How To Handle the Week Before Break

URGENT! Ok, it’s the last week before winter break. In this vlog I speak directly TO STUDENTS, but as always, parents and teachers should watch first to see if it’s something you want to share with your child/student. For students with EF challenges, this is a BIG make it or break it week. It’s a week where a lot of these students can go from a C to an F, and it’s too late to fix anything after Friday. This vlog will help your child know exactly how to handle it.

Click here to download the PDF checklist.

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Video Transcript: Click here to download the transcript PDF.

Hey, what’s up parents and teachers? It’s me, Seth with SethPerler.com. I’m an executive function coach and I help struggling students navigate this thing called education so that they can have a great life. And in this video, this video is for students. So parents and teachers, I want you to watch this video first. And then if you want to share it with your child, or your students, go for it. And I have a PDF that goes with this video to help you.

Students, what’s up? My name is Seth. I’m here to help you at the end of the semester, in the last week of the semester, this is a critical week of the semester. If you want to end the semester with as little stress as possible and as much success as possible, as little frustration and annoyance as possible, and getting through this week as easily as possible, this video is for you. So what I do for work is I’m an executive function coach, I help students who struggle with this thing called executive function. These are students who have a lot of missings and incompletes, late work, zeroes, things like this. These are students who are super smart, bright, amazing human beings, who often struggle in school because of this thing called executive function. So I’m going to help make life easier for you.

This is the last week of the semester for most of you students watching, this week is your last week of the semester. For some of you, your semester goes into January or goes longer or you’re not on a traditional schedule. So most of you it’s the last week of the semester. For all of you, it’s the last week before winter break. So in this last week before winter break, this is for all of you even if your semesters not over. But these are the things that you want to know. What I’m going to do is I’m going to show you a checklist and I’m going to help you make your life easier this week with this checklist that you can print up if you want to.

So first thing that I want you to know is that what I’ve seen with a lot of my students, what happens to them at this time in the semester is they can have a C in a class, and then they get the report card and they have an F. The reason that happens is because they think they’re on top of things but they’re not good at tracking things. And then oftentimes teachers will input a bunch of final grades at the last minute, they put those grades and it drops you down to an F. The other thing that happens is you have final papers, final exams, final projects, those are often due at the end of the week. And if you fail that and it pulls your whole grade down, you don’t know oftentimes until you get your report card or your grades. So here is what I want you to know.

There are two things I want to start off by telling you. One is there are things that you want, two is that there are things that you don’t want. What do you want? Well, I know what you want, because I’m psychic, just kidding. Everybody wants the same thing. We want fun, we want freedom, we want a good future with choices in life, we want independence, we want to be done with our work. Okay, we all want the same thing in that sort of a way. And the actions we take now will impact all of those things. What do we not want? Well, we don’t want F’s, we don’t want to retake classes that we fail, we don’t want summer school, we don’t want a bunch of stress and anxiety, we don’t want things hanging over our head, and we don’t want to wait till the last minute because it’s stressful and it creates worst results. So I have a checklist for you. My suggestion for the checklist is that you do it every single day this week, even today. So it’s Sunday now, I suggest you do it today. And then do it Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. And then you’re on break Friday. But guess what? I suggest you do it Friday as well. Because on Friday, your teachers are still inputting grades. And if you leave some stone unturned, and you don’t figure out that something big is missing, you can fail, even on Friday. So I do encourage you to check this out on Friday as well.

Here is the checklist right here. Basically, at the beginning of it I have this week and then I have a little intro here that I already explained. Here’s what you want, here’s what you don’t want. And here’s my suggestion to do it every day. You can look at that all later, I just mentioned it. Now here’s the checklist. Here’s what I think should do.

The most important thing is don’t listen to the resistance voices in your head too much. The voices that are like “I’m not motivated. I just want to procrastinate. I’ll do it later. I’ll do it tomorrow.” This is crunch time. I want you try to override this thought with better thoughts. Override the thought, replace the thought. You don’t just get rid of thoughts, you have to replace them. They don’t just go away, you replace them. What do you replace them with? You got to have a positive mindset that says “I can do this. It’s a stressful week but I’ve got this. It may be hard, maybe daunting and maybe long, maybe tedious but I got this I can do this. This is for me and my awesome future, not for my parents not for Seth, not for my teachers, not for anybody. This is for me investing in my future. I’ve got this.” And you have a serious mindset this week about focusing, that you’re really going to focus well this week.

Next, check your grade portal thoroughly to find missing, incomplete, late work, low scores. So basically the reason I say ‘thoroughly’ is because a lot of my students will look at the grades, but they don’t look at the details of this grade in the class. And then when I have them open it up, I’m like, “Come on, open up, let’s see.” And we open it up, they’re like, “Oh, I turned that in, my teacher should have already given me a grade for that. I better tell them that I did that, they must not know or something,” or “Oh my gosh, I didn’t know I had a zero and that. Oh, my gosh, I have all these missings and the’yre so easy, I could get it done in 20 minutes.” So look at those portals, and beware: teachers can input grades last minute. And that can really make things thanks. So be aware of that.

Next, make a master task list of everything important from your portal check. So when you check them, everything you see, write it down, print it up, put it in Google Calendar, put it in your agenda. I don’t care where you put it, on sticky notes, whatever you want to do that works for you, a whiteboard, but track everything so that you can make sure that you get everything done as best you can. You don’t have to get everything done, but a lot of my students get nothing done. Now that’s a recipe for disaster. So just get something done, get as much as you can. But your master list should contain everything on the list.

The next one is check all your other portals, your teacher pages, Google Classroom, Schoology, or anywhere that teachers share information I want you to check all of it, make sure that you’ve checked everything. There’s the next one, beware of teachers inputting grades, a bunch of grades, all of a sudden and check your portals daily. Email your teachers proactively to ask if everything is looking good. Now a lot of you’re going to be very resistant, “Seth, I don’t need to email my teachers, it feels tedious.” Look, I’m telling you, I do this all the time with my students, send a quick email, “Hey, teach, what’s up? I just want to make sure everything’s looking good. I think I’m doing well in your class, want to make sure that I’m not missing something crazy and that I fail all of a sudden”, just send a quick email like that. “Thanks for what you do. Take care, have a great day, bye. “Just a super quick email and just get it off to them. You can send the same one to every single teacher if you want. But it’s really important that you make sure that you’re not missing something.

Next thing is blockout more time than you think you need for your final projects, your final essays, your final assignment, your final readings. My students are notoriously bad at predicting how long things will take. And that combined with the fact that they procrastinate means that if they wait until nine o’clock to do their stuff, nine o’clock at night, and then all of a sudden they find out that they have like 10 hours worth of homework to do then they often shut down and just like are too paralyzed to do any of it. Or they do a little bit of it and it’s just not enough. So don’t shoot yourself in the foot, block out more time than you think you need. Just remember this week might be a wash for you. It might be a week where you just don’t have a life, all you have is school. But don’t worry, because next week is break and don’t forget that you are investing in a great future for yourself. So you know, just keep that in mind.

Next thing, get accountability, co-work with others. Okay, look, it’s the last week. Again, we like to procrastinate, call or text a friend, Zoom with them, a parent, even a relative, a tutor, whoever and be like, “Hey, let’s study at this time. Let’s co-work at this time.” I just co-worked today with a bunch of my students. I have students all over the place and we got on Zoom. We all just we meet up at a determined time. We say, “Hey, what are you working on today? What are you working on today?” Then it’s really quiet and we’re just working on our stuff. And every once a while we talk a little bit and then get back to work. Get accountability and co-working. Don’t try to just do it all yourself. Make it more fun and more interesting and do it with other people. It helps a lot.

Next, remove distractions. Look, this is for you and your life. Close the tabs, close the things that are distracting, turn off the social media that’s distracting. It will be there and it doesn’t do much good for my life. It probably doesn’t do much for your life. Like it’s a distraction. It’s just like a little zap to your brain of “Oh my gosh, somebody just texted me or snapchatted me or whatever, or TikTok or whatever, YouTube”. Just turn off and close the distraction so you can focus on what you need to do, then you can enjoy your distractions when you have time to enjoy them. So remove your distractions this week. And then every day this week, get excellent rest, eat food that truly nourishes your body and your mind, and get plenty of movement and exercise.

And then the last one that I have, the last one that I have, is ask for help. Nobody wants to ask for help. It’s the hardest thing to do. But all successful people, athletes, musicians, famous people, anybody you like and respect. Your relatives or anybody you know who is successful, they have learned how to ask for help. They have learned how to ask for help. It’s very hard. It’s very humbling. It takes humility. But that is maturity. If you want to be mature, if you want to be treated more maturely, if you want to be treated like an adult, you got to act like an adult. You got to act mature and asking for help is one of the best things you can ever do.

So those are the things on the checklist right there. The thing about the rest, yep, turn off your devices at night, get good rest, your brain needs it. And your exercise, just do something to move your body every day. I don’t care what it is. Now, I put some other things in here that can help you. You might have some papers, exams, projects and readings. A lot of times my students have this in the last week of school, you might want to list that here. It’s optional. I just made this for you, you can use. Some people you can study with, where can you study, where you can concentrate, here’s just like a little guide where you can fill in, you know, your times and stuff like that you can create this on your own. But however you want to use it, I just wanted to put some things there to make your life easier.

Yes, what I’m asking you to do is going to take time and energy. And it might seem like it’s too much because you already have a lot on your plate. But it will save you way, way more time and energy in the end. That is called being proactive. That is what mature successful people do. People who struggle with executive function struggle with this sort of stuff. If you practice now, it will help your life now and in your future. My name is Seth Perler, I’m an executive function coach. I hope you’re having a great day. Go ahead and give me a thumbs up, put your comment below. What do you think of this video? Leave it on YouTube, leave it on the blog, I don’t really care. But if you like what I’m doing, leave a comment, leave a thumbs up support my work, subscribe to my work, share my work, whatever you want to do. Have a great day. Be good to yourself. This is for you, remember that. Invest in yourself with this education. Take care. I’ll see you soon.