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You keep your nose to the grindstone and move from one commitment to the next, but in between you feel exhausted and ornery. You are a machine, and your only opportunity to switch “off” happens at night when you’re asleep (if you’re able to sleep restfully, that is).
Second, there’s the burnout that ironically seems like a bit of a luxury—the kind that you can feel because you have time to be tired and unmotivated. This is the burnout that comes after the storm. You’ve accomplished quite a bit leading up to this point (you may have even been operating with Burnout #1 for a while). But now that you’re no longer running on adrenaline and willpower, you don’t want to do much. Still, you want to neither feel ineffective nor waste the discretionary time at your disposal.
Then, I settled into watching the show not as a teenager admiring my Ivy-bound role model but as a test prep coach. Having garnered the wisdom of a few years and worked with many students on their own test prep, I can now look at some of the characters’ conversations with a different point of view.
With all that said, I present to you exhibit A: Rory, Paris (her super-type-A, neurotic nemesis), Madeline (one of Paris’s friends), and Louise (another of Paris’s friends) have recently received their PSAT scores… Let’s see what happens...
Last year, I attended an introductory talk with Thom Knoles, a world renowned Vedic Meditation teacher. Thom suggested that practicing meditation as he instructed would help us to release all of the stress we’d accumulated over the years, leading us to more blissful lives.
You can’t change how you performed on the previous test because it's done. What you can control is what you do right now. Present actions determine future outcomes. {Tweet It}
In the summer, test prep doesn’t feel like a continuation of the momentum you’ve already established, but an interruption. You may be able to get yourself to physically sit down and study, but it’s like your brain can’t catch up to your body. Your head may still be outside, or in front of the television, or reading your book, or playing with the family pet.
What’s the solution? Muscle through? Suck it up? Just do it?
Except, there’s a slight problem. Over the course of those six months, I fell out of the practice of writing blog posts. Sure, I was still writing and editing for my book, but that is a totally different style of crafting the written word. So, here I am, with the time, desire, and motivation to blog but sometimes the writing feels clunky and awkward.
Luckily, I know that this is just a part of the process of reestablishing a skill or habit. Here are some thoughts to keep in mind when you return to an activity—be it test prep, academics, a sport, a musical instrument, or writing in a certain style—after a break.
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