TAKING A BREAK FROM UNIVERSITY STUDIES

We have often heard of terms like LEAVE OF ABSENCE or even Withdrawing or Lower you workload for your current semester.

For the longest time, having worked with students at college, never would I have figured that the abbreviation LOA would be so synonymous with so many in the last 2 years.

This blog post hopes to enlighten some of you guys about taking an LOA or Leave of Absence.

There are many reasons as to why students take an LOA -

1. Personal

2. Medical

3. Existential

4. Financial

5. Call of Duty

Let's start with personal reasons.

1. Relationship

You realise that your relationship with your partner/spouse needs attention and time is the only has been rolling down the hill and needs attention and perhaps adjustment to your schedules and peak periods during semester.

2. A family member has turned seriously ill and you need to go back home to spend time with family.

3. Dad's business not doing well and needs YOU, yes YOU to help with the business.

And the list goes on....

Working with tertiary students at a university; i have often thought of the stressors and anxieties that comes with varsity life.

We are often rushing from class to class, lecture to lecture, tutorials to tutorials and deadlines for projects, assignments and getting that 'A' or a high GPA means so much more than anything else.

As if this is not enough to stress us out, then comes COVID 19.

The constant worries, anxieties, weighs you down and it simply gets worst as unhealthy thoughts or what I would call irrational thoughts begin to develop -

This is sometimes also called NAT - Negative Automatic Thoughts or better still ANTS - Automatic Negative Thoughts, that's a more cool phrase.

Everyone else is better than me

Everyone else is smarter than me

Everyone else is faster than me

PAUSE

Many Different Pauses

We all need time to create this 'PAUSE' in sometime in our lives and the LOA allows you to do that. I must add that in Singapore application for an LOA is stricter of course, you have to have a valid reason. As mentioned earlier, a medical reason or personal reason. Let me just further explain as to how a 'PAUSE' helps.

In our daily routine (sometimes there's never a routine in varsity life) we seem to be constantly rushing and there's so few moments where we could take time to just stop and ponder over our thoughts on what we just heard from our tutor,lecturer and friends in our group work.

I always do tell varsity students, that after any lecture or tutorial or some deep learning, they would need to find a quiet corner and spend 10 to 15 minutes to ask themselves QUESTIONS - Incisive as possible and always start with a What.

What did i just hear ?

jot down notes ... etc etc

What was so significant or important to me during this lecture/tutorial etc...

jot down notes .....etc etc...

I hope you get the picture... so far.

Try practicing this. I will come back again so stay tuned.

This is a PAUSE we build in on a daily basis and so our routine doesn't become so damn predictable. This pause helps with building ,slowly but surely, your sense of purpose, meaning to everything that's happening around you in Uni.

The 2nd PAUSE would be your 1 hour of activity for yourself which could be sports related (highly recommended) or just reading or simply finding a spot at Starbucks or Spinelli sipping your coffee and maybe being with a friend.

Finally the big PAUSE would be the Leave of Absence and that would be over a semester or a few months.

So if friends, relatives asks you as to why you are back home during semester just let them know that you're taking a PAUSE in your studies and that's OK.

And if they ask too much, just tell them to PAUSE and CHILL.

Cheers,

Stay tuned for more of my blogs and thoughts on how varsity students can work their way through their time at college. Its tough but hang in there.

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