What to do in your summer after year 13?

NCEA exams (and Cambridge/IB) have finished now and I think it’s perfect time to write about what you I recommend you do in your summer. In this blog I’ll be writing about stuff to do in the summer, the last points will be HSFY focused but overall will be applicable to all school leavers.

I think it’s important to relax, take time for yourself, do things that you enjoy. After spending countless hours in the library (or not!) throughout the exam period you’ve deserved some time to relax and just chill out. There are many things that people do, take a road trip, surround yourself with friends and family, take some time to exercise or read. Your brain has been filled with so much knowledge and content from year 13 and now you can let that all go. Your high school friends are people that you should take some time to hang out with, after all these are the people that you’ve been surrounding yourself with for the last 5 years; maintaining these relationships even if you all are going down different pathways is important and you’ll thank yourself that you spent quality time with them.

Family is also something that is equally if not more important than anything else on this list. Moving away to university is hard, living away from home is hard. Being away from an environment that you’re so familiar with (especially with your parents doing a lot of small stuff that you take for granted) can be hard, especially being away for around 2 months and not seeing them. Take some time to hang out with your parents, although they may be annoying at times they love you and do a ridiculous amount of stuff we can’t see beyond the surface.

Going to university is unfortunately not cheap, the reality is that the majority will have to take out student loans to help finance your tuition and living costs. And somehow, some way you’re going to have to eventually pay it off with this thing called money. Listen to your parents when the say money doesn’t grow on trees because it’s true, it doesn’t unfortunately and every dollar count. If you don’t have a job then try and get one your loan will be enough to cover your hall costs but it doesn’t cover the amount of money spent on late night McDonald’s runs or the countess boxes of alcohol you’ll end up purchasing. It also will help teach you some life skills that will feed into your independence, it will give you greater appreciation for what the person and the New World checkout goes through or what actual manual labour looks like. I would recommend student job search to help find you a job, as well as seek and trade me jobs. 

Learning how to do things for yourself is an important step in being independent and developing “life skills”. This include but are not restricted to: how to iron your clothes, how to cook (helpful for flatting), how to do your own laundry or cleaning. These tasks are all pretty mundane but pretty important once you move away from home and your mum is no longer your personal laundry machine or chef.

Step outside your comfort zone. Talk to that crush that you never talked to in high school, pick up a new hobby that you were always afraid of doing. By stepping out of your comfort zone you are preparing yourself to overcome things that you’re afraid of, and typically you are afraid of these things because you knw that there is a high chance of failiure. Well guess what, the first year of university you will have to overcome lots of adversity, lots of obstacle and the many “uncomfortable” times you’ll experience. The reality is how do you mentally prepare yourself, whether it’s a poor grade in HSFY or a mistake you made on a drunken night out, it’s all about how you rebound, how you come back from adversity. Learning how to carry yourself in life is an important trait, and its those who are not afraid to fail because they have built up this wall of resilience are the ones that succeed, perfectionists will suffer because they don’t know what it feels like to fail, whereas you do.

Academically especially with HSFY there has been lots of debate around whether you should study before or not. Personally, I didn’t do any study in the summer and felt just fine during first semester, yes I didn’t do as great if I did but to be honest I learnt more about myself in first semester through trial and error. I’m not going to tell you to study or not to study because it’s really up to each individual and what they WANT to do. If you are planning on studying, I recommend only studying a few topics before heading into HSFY specifically. 

These include: 

-       Mechanics (NCEA level 3 Physics), this is because the first two weeks of PHSI 191 lectures are just maths and you can spend that time recapping what you’ll be going over in the future (ie studying before the lecture because they give you the whole semesters slides), this one isn’t very important but if you are uncomfortable with the basics of mechanics (or have never taken it before) then you might want to recap the NCEA level 3 mechanics paper to give you that extra confidence boost. 

-       Aqueous Systems (NCEA level 3 Chemistry), this is because the first module (9 lectures) is about this paper, in reality CHEM 191 in some aspects is actually easier than NCEA (same for PHSI 191) and having a good solid knowledge about pKa and how to do calculations etc will be helpful.

-       Cell Processes and Gene Expression (NCEA level 2 Biology), if you have taken level 3 biology then you’ll know that it is actually kinda hard but luckily for you absolutely none of it will be covered in any of the HSFY course (core 7 papers). I’d say if you want a little boost to study the cell processes (photosynthesis etc) and gene expression, being able to read codon tables and knowing the basics of transcription and translation will help.

Another fun thing you could do is to have a skin through some of the UCAT content. Understanding what the test is, the structure, the importance and even just attempting some questions. In the meantime, don’t stress about it as you will have ample time in between semester 1 and 2 to adequately prepare but if you know that it might be a struggle have a quick glance over it. (will be making the UCAT and its specifics.

So to conclude, have fun, spend time with those you care about, make some money, become an individual person and don’t stress about HSFY, if you want to destress yourself by studying by all means do so if you want to destress by doing other random stuff then do it. What I’m trying to say is enjoy your summer, it’s the longest break all year and enjoy it while it lasts!