Harken your mind back to January, I know it’s August, but stay with me. In January, when you need to leave your house to run an errand, most likely you start your car about 5 minutes before you need to leave. This winter ritual is called “warming up the car”, and it involves running the car in the driveway long enough for the engine to warm up and defrost the windows. Another type of “warm up” can be found in sports. If you arrive early for a soccer game, you may notice the players warming up on the field. It isn’t that they forgot how to play soccer and need to relearn everything before the game anymore than your car in the winter forgot how to run. Rather, the warm up allows our muscles a chance to prepare for the intense skill tests that follow.
Our bodies are complex systems of muscles, bones, nerves, etc. Our brain is a muscle. This muscle needs a chance to warm up. We can no sooner jump from sleeping to solving the hardest calculus problem any more than we can go from sitting on the couch to sprinting down a soccer field. Summer break is a wonderful time of rest and relaxation for our scholarly selves, but it’s also a great temptation. Atrophy sets in rather quickly. What is the best strategy against the temptation of brain atrophy? Warming up of course!
Instead of letting these next few weeks wash over you and your brain, start warming your brain up for some new learning opportunities! Prepare yourself and when the calendar slides from August into September, you’ll be ready to say, “Hello World, I’m ready!”