Reading Week 2009!
Oh Reading Week. I always have such high expectations of you. I promise myself that I’m going to get my homework done, I’ll clean up my house, catch up on my sewing (yeah, okay… keep the needles away), watch those episodes of Dexter that I’ve missed (which I definitely will do), and you know what? I’ll even get ahead in my readings and assignments. Ah, such optimism.
In case you were wondering, this year’s Reading Week falls between Monday, February 16th and Saturday, February 21st. That means that classes resume on Monday the 23rd. You can find this date and other sessional dates on the Registrar’s website
here.
What you do with your Reading Week is up to you, you can go to Cancun if you want, or you can do what I did last year which was lie on my best friends couch eating fondue and watching chick flicks with her for four days straight. Mmm… fondue…
Reading Week is meant to break up some of the stress that has accumulated since September. Granted, there was the Winter Holidays but who actually finds that relaxing? Family around all the time (which inevitably means either a fight between someone or embarrassing stories being told to your new BF/GF), navigating crowded shopping malls… or worse… being dragged by your mother through said malls, visiting family and friends who may not live nearby, etc etc. No matter what you do, or what you celebrate, the holiday season is usually very busy.
When planning your Reading Week, be realistic with yourself. You are not going to reorganize all the cupboards alphabetically. You will most likely not sew the hole that has appeared in your favorite pair of old jeans and you probably will not get ALL of your homework done. Plan accordingly and prioritize: if you don’t have assignments due right after Reading Week, get some extra reading out of the way, or catch up on older stuff you didn’t have time for while you were cramming for those 3 midterms you wrote in one day. If you DO have assignments due right after Reading Week, get them done sooner rather than later. You’ll feel better about doing nothing when you don’t have that assignment looming over you.
Whatever you do, make sure it is balanced. Do a little bit of work that needs to get done, but watch an episode of Dexter, or House, or Scrubs, or Gossip Girl… whatever your guilty pleasure. Read a book that you actually WANT to read. Go spend that hard earned holiday money on a new… whatever. Take some time for yourself because before you know it, things will be back in full swing and you won’t have the time to relax and take care of your own entertainment needs.
If you’re going away for Reading Week try to get as much of your work done before hand as possible. Let’s face it; you’re not going to do any homework when you’re there. I went to New York this Thanksgiving with my family and I brought some work along with me… I read half a chapter of one of the books I brought… and that was only while I was on the train.
Reading Week is a time to relax and re-energize but also to get yourself back on track. That means not leaving everything to the last minute, you WILL pay for it when classes resume, and keeping in mind that even though this is a ‘holiday’ you still have responsibilities to adhere to. If you work extra hard at the beginning of your break and accomplish what you need to, you can have the rest of your holiday to relax, eat tons of home cooked food, have Mum do your laundry and catch up with old friends. Before you know it, you may even miss the hustle and bustle of McMaster and that crazy thing we call student life.
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