Sparkler africanstardust goes to school online, and this post makes us wonder if there are more of you out there. Online student Sparklers, unite! —SparkNotes editors
Internet schooling and home schooling are two totally different things. Home schooling usually involves your parents/guardians/friend’s parents teaching you, helping you with your homework, and hopefully making you coffee when the 3 p.m. zombie stage kicks in. But internet schooling is something like this:
7 a.m. Drink coffee.
8 a.m. Shower.
9 a.m. Sit alone in room in front of computer and do homework until eyes shrivel up like raisins.
1 p.m. Eat lunch.
2 p.m. Sit alone in room in front of computer and do homework until eyes shrivel up like raisins.
5 p.m. Consider stopping for the day, then realize you have nothing else to do so you might as well keep going.
7 p.m. Eat dinner.
9 p.m. Sleep.
Next day: Try to regain your sight, as the laptop screen seems to have sucked it out of your eyeballs.
So what’s to be done if you go to school online, and if you want to avoid flinging yourself into a bonfire? After doing this for two years, here are my tips for surviving internet school:
1. Find something to do. Because your schedule is so flexible, you can more easily get involved in things like community service. You can also find your own extracurriculars, since you aren’t bound by school hours. Is there a place nearby where you can learn horseback riding? Painting classes? Is there an athletics club or a hiking club in your town? Internet schooling opens up a world of options, and if you take advantage of them, you’ll end up feeling like you want to make out with that once-dreaded computer.
2. Leave social networking on the back burner. You spend tons of time on the computer already for school, and the light from computer screens isn’t good for your eyes. Do you want to be 30 and half blind? The answer to that is hopefully no. Instead of relying on Facebook, MySpace, and other online social activities, try and spend as much time as you can with actual people. It’s hard to make friends when you’re not in a school, but that’s one of the reasons #1 is so important. Plus, if you mix business with pleasure on your computer, you’ll end up either a) never getting work done because you’re constantly back and forth between Facebook and homework, b) never being able to chill and relax because you’re stressed about homework even though you’re supposed to be done for the day, or, more likely, c) both.
3. Get exercise. You might hate running, and I know that couch is oh so very soft and that LOST is on, but the ugly truth is that you get 100 percent less exercise than people who are in a high school. When I was in public school, I walked twenty miles in the snow, uphill both ways, to get to Biology. (Not really, but it was a long walk.) Now I sit all day, and even though my fingers are looking toned and sexy from all the typing, I have to make an actual effort to be active. If you don’t want to run, then walk. Or swim. Or ride your bike. Just do something, because otherwise, you’ll have the health and body of a 70-year-old when you’re a freshman in college.
4. Eat healthy foods. Speaking of health…isn’t it just so easy to avoid working by sauntering off to the kitchen and grabbing a handful or ten of M&Ms every five minutes? If the image of your arteries clotting with fat, oil, and sugar doesn’t do it for you, then find someone, whether a parent or a sibling, who will help you limit your food intake. Even better, ask your parents to buy healthy snacks and leave the cookies and junk food on the grocery store shelf. Because you’re sitting down all day, you have to be extra careful about what you eat. This is not about looking like Kristen Stewart. This is about not being really, really embarrassed in heaven when everyone is swapping death stories and you get to say, “Oh, I had a heart attack when I was seventeen. It was wicked.”
5. Take breaks. This I learned, of course, from SparkNotes. For every hour you work, take a ten-to-fifteen minute break. Your eyes and your brain need rest. Do not, under any circumstances, use all of your breaks to surf the net or play video games! Don’t! Taboo! Bad! I slap your hand! Get up and move. Make coffee. Whatever.
6. Make a schedule and stick to it. If your internet school is like mine, you have no deadlines except that you have to finish in a year. If you, like me, have received various honors, medals, rewards, and cash prizes for your abilities to procrastinate, then your lack of deadlines is a very bad thing. So to help yourself, make a schedule—or follow the suggested schedule your school gives you—and give a copy to your mom or dad. Pick the stricter parent, or pick both. This goes both ways, because while it’s super important that you stick to your work schedule, it’s just as important that when you have a weekend (which consists of whatever two days you choose), you shouldn’t work on those days. It’s easy to become a workaholic. Don’t. Take at least two days a week off, and go climb a mountain or write the next great bestseller or something, as long as it’s not on your computer. Writing by hand never killed anybody.
Do you know anyone in internet school?
Related Post: How to Deal with Stress
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Topics: School
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