Halloween is over, now Christmas? Yep, the Holidays start for a lot of businesses sooner than we care for. From a business perspective, this is a good thing to market products in advance but for those of us who are students and find ourselves working during the Holiday months too, this can mean something terrible. This can mean a lot of sanity checks, much coffee, longer work hours, different study habits and a very minimal social life. The Holidays are great, as long as you know some tricks to ensure sanity.

Jennifer Day, a nursing student at EvCC stated, “I am preparing for the Holidays by working extra hours so that I can afford Christmas presents for my friends and family.” I think a lot of us can agree that we do this when we can. If we aren’t working retail, we will at least find ourselves chucking on more hours for Christmas shopping.

“While going to school and working I’m going to make sure that I make the time to rest, do the things I enjoy doing and not worry too much. I’m going to slowly get Christmas gifts over the next month or so.” Said Jennifer Day when asked how she plans to get through this holiday season. Her advice to other students is, “Don’t stress yourself out too much…If you don’t get perfect grades its not the end of the world. My advice would be to put your mental health before grades and work.”

Cole Whitaker, a cosmetology instructor during the day when not a student at EvCC stated, “I am working 40 hours a week and going to school. Im just not worrying about holiday stuff until school is done.” While not working a direct, retail crazed holiday position, his way of dealing is to not partake in the busy-ness of it all and states, “I like to bake. I have my pans and I’m just going to bake at home.”

Morgan Hoyt, a general studies student stated, “Sometimes it’s hard to focus on schoolwork during the holidays because of all my extended family who stays with us, so I can’t really find a quiet place to work, I spend a lot of time at the library this time of year.”

These are all great tips that work for these students and it’s always good to know what works for others but its most important to find out what tricks for us personally. To get through all the business of the Holiday season we must be prepared for ourselves.