Here’s the thing – if you’re someone like me who needs the constant reminder of everyone around you doing something productive to be able to get things done yourself, you’ve hopefully realized sooner than I did that putting yourself in an environment where no one’s holding you accountable isn’t necessarily a good idea.
When January 3rd arrived and Winter Term officially began, it felt to me just like any other day of Winter Break. But it wasn’t. And that was something I struggled with the whole month of January.
So here’s my biggest tip for people who plan on doing an individual project at home over Winter Term: plan things to do outside of your project. It was amazing how every day I actually hung out with my friends or visited some cool place in the city, I suddenly felt the need to work on my project again. That’s one of the things I think I took for granted when I was on campus last year. I always had something to do then because there was always something fun to find on campus to cure my boredom and laziness, and that in turn would subconsciously boost my desire to be productive.
But once I started getting better about managing my time and motivation this month at home, I started to appreciate having the freedom and flexibility to explore other cool things besides my writing. It made the creative process different from any other. I realized that it was very beneficial to have something big to work on while also getting to catch up with friends and become familiar again with winter at home. Plus, while all my high school friends were already back at school, shivering either in the record-breaking cold in NYC or somewhere in a windy New England college town, I spent what was only the third week out of four of Winter Term escaping the cold weather by visiting some family in San Diego.
And it was so cool! I saw the seals and sea lions at La Jolla Beach, visited the San Diego Zoo, and even attended my first-ever high school water polo game. ALL while in the middle of my writing project! I loved meeting different people and experiencing different places with the reliable, constant goal of writing a novel. And it was only once I’d gone through all the different weathers and time zones that I realized how much it helped me to write from differing perspectives. Character work has always been one of the hardest things for me – I’ve lived in the same city my whole life, and it’s only since going to school that I’ve begun to have these experiences that remind me how different everyone’s lives are from one another.
Ultimately, the best thing about Oberlin’s Winter Term is that you can turn it into anything you want it to be. A few of my friends worked on theater shows back on campus, while others went abroad for the month, spent time archiving, or even learned to play new instruments. As always, everyone’s spent this month doing something wildly different and exciting, and they’ve all done it in their own unique way. I don’t expect to be writing with the La Jolla seals next Winter Term, but we’ll see if I can top that.
