By Mimi Mays

During the first weeks of a fall semester, we all feel the buzz of Meredith’s eager and welcoming atmosphere. Strangers we pass on the sidewalk smile and greet us as if we’re the best of friends and syllabus week gives us that innocent excitement about all the learning to come. But fast forward to the last weeks of a spring semester, and it’s a whole different ear of corn…here are just a few tips for conquering summeritis!

1. Procrastination is so last season. Use incentives! Instead of using Netflix to keep you from your work, let it be a reward. Or if you’ve already finished the Gilmore Girls revival (twice), promise yourself a nice cup of tea after 20 minutes of studying. Put your laundry in and challenge yourself to get a perfect score on a Quizlet set before the washer cycle is done…whatever it takes!

2. If you wouldn’t want your nutrition professor to see you eat it, don’t. There’s something about 11:47 pm that screams, “COOK OUT”, but you can’t deny that there are better ways to take care of your body. Science proves that your brain is like a nice car; you’ve got to give it premium fuel if you want it to keep driving. And you can’t drive your brain through finals to get to summer with crummy gas mileage! (Or your car to the beach, come May 12th!)

3. Look forward! But also, look back. If the path to summer feels overwhelmingly challenging, try to think back to when you conquered worse! For first year students, rewinding a year would bring you back to high school finals (yuck), plus deciding on college by May 1st. Maybe you were taking IB or AP exams, trying to find a summer job, or getting ready to say goodbye to all your classmates and teachers. Look how far you’ve come! For seniors, look how far you’ve come! Good ol’Mereco sure has thrown a lot at you over the years, but here you stand. (Or sit. With good posture, for studying’s sake.) If you could do it then, you can do it now!