There’s only about 1 week until classes start back up, and before you head back for a productive semester there are a few things you should do.

Spend a Day With Friends

Make this a simple day with your friends.  It can be as simple as sitting at a coffee shop for the whole day and just talking.  This is for deep conversation.  Share your goals and ambitions.  And when I mean friends, I mean your true friends.  The ones you will still make an effort to talk to even when you are states away, this is not the same friend that you accept on facebook.

Spend A Day with your Family

Most people hate this one, but it’s an important one.  Your family has done a lot for you, and you need to show them you appreciate it.  Spend a day playing boardgames with your family, going out to get ice cream and just enjoy being with each other.  The purpose of this is to make sure you leave your family on good terms.  This will make life easier when you come home on breaks, and besides you may actually enjoy it.

Take Yourself on a Date

Now this is the important one.  Plan a day where you wake up about 8 am and you leave the house and don’t come back till it’s dark out.  The importance of this is for you to think.  You need to get your thoughts together before you head of to college.  While college is a place where you discover who you are, you still need to head to college with a bit of an idea of who you are.  How do you imagine your future? What can you do to achieve your goals?

But what do you do on this “date”?   Here are some suggestions:

• go out to eat: breakfast, lunch, and dinner
• spend sometime at the library just browsing
• walk around the nearest city
• go shopping (go in random shops that you normally would never go in)
• go watch a movie by yourself (Yes, there are people who do that. I am one of them.)
• If you are a musician like me, go to different music stores.  (I once took an adventure just to find a music store with a hammered dulcimer.  I just wanted to see one and play it.)
• Go to a museum
• Go to an orchestra concert (Not a rock concert, an orchestra concert.  Something that is relaxing.)

Just pick a place that you would love to go to, but you never made the time for it.  But a key part of this is that you are ALONE, no significant other, no friend (get rid of the cell phone if you can). Just you and your mind, nothing more nothing less.

While there are a lot of things you should be doing before heading back to school, these three things I find to be very important to my mental health.  They allow me to have a clear mind through out the semester.

Where would you take yourself on your date?