To Start the School Year Strong, Embrace Your Role as Student

This month we have been focusing on getting to know your school counselor and the many ways that they can support you.

Today we want to talk about what we like to call putting first things first, and more specifically, that your first thing right now is to be a student to the best of your ability.

Let’s look at what that means…

Embrace that your job is to be a student

You may have other demands on your time such as a sport or other extracurriculars, or even a job or family needs you must take care of, but as much as possible, try to make your main job right now that of student.

Your parents have their jobs. Whether they work at home or outside the home, you hopefully are able to observe how they do what they need to do to prioritize their time and energy so that they do their job successfully.

And you can and should do the same! While we want you to be well-rounded (more on that below), right now being a student is your main responsibility- because as we’ve said in recent posts, while you can catch up and make up for lost time or struggles along the way, it is definitely easier to just simply apply yourself the first time around!

In order to prioritize your job of being a student, you must be sure you’re prioritizing your overall well-being

To succeed as a student, you must be succeeding as a human being. Meaning- you have to have the physical, mental, and emotional energy to give your best as a student!

So your mental wellness should always come first, because it is the foundation for everything.

You want to have the energy and clarity to do your job well, which means that you must prioritize your own:

Sleep and recovery. You’ve been told by every well-meaning adult forever, right? Get enough sleep. But not only that- think of rest as recovery from the stresses of your daily life. Whether you demand a lot of your body through a sport, or you spend long hours at a job or another extracurricular, the time that you rest is how you recover to be able to get up and do it again tomorrow!
Nutrition and hydration. You already know that you feel better when you eat better. So this is just your reminder. This has nothing to do with how your body looks and everything to do with how it feels. Fuel it well and it will give you what you need to succeed.
Mental wellness. This entire website is all about resources and tools to support your mental wellness, but if you are stressed or overwhelmed or sad or anxious, you will have a difficult time focusing on school.

To reiterate, when it comes to your mental wellness, you can:

Attend a Ready to Hope workshop. Our workshops are all about you, bringing whatever is on your heart, and giving you a safe space to share, as well as a chance to try out mental health tools, and build a support network and friendships.
Spend time with friends.
Listen to music.
Go for a walk.
Snuggle your pet.
Talk to a trusted adult and lean on them and let them guide you.

Whatever it takes, devote the time to keep your mental wellness cup filled. Do those things that help you refill it as often as necessary, so that you can do your job of student as well as you possibly can!

And don’t forget to follow us on social, or hop on our email list to find out when our next workshop is!