Beating the Dog Days of Summer in Higher Education

The dog days of summer – those long, hot stretches when motivation can melt away – are often the calm before the academic storm. For students, faculty, and administrators in higher education, this time can feel like a slow crawl toward the fall semester. But what if instead of letting the summer heat stall your progress, you use it to your advantage? You can go from lull to launch, setting meaningful academic and personal objectives while the pace is still manageable.

Whether you’re a student looking to improve your GPA or field readiness, a professor aiming to publish that long-overdue research paper, or an advisor hoping to streamline student support, you can work towards incremental goals that grow with you. Instead of all-or-nothing outcomes, try scaling minimum, target, and stretch goals for each desired outcome that match the unpredictable pace of academic life. Set target dates for goals you can initiate during the dog days and for goals through the busy academic year ahead.

Why sacrifice this summer respite to focus on goal setting? I challenge those of you who browse the “Christmas in July” sales and Halloween merchandise already in our stores. Thinking ahead and anticipating the next thing is what most of us naturally do in other areas of our lives. Wrapping some measurable, incremental goals around this process for your academic life will ensure a better outcome (https://www.goalscaling.info/publications/).

So as the sun blazes on and you enjoy an iced coffee or a late sunset, consider making the dog days your strategic edge. Of course, using an app like Goal Scaling Solutions could simplify this for you. Whatever approach you choose, stay cool, stay focused, and start building a better semester today.