Tackling Boredom

When people imagine the lives of students, it is anything but dull. We live in houses with our friends, party into the early hours, and use our student loans on various ‘necessities’ to keep us happy. The illusion of the student as a tipsy adventurer fueled by coffee and ramen noodles is one that is widely diffused across the UK, however when it comes down to it, we are still slave to the thing that drives every person to vague irritability- boredom.

That’s right, when the student loan is running dry, we’ve exhausted the quaint range of shops and cafés in the local town and all that we have in front of us is looming deadlines and some dry papers to read, us students suffer from the big boredom cloud as much as any other adult. If not more. Some days when we don’t have lectures, the weather is cold and the streets outside our boxy student rooms seem gray and uninviting, university life seems like a big old bubble of dull.

However, there are simple ways to combat this and I’ve put together a few ideas for the next time you find yourself moping around with ‘nothing to do’. (Translation: you have work to do, you just don’t want to do it).

1)      Get creative

Whether it be drawing, writing, dancing, music. Whatever it is that gets your creative juices flowing, give it a go. Even if you don’t think it’s any good, you can always throw it away or delete it later. Buy an adult colouring book, or write an unflattering poem about your least-favourite lecturer (you know you want to).

2)      Join a society

Warwick has so many societies to choose from, and chances are if you’re sat bored one evening then you haven’t joined any. If you already are a member of a society or two, spend some time doing something related to it. If you’re in a dance society, practice a routine, or do some research on something that your fellow society members might find interesting.

3)      Discover somewhere new

Leaving the house with no aims is how I usually end up discovering the best places. It might be a coffee shop tucked away down a side street, a park with nice ducks, or even just a beautiful street that you never knew existed. Take out your phone and snap a few pics for the gram. There might be a museum of your local area where you can learn something new about where you live.  It’s never a bad idea to expand your horizons, even if only by a few hundred yards.

4)      Run an errand

Go buy milk from across town, or think of something you’ve been needing for the house for ages but has never been urgent enough to run out and buy. If you don’t have any real errands to do, make one up. Think of something strangely specific, like a yellow hat or a lavender candle, and spend an hour searching for it in charity shops. Or, if that doesn’t appeal, send a message out to the group chat. If you don’t have something that needs doing, someone else surely will and won’t mind you coming along.

Those are just a few ideas of what you can do on those occasions when you find yourself saying you have nothing to do. Boredom sucks, but it can be turned around into something great if you try!

Becca.

PS: if you have any ideas on how to tackle boredom yourself, please feel free to throw them in below!