In high school, we don’t really have a lot of time to do everything, right? You finish school, then you do sports, then you study, then you eat, then you hang out with friends … there are just so many things that a high schooler wants to do. Understanding the fact that we have a lot of things that we can do yet a limited amount of time, in this post, I would like to share with you a guide that you can follow in order to spend your weekends more effectively and efficiently, so that you can maximize the ability of doing different things!
And before we dive into this, a question here is: why do you decide to target the weekends, Bach? Well, the answer is probably pretty obvious, already - the weekend is that time of the week where you don’t have to go school, and when you can pursue different interests without having to care too much about schoolwork. However, by having two days of break, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you should just enjoy the whole 48 hours - I know that it is important to rest, but it is even more important to spend that time towards doing things that you haven’t been able to do at school. I hope that through this guide, you will be able to apply these in making decisions of things you would like to do on the weekends.
First and foremost, before you actually start doing anything, I can’t stop emphasizing this: make a schedule of what you want to do on the weekends! You may think of this as not too important (well, we only have 2 days of the weekend, right?), but trust me, if you spend time correctly, 2 days can be a ton of time for you to do a lot of stuff. Many times, you may have work to do, but since you don’t have a clear outline of the goals you want to achieve in that weekend, you may have the mindset of “I have two days of break, just chill out!”. And eventually, those 2 days become 1, and then boom, the weekend is over, and yet you haven’t finished anything! Therefore, it is very crucial that you actually have a plan of what to do and what goals to achieve by the end of the weekends - it doesn’t have to focus solely on schoolwork but can be of other activities as well, including playing: the purpose of having a timetable ultimately is to remind you of the fact that there are things that you have to do by the end of the weekends.
After you have finished your schedule for the weekend, there are some things that I would encourage you to do on these two days also. The first thing is to catch up with your sleep! Sleeping is very important, and if you don’t sleep the full 8 hours per day, chances are you may not be able to function properly on the next school day. Personally, I am not a person who sleeps much (around 6 and a half hours per night), hence to sleep longer on the weekends, at least for me, makes me feel much better. I am not sure if the science behind this actually supports my point, but I really believe that sleeping on the weekends makes me kind of “recharged” after a long school week. That’s why personally, I would want you to sleep longer on the weekends - not too much, just around 9 hours or so in order to make you more energetic after a week of little sleep.
The next thing that I highly encourage you to do on the weekends is to spend more quality time with your family. I know that your parents and siblings (even your pets) are always in the house, but on the weekdays you may not have that much ability to talk to them - probably since you are busy learning or that you are not at home. Therefore, the weekend is an ideal time where you can spend time with your family - talk to your siblings, tell your parents about what is going on at school, or just the belly of your pet dog!
The final thing, that I believe is the most important thing to keep in mind, is that you should devote your time on the weekend in order to do things that you have not had the opportunity to pursue on the weekdays. On school days, it can get extremely busy that you don’t have much time to pursue different things, hence the weekend is a valuable time where you can compensate for that time in the weekdays. There are three things that I typically do on the weekends: first is that I will study for the SAT. Since there are huge chunks of time on the weekends, occasionally, I will practice for the SAT by doing full-length exams. Of course, I can’t just spend 2 to 3 hours in the week just doing some full-length tests, right? The second thing that I will do is that I will self-learn AP exams. I am actually going to talk about self-learning AP subjects in the next post, but basically, the weekend is so valuable because there is so much time to do other things, especially to explore different subjects. And the third thing I’ll do is that I tend to devote my time towards exploring my interests through extracurricular activities - quite obvious, right?
At the end of the day, the weekend is that rare time of the week where you have so much time to pursue different interests. Therefore, whereas you can (and should) devote some of it towards relaxing yourself after a long week of studying, start to think of it as a time of endless possibilities, where you can do anything without worrying too much about school! Remember, it is in a few years that you can go into college - start making wise decisions from now on!
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