The Christmas holiday is an exciting time at Surrey, as the first semester draws to a close and many students get to take a well-deserved break from university. However, many courses at Surrey have their exams and coursework scheduled for January, making the holiday a somewhat stressful period as students attempt to balance taking time off and making sure to spend enough time studying and working on any coursework which may be due. This can become even more stressful when the assessments in question are heavily weighted or perhaps even the only assessments for the module. In this blog, I will be sharing some of my experiences and advice from spending the last two Christmas breaks balancing work and relaxation.
In December 2024, I had to complete a piece of coursework and an online exam over the break. It was my first year of law, and I wasn’t entirely sure how to balance things as well as I can now. The first thing which I now realise is that I underestimated how fast the break goes by. I was catching up with friends and family, driving around the city and making the most of every day. I started working on the coursework early enough, however, I do wish I had spent more time during the break working on it.
The online exam was also a very interesting experience. The natural tendency is to relax when you have an online, open book as I knew I would have all the resources at my disposal. However, I was reasonable enough to know that going into the exam without revising would be unwise. The issue was that I didn’t know HOW MUCH revision would be necessary, and in hindsight, if I had studied for the exam as if it were a closed-book, in-person exam, I likely would’ve done significantly better.
This year, I have gone into the December break wiser and perhaps more disciplined. Although I am still adjusting my strategy as I go along, here are my top tips for getting your work done during the Christmas break:
- Set an ‘ Out of Office ‘ period
In order to make the most of the break, I believe it is useful to set a few days where you do absolutely no work and don’t think about work either. This is to ensure that you can get enough rest and also to avoid burnout. You can choose how you want to distribute your leave days, this year I decided to put them all at the beginning of the break when I knew I would be travelling, after which I decided to work throughout the Christmas period.
- Set a target for hours of work per day.
Once you have set your out of office days, you may want to set a target of how many hours you want to work per day. This is the hardest part as I’ve found. The first challenge is deciding how many hours you need to study to get all your work done, and then trying to figure out how to distribute those hours throughout the day, given that you may have family responsibilities. I decided that working 4 hours a day was optimal for me. This has been split into 2, two-hour sessions. Initially, my plan was to do 2 hours of one module in the morning and 2 hours of another module in the evening. Spread over about 3 weeks, I believed this would be enough time. Unfortunately, I have found that this is not always enough time to get all my work done, and I have often found myself doing up to 6 hours of revision per day.
The truth is, there is no formula to studying during the break. In many ways, it is more of an art than a science. Depending on your family responsibilities and plans for the break, you may have to take a more flexible and pragmatic approach to your revision. Whatever your plans are, make sure to enjoy the break as you revise for your exams!
