#studylilac

1: Track your food and water

There’s no point in me going into much detail with this, but it’s always a brilliant place to start. Put simply, your body functions best when it’s well fed and watered, but if you’re ill then that can be hard to do, let alone remember. There are millions of methods out there to help you remember to eat and drink, many of which I’ve experimented with, but here are my favourites:

-          Logging it in a bullet journal habits tracker- when I’ve been struggling I find it helpful to write down my tasks and activities because my memory tends to be the first thing to go. Using a habit tracker in my weekly spreads meant that I was able to tick or colour a box once I’d had at least one bottle of water, and do the same once I’d eaten a solid meal or two in a day. It means you know if you’ve looked after the basics that day at a glance and can be a gentle reminder if you use your bullet journal a lot.

-          An app, such as Aloe Bud- by no means is this the only app to do this, but @aloebud is definitely one of the cutest. It works by you setting up different little tasks to accomplish and you can add in little reminders periodically as well, which works great if you want to set up a slightly more rigid eating pattern or forget to drink water during the day! This post explains it pretty well but if you’d like a more detailed guide then drop me an ask! (Disclaimer: I believe this app is only available on iOS at the moment but hopefully an Android one will be released soon, too!)

2: Set out time for yourself

This is one I have yet to implement fully, but I intend to! It’s great if you already have your self-care routines nailed, but if you end up running out of time to do said routine then you’re inevitably going to feel rushed off of your feet and stressed, procrastinating on looking after yourself. A solution to this is scheduling that routine in: if your head to toe self-care routine takes two hours, then put it on your timetable, in your iCalendar, or wherever else you stay organised, as if it were a two hour class. The same also goes for hobbies you want to pick up or skills you want to learn- if you have time specifically set out for those things, then it means that you’re more likely to do them, and less likely to procrastinate on your final paper by racking up the highest daily score DuoLingo has ever seen.

3: Set earlier deadlines

I started doing this in my first semester of university and it’s changed my life. Luckily, with some self-discipline, it’s not too hard to pull off, either! Let’s say the deadline for your Super Important Terrifying Paper is March 18th. Note that deadline down somewhere, but when you’re writing down the deadline in a bullet journal or a note on your phone, write the date 5 days earlier- for example, March 13th. This gives you time to finish the assignment earlier and get it proofread, and you’re considerably less likely to be submitting it on 11:59PM if the deadline is 12:00AM. Plus, anyone with any type of mental illness is likely to agree that working under pressure absolutely sucks and can worsen your symptoms. Just make sure you also keep a note of the real deadline so you submit it!

4: Plan out work in detail

This is actually just a good tip for life, but it’s especially applicable to mentally ill students. Once you have your assignment brief, it’s pretty good practice to map out what you need to do to complete the assignment within the first week or two. But instead of jotting down “write section A”, “write section B”, “write bibliography”, try to break it down even further. Try and do it as small as possible, or as small as is helpful: in my worst moments, it’s helpful to look at my to do list for an assignment and find it broken down into the six or seven things I need to do to write section A. The to-do list may be longer, but it stops me from being confused and makes me feel like I’ve accomplished even more than I already have!

5: Make a study timetable

This tip is, by far, the scariest, but I found that it really helped during my A Levels! It’s all too easy to fall into the trap of saying you’ll study for an exam tomorrow, and by the time tomorrow comes it’s the day before the exam. That’s the worst, even if you’re completely mentally healthy, and it’s so common because exam seasons are overwhelming. However, if you divide your subject content up into smaller sections and set out a plan to study a little bit every day, with some time to review in the last few days before the exam, then it can feel a lot less terrifying. Be warned that if you’re doing this for more than a month or two it can be easy to burn out, but if you take it at your own pace and give yourself three or four weeks then you should be okay!

6: Talk to your institution’s mental health team

Throughout my academic career I’ve been incredibly lucky to get some really great support from my school/college etc’s mental health team. This does not necessarily mean a referral to counselling or psychiatric help (but those are both brilliant options if you want to try them!), but for me at least it has meant that I was able to get some leeway surrounding exams and assessed work. For both GCSE and A Level I sat in a smaller room to do my exams due to anxiety, and if I am unable to meet a deadline for reasons related to my mental health, I can email my university’s mental health team who can help me to officially ask for an extension, and appeal if my application is overturned. Even if you are not as lucky as I’ve been, there is absolutely no harm in you asking your institution for some help. This is especially true in larger places like universities! Your lecturers are likely to not know you as well as previous teachers may have and will not be able to tell that you are struggling unless you tell them. They mostly don’t bite and are usually more than willing to help you catch up or give you extensions or pointers for assignments. And for the record, it’s not weak to ask for help: it’s one of the strongest things you can do!