Boredom is even more common in the classroom. Have you ever asked why school is boring? Or have you ever been seated in your school chair often glancing at the clock while waiting for a class to be over?
Now, with the shift of learning setup, imagine how hours could, even more, feel long when you are bored in an online class. Studies suggest that students are uninterested in what is happening in the classroom. They feel under-stimulated and disengaged.
The effects of boredom can be quite harmful. When bored in class, students are more likely to skip, pay less attention, get lower grades, or worse drop out of class.
So, what to do when you are bored in class? Of course, we can do fun things in class but we need to learn first before anything because after all, learning is the primary reason why we are in school.
Here are 5 things you can do without jeopardizing the learning process.
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5 Things To Do To Relax in Class When Bored
1. Listen To Romantic Stories
So, it’s vacant time and you’re waiting for the next class to take over. You’re all done with the homework, and you have lots of break time. Odd it may seem, you might also likely feel bored when resting.
Listening to romantic stories will help you pass the long hours of vacant time. Aside from that, you might be surprised how romantic stories foster learning. As you listen to romantic stories, you are picking up relationship advice that you can apply to hypothetical scenarios in your own life. In some situations, audio is used by listeners to alter their own life.
We have that one story where we can identify ourselves. With this, people frequently use the characters’ experiences in romance books to change the course of their own life, and mostly as their source of inspiration too. What to do when bored in class? Listening to romantic stories isn’t something we have to be judgemental of. We can learn from it in the same way we learn from other genres.
Feminism is celebrated in most romantic stories. Emphasis on female power and the ability of women to make decisions that contribute to their success in life and love is what draws many women into the plot of romantic stories. If you are looking for that kind of storyline, there are lots of it to listen to in Wehear like romantic stories with strong female leads.
Another positive factor is that romantic stories lead us to appreciate the concept of love, its complexities, and beauty. What to do if you are bored in class? Download the WeHear app and listen to romantic stories. This is a fun thing to do while relaxing, besides, romantic stories instruct students on the value of communication, loyalty, and problem-solving on both a personal and interpersonal level.
In Wehear, listeners are allowed to experience a romantic journey via the eyes of a fictional character and solve love concerning problems without it having any real impact on their day-to-day life.
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2. Engage in Distract – Free Activities
What to do when bored in class? And when is it okay to do extra things? Well, if the activity will not disrupt attention and learning, then, it’s just fine to do such stuff. Doodling is a type of unfocused kind of drawing that might or might not have definite meanings. It keeps the brain active. The fact is, teachers cannot hold students’ interests all the time.
Students learn differently. And individual engagement varies from one student to another. If you are bored in class, and lessons fail to engage your attention, doodling will place you on the task. Doodling helps to keep the mind focused on the work at hand and in the present.
Numerous studies have shown that doodling can help students retain the information they are learning while drawing. For the visual type of learners, doodling is highly applicable since this activity can help you rapidly capture complex and subtle information.
Doodling helps to further engage the brain by triggering the visual senses. Overwhelming scientific support had been ruled out too on how doodling, when bored in class, has a variety of advantages, including better memory and increased attention spans.
3. Write a To-Do List
This is funny. Well, your teacher may think you are note-taking but you are writing a to-do list while in a lecture. When a class session is about to be finished, admit it we get excited about logging out if it’s online, or our attention might be on that door, glancing outside and tapping our fingers while counting down the remaining minutes.
Of course, don’t do that or else you’ll get reprimanded by your teacher. Instead, when bored in class while waiting for the minutes to be over, write a to-do list. School life is stressful. There are too many things to do, and remembering it might be troubling.
Listing down what to do will help you organize things and sort out what is important and what needs to be done first. Crossing out completed tasks could keep you motivated in some ways, and the act of planning activities in a day reduces stress.
The good thing about writing a to-do list when bored in class is its self-rewarding. The feeling of having a sense of accomplishment after completing a task boosts our mood and increases productivity.
4. Eat Sweets
Weird, but sneaking candies in class can help you become better students! Recent studies find out that a sugar boost can help students get through sleepy, boring lectures.
If you’re bored in class, a little sugar could help you push through to the end. Aside from that, there are scientific connections between sweets and learning.
Researchers discovered that eating sweets activates neurons in the area of the brain associated with episodic memory, which governs one’s capacity to recall a prior event from a particular moment in time. So, no wonder how our oldies advise us to eat chocolates while studying. This doesn’t just keep us awake but it helps us recall some lessons.
Your body converts glucose from the sugars into the preferred fuel for your brain. Because of this, drinking a glass of orange juice or another fruit juice or eating sweets will temporarily improve one’s memory, thinking, and mental capacity.
Yeah, a sugar boost is a temporary remedy when you are bored in class, or sleepy and low in energy, but despite being recommended, consuming sweets should be in moderation for health reasons.
5. Make a Gratitude List
What to do when bored in class? Jot down things you are grateful for instead of getting irritated with a dull long class time. Keeping a gratitude list is a whole new level of experience which in return could, later on, promote positive behavior. By expressing what you are grateful for, you are less likely to harbor resentment toward other people.
It has been demonstrated that expressing appreciation reduces social comparisons. Some studies reported how social comparison could decrease one’s self-esteem, thus raising social anxiety and depression, although in some cases it has positive impacts on students’ grades.
But there are a variety of personalities in a classroom, and if you’re the type that needs some esteem boost, then gratitude listing is for you.
Next time when you are thinking about what to do when bored in class, consider making a gratitude list.
What to do if you are bored in class has been a common question in whatever kind of learning environment. There are many factors affecting students’ attention and interests. Though challenging, this question – What to do when you are bored in class isn’t something we could just drop.
This is a very common problem in school that seriously affects learning. Doing some fun, healthy, extra things that are educational in some aspects could help them cope with disengagement and boredom.