by Scott Lutostanski – Galin Education Director of Academic Consulting
Spring break is the season of vacations. West Coast, East Coast, mountains, Mexico, road trips: they’re all great. But there is also a side to vacations that is more than just relaxation and sun: all the work that goes into planning and coordinating the trip. Sometimes, based on the time of year, it is easy to select a real-life scenario (such as planning a vacation), dissect the components, and examine the difficulties an executive function-challenged person has to encounter and overcome in order to successfully complete the task.
I understand that students in high school aren’t in charge of planning the family vacation, but as they enter college and beyond they will most likely be planning lots of trips: weekends away, spring breaks, winter breaks, or summers away. Let’s look at all the obstacles a college student — adult — faces when planning a trip.
Planning: Looking at flights, researching hotels, looking at restaurants, and reading reviews takes a lot of effort. Throw in rental cars, shuttles, Ubers, and other travel options and it gets even more difficult. Smart phones certainly make some of this easier to manage on the fly, but a well-planned-out trip involves a lot of forethought, research, and structure.
Time Management: How do you want to spend your free time on this trip? Sometimes vacations can cause us to have to manage our time even more than our “regular lives.” It starts with getting to the airport on time and it pretty much continues for the rest of the the trip. Want to get to a couple museums in one day? Have to make a dinner reservation before heading off to a show? Even though we move at a different speed on vacation, it is often difficult to manage how long it will take to get from one side of a city to another.
Organization: Packing is a challenge. This tends to be something that gets easier as we get older, and there is a reason for that. Because each time we pack suitcase is practice. The more we do it, the better we get at it. Packing cosmetics, weather-appropriate clothes, shoes, and anything takes a lot of organization and patience. This can be very difficult for a student.
Self-Regulation: Traveling can be a very stressful and anxiety-provoking time. We must be able to have the self-awareness to monitor ourselves and regulate our emotions. The more we can manage ourselves and our reactions, the more enjoyable the traveling will be and the more effective we can execute the skills above.
Again, our phones have made some of this easier (and sometimes more stressful, too), but planning a vacation still requires our executive functions to be in full force in order to help us organize, plan, and create a fun, eventful trip. This is real-life example of a situation how our executive functions can be pushed to the limits of our ability.
