Five Ways to Prepare for the New School Year to Curb Stress (Brooke)

Preparing for a new school year is essential to starting the year off strong. Most people will feel nerves creeping up on them as the first day comes along, but there are ways to make this fresh start feel less intimidating. By making sure that you are organized and ready, you can reduce the amount of stressors that you will experience during your first few days so that you can focus on your new classes. 

1. Return to Your School Schedule

Getting into a good schedule ahead of time will ensure you aren’t taken by surprise when that first week of school comes around. Most importantly, improve your sleep habits – try to get at least 8 hours of sleep and align your bedtime, to say, with what it will look like during the academic year.
Along with getting better sleep, adjust your waking schedule as well. Start training for sports, scheduling shifts at work or finding new employment, and preparing for any other extracurricular activities.

2. Reconnect With Friends

Before school starts, reach out to your friends at school. Find out what courses they are taking, if you’re in any of the same classes, or if they would want to meet up before or after school starts. This will remind you that you will have friendly faces by your side even though you may be in a new environment.

If you are a residential student, reach out to your roommate or roommates to figure out your living situation.  If you have never met your roommate, try to get to know them — you can text, facetime, email, or meet in person. Reaching out to your potential roommates will help you to feel more comfortable in your new living situation!

3. Review your courses and syllabuses

First, make sure that your classes and courses are correct — that they will fulfill your credit requirements and still work with your schedule! 

Then, check your course syllabuses — see if there is any outstanding summer work or prerequisites that you need to take care of, check if there are any required materials (i.e. textbooks), and get familiar with the course expectations. By knowing the syllabus, you will guarantee that you can do everything you need to in order to prepare for school. 

4. Get your school supplies

Prepare your backpack — maybe this means getting a backpack, cleaning an old backpack, or organizing your school supplies and necessities.

Purchase supplies — order any materials required by your courses and purchase items that you know you will need (ie. pens, pencils, highlighters, notebooks).

Solve any tech issues — if you are using a laptop, ipad, or other form of technology for school, make sure that it is properly set up.  This may mean activating school accounts and visiting your institution’s tech support.

Readying your school supplies will allow for a more seamless start to the year — after all, no one wants to be searching for a notebook on their first day! This may seem like a small task, but it will help you to have peace of mind in place of panic.

5. Find your first day outfit

Figuring out your outfit for the first day of school can eliminate a lot of stress, which is especially helpful if you are entering a new environment and meeting new people.

Don’t feel pressured to purchase new clothes, but it certainly will not hurt to have a few new items that you can integrate into your wardrobe.  So, if you can, shop! You can even do this from the comfort of your own home by browsing online stores.

Go through your closet and throw away or donate the clothing items that you don’t wear.  This will make choosing clothes during the school year a lot easier and quicker.

Conclusion

By taking one or all of these steps, you can relieve some of the stress surrounding the new school year and get on track to be a star student! Remember, it’s okay to feel nervous about having new classes, teachers/professors, peers, and environments. Know that everyone is feeling a range of emotions about the new school year — just like you are. 

If you are feeling down and need support, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us here at Letters Against Depression if you haven’t already. We send letters of hope and support to those who need someone there for them. You can request to receive letters here.