Study while traveling?

Sure! Many hostels don’t only feature kitchenettes, common rooms and chill out places for a cup of tea, but also have study rooms and/or conference rooms. This will allow you to spend your time in a hostel studying, so you won’t need to lay with headphones on, with roommates coming in and out of the room all the time breaking your concentration. Before you go on the trip, check out what the hostels in the places you’ll visit have to offer, or just ask at the check-in, if there’s a good room for you to study in. Simply go to that room, take your material with you, the sticky notes, markers,… and you can start studying. And almost every hostel provides free internet access, so there’s no excuse not to your laptop either. OK, this will take self-discipline, sure, because the plans of your friends or other people in the hostel can lure you into other activities, but it definitely is possible to travel and study at the same time You just need to be persistent and have a well-planned out schedule of what to do when.

Even before you start the trip you need to make good plans. Talk with your friends when, on which day and at what time you’ll be doing something. If you prefer to study in the morning, you should go sightseeing in the afternoon, and your friends can go check out some things that are not on your priority list. And remember to divide the study material into units which you’ll systematically go through one by one and make a plan when you will do each of the units to know how much and which topics you’ll cover each day. Also don’t forget to plan a day when you’ll repeat all of it before the exam, to make sure, you’ve remembered it.

Quite a lot of Slovenian hostels are part of youth centres, which are really meant for learning. You can find such hostels in Ajdovščina, Celje, Krško, Velenje… and quite a few other hostels have great rooms where you can learn and even classrooms, as some are part of high school dorms, such as  hostel Proteus, hostel Poetovio, hostel Radenci … You should not be surprised, if you won’t be the only one to be studying and spending time with books as you travel. If you prefer to study on your own, just get an empty desk, prepare your materials and start reading… but if you prefer the company of others you may even be able to set up a small learning group. Maybe the two of you could help each other out with knowledge, as there’s always a chance somebody can explain the things you’re studying in a simple yet exact way, or vice versa. It’s always good though, that if you learn in groups, you should be doing similar stuff – for instance just science or just sociology… More heads are better than one so you can help each other doing the math behind physics or chemistry… you can compare results and ways you’ve got them. While learning together you can always form positive chemistry. You’re all connected by the same thing – learning what is needed. Learning together can positively influence on others (if everybody’s doing it, let’s stay for another hour) or support each other (half more hour, then we’ll go together to grab some lunch). It’s a different kind of learning, interesting and above all successful if we support each other while we learn and exchange information among us. The benefits of such learning is dynamical work, joint motivation, support and even relaxing together. The more senses we activate (reading, writing, debating with others) the more active our brains are and better we will remember the things we were learning.