With peak holiday times upon us, the question is whether you should enjoy yourself or get to work and have a studious holiday?
As you might guess, there’s no easy answer, but there is a reasonable middle ground.
A Studious Holiday: Not That Bad
Most people find themselves with periods of downtime during the holidays. How you choose what to do with this time is the big question.
There’s nothing wrong with taking an hour to just mindlessly scroll through social media or read the news. Maybe you need the zone out break.
Nevertheless, chances are, you are in the middle of a rare downtime for Wall Street.
The only other time that tends to be close to this quiet are the last two weeks of August.
However, if instead of some mindless scrolling, you spend an hour just keeping some material fresh, your brain will thank you for it.
In our experience, there’s not a lot that you lose with a week of no studying. But, it does help if you keep it up even a little.
How Much Time Should I Dedicate?
When it comes to deciding how much study time to dedicate over the holidays, there’s no precise answer.
That said, at Professional Exam Tutoring, we have never (really, never!) come across a student that comes back from December vacation and has dropped 10 percentage points or more.
So, if you do decide to take some time to yourself, it’s not the end of the world.
All of this has to be balanced with what you’re risking of course.
If you are at risk of losing your job and your exam is on January 2, then it’s probably better that you hit the books while everyone else is on holiday. This is especially true, if you’re just barely getting a passing score in your practice exam and your exam is within a couple weeks.
If that’s not the case, and your schedule leaves you at least another month of studying, you might have a little more wiggle room.
Take some breaks, but still try to find some time (an hour a day can often be enough to keep things fresh).
Harder exams, like the Series 86, Series 79, or Series 7 might require a little more studying.
If you have any questions or if you’re looking for more tips, feel free to reach out. Good luck! And happy holidays!