<p>Any tips on how to maintain motivation through the mid-semester malaise?<br>
When you are done with review and all preliminary stuff and you are past the easy material and the semester’s end seems very far away and the homework is getting really hard and you just can’t get motivated for the weed out midterm you know is coming and you start to question if you are in the right major if you can’t even get through a difficult core class… what do you do to keep yourself going to get through it?</p>
<p>I imagine the hottest girl I’ve seen in the past few days.</p>
<p>I then imagine that doing my homework will cause the stars to align a certain way and make her sleep with me.</p>
<p>The sex part hasn’t worked yet but hellooooo straight A’s.</p>
<p>I used to just take a break when I needed to, go someplace different, change my study environment, get out, enjoy the last bits of nice weather… I’d give myself a set time that I’d need to get back to studying (usually would try to give myself a day or so… a good amount of time so that I didn’t feel like it went by <em>too</em> quickly), and then I’d feel a little refreshed. Not like a full vacation or weekend, because I didn’t really have those in undergrad, but I did have a <em>little</em> time to myself.</p>
<p>I’d do something dumb like go to the zoo or shoot rubber bands off the balcony or fly a kite or throw pennies out the window of my car while I drove. Something utterly stupid and college-esque to break the monotony.</p>
<p>Then I’d have enough distance to get perspective and remember why I was doing what I was doing in the first place, and I’d feel a little better. I’d surf the 'net and see how construction was going on the latest tallest-building-in-the-world. I’d sigh, then I’d get back to work.</p>
<p>I do the same thing now that I’m working in my office all day, but since I can’t swing a day-long break anymore, mainly I just take ten minute breaks to go across the street to get a chai latte at Starbucks, or browse books at the Waldenbooks, or look at cards at Hallmark. I’ll take a picture of the “Jesus loves you but I’m his favorite” plaque and text it to my brother. Every now and then, I’ll be able to rally up the junior engineers for ice cream cones at Chick-Fil-A and we’ll all come back upstairs and the principals of the company will look at us, mindboggled but bemused, as fifteen of us stroll in with vanilla cones.</p>
<p>Just a little monotony break to do something stupid. Then back to work.</p>
<p>I read the phdcomics.com strips. They are meant for grad students but I read them for fun. It actually motivates me somehow although i dont know why.</p>
<p>And there is this girl who keeps texting me for information about the hw, I dont want to look like a fool so I always make sure I know my stuff. Lame? You bet! but its worth the grade + girl( hopefully).</p>
<p>I find have shorter term goals and milestones helps take the drag out of the UG semester. For example, looking forward to the weekend or other advanced plans helped me have the motivation to power through.</p>
<p>Ironically in graduate school I found the opposite–time flies by.</p>