetabling. You know exactly what you need to do, and simply work until it’s done. No reordering your playlists until the end of the hour so you can take a break, because the break starts when the work is done! It’s a pretty simplistic time management model that relies a lot on your own self-discipline. But if you can get into a routine, it’s definitely worthwhile. You can read more about how to actually do this in this nifty article!

Here’s the best thing, though: you can do both at once! Simply write up a to-do list for each study block. You might be surprised how much you get done.

BUT, WHAT IF…

… I told you that you could have it all? Breaks and study sessions? Well, that’s crazy – they’re pretty much opposites!

… That was a joke. You certainly can be the Hannah Montana of your own holidays. Breaks and study sessions actually work very well together. No matter how much you love studying (right?), you need to take breaks – if only for your health. That means standing up and stretching every 45 minutes or so. Getting some proper exercise. Eating well. But also being mindful and managing your stress.

Basically, it works out to this: November is forever away. If you need to stop because the thought of English makes you want to hide in the space between your bed and the wall, and not come out ever, that’s okay. Go ahead and give it your best shot anyway, because resilience is an excellent life skill. Of course, if that doesn’t work, shoot your teacher a message asking what they would suggest doing to be ready for the coming term. Remember that they’re professionals and essentially have to do Year 12 every year. Thankfully, the rest of us only need to do it once – so your only real responsibility is to do your absolute best, and pat yourself on the back at the end.

Want to talk about your VCE journey? Jump onto this thread and get involved!
Want to talk about your HSC journey? Jump onto this thread and get involved!