How to Prepare for a Festival - While Missing School

By: Liza Kliminsky (@lizaklimm)

The music is blasting, you’re dancing with your friends and you don’t feel a drop of stress while at the festival about school. How is this incredible feat accomplished? By following the mantra of: “plan, plan, plan”! 

Many of us extremely busy individuals and a huge portion of us are ravers second, students first. College is a mighty endeavor, and keeping up with assignments may be difficult on a regular day...but with a festival coming up? It’s hard to get everything in order! The best thing to do, the second you realize you’ll miss class, is to check your class schedule. 

Different professors have different policies, but for a huge amount of courses - missing a class period can be difficult to bounce back from. Sometimes there’s exams that fall on festival dates or sometimes there’s an essay due. If you look at your schedule, realize you’ll only miss a class and attendance doesn’t hinder your success - you’re set, read no further! 

But sometimes, things don’t work out so perfectly. First course of action is to email your professor and ask to meet with them as soon as possible in order to account for missed class. Once you and your professor are all set to meet, outline what you’re going to say on a piece of paper. This is something you can use as insurance that you say everything you need to during your meeting, it’ll also make you seem prepared and score you some brownie points ;) In past experiences, saying that you’re going on a “family camping trip” works like a charm, and - it’s not a lie. After all, aren’t all festivals, family camping trips? 

Once your absence is discussed with your professor, it’s time to settle down and see how you need to prepare to be the best student you can be, and still attend the magic of festivals. If you have a quiz or test when you come back from the festival, you need to start studying earlier! Many of us say, “oh - we’ll study in the morning before getting ready” …. But, this is rarely how it goes. The best course of action is to create a study plan to follow before your departure. If there’s 100 pages of reading due while you’re going to be dancing, add on some extra reading to your daily homework beforehand! Adding little by little before the festival, is going to be your saving grace! 

There’s no reason that you can’t have your cake and eat it too - we just have to take life by the reins and milk as much goodness out of it as we can. But this means we have to work hard, to play hard! 

Next time your festival falls on school dates, no need to stress! You need to: 

1. Look at class schedule
2. Set up meeting with professor to address any conflicts
3. Create a study plan before festival departure
4. Study little by little 

These little tricks can be lifesavers and there’s no need to stress about doing poorly in school. Now, I better see all of you beautiful, dean’s list people roaming around festivals :)