Monday, April 1, 2024 Tips for Helping Your Student Stay Motivated
Keeping up motivation through a long school year can be difficult for many students. As students reach the middle of spring semester, they may find themselves spread thin between their academic work, social engagements, and other responsibilities. Trying to balance everything may lead to feelings of burnout that create low mood, loss of interest, and difficulty with motivation. Here are some tips to connect with your student and provide support when experiencing these concerns.
Encourage doing first things first.
Help your student prioritize their most important scholarly tasks. It can be easy to lose motivation in courses without a clear plan for studying. Encourage your student to prioritize their study time by working on the most high-impact tasks first. For example, if your student has an exam coming up and they also have some general reading for courses, they will benefit from studying for their exam first. Even though this may be the more anxiety-producing task that they want to put off, getting the harder and more important task out of the way first can be a huge relief, and it helps students make the best use of their limited time and energy.
Remind them to recharge.
Encourage your student to maintain as balanced a life as possible. It turns out that overwork can make students less productive and more fatigued. Studying too much can drain energy, lower mood, and damage motivation to continue. If you want to help your student stay focused, encourage them to get plenty of sleep, prioritize their physical and mental health, and make enough time for fun hobbies and nourishing relationships. Allowing time to rest and recharge will help your student maintain energy over the long haul.
Support them to take failure in stride.
Help your student maintain focus after a setback. It’s easy to get discouraged when something doesn’t go your way. However, failure is a learning opportunity. A disappointing outcome can be a moment to assess what happened and learn more about yourself and your own needs going forward. Treating failure as a moment to learn will help you understand what didn’t work for you this time, and how you can proceed differently the next time.
Help them keep their eye on the prize.
It can be hard to stay motivated without a clear sense of purpose and direction. Support your student to take a step back and get in touch with why they are pursuing their degree in the first place.
- Are they hoping to challenge themselves by gaining new knowledge?
- Do they want to increase their earning potential?
- Are they hoping to serve others?
- Do they want to learn new skills?
- Are they aiming to change the world for the better?
Each student’s vision for their future will be different. Helping your student remember the end goal of their education can help them push through the challenging periods.
Adapted from:
nu.edu/blog/eye-on-the-prize-tips-for-staying-motivated-in-college/
villanovau.com/articles/student-learning/tips-for-staying-motivated-in-college/