At first sight, gardening and formal learning have nothing in common. Gardening is about growing and cultivating plants, while learning is about cultivating knowledge and improving academic skills. Still, scientists wouldn’t agree with such an opinion.
Gardening proves to be exceptionally beneficial for students who want to boost their academic performance and start enjoying a more rewarding and healthier life in college. Intrigued? Go on reading to learn how gardening can help you.
Relieves Stress
It’s not a secret that college can put an immense psychological strain on students. New subjects, new teachers, new assignments that differ greatly from those assigned at school. Moreover, a good few students have to combine work and study to make some extra money in college. As a result, they often find themselves drained morally and emotionally.
The constant lack of time and insufficient sleep add to the problem. Students under stress cannot perform well and often lag behind educationally. Incapable of coping with their homework, students start scouring the Internet in search of a reliable and knowledgeable custom assignment writer who can help them with their homework. When there’s no inspiration and desire to continue your academic journey, try gardening!
In essence, gardening is a form of meditation, which, as you know, involves repetitive, monotonous movements that help you divert your mind from everyday problems and focus on something more relaxing and pleasant. Just imagine the situation where you’re growing pleasant-smelling flowers, contemplating fruit trees, or gathering the harvest, even if it’s just several pears or apples.
The very mention of gardening quiets your mind, doesn’t it? Spending several hours in nature’s lap doing some gardening will help you with your essay or research paper a great deal. Gardening is an excellent diversion that inspires tranquility and appeasement in every person involved in it. And once you calm down and set your mind to efficient learning, you’ll start to perform better in college.
Acts as Effective Exercise
We bet you’ve seen students planting laws and managing their lawns on campus. It’s about time you joined them and started taming your stress and anxiety. What’s more, gardening can go a long way towards helping you keep fit and shed some annoying pounds, since this activity can be as effective as exercising in the gym, experts note.
If you cannot afford signing up for a gym membership, you can rely on your gardening hobby as an effective mood-boosting form of exercise. Most people think that gardening is physically undemanding at all, but they are wrong. Take a closer look at people engaged in gardening. It’s not that easy to wield a lawn mower, do all that raking, digging, and weeding. A 30-minute session of digging or raking helps you burn about 130 calories, while mowing your lawn for half an hour accounts for 170 burn calories.
Nevertheless, maintaining a healthy weight is not the only reason why you should try gardening while in college. As any form of physical exercise, gardening can help combat mental illnesses and lift your mood. Exercising prompts our brain to release more endorphins, the hormones that induce persistent improvements in our cognitive functions. Thus, gardening can be as effective as traditional brainstorming techniques that help you generate ideas for your college papers. Moreover, students performing ‘gardening exercises’ enjoy improved executive functions, including cognitive flexibility, decision-making, problem-solving, and long-term retention of information. As you know, these functions are critical for students.
Boosts Productivity
People that spend much time working or exercising in the fresh air are less prone to mood swings and depressions. Moreover, sunshine and natural daylight act as workable mood stabilizers and antidepressants.
They prevent your serotonins from dropping and thus don’t let you feel demoralized, worn-out, and listless. Seasonal affective disorders that are often responsible for decreased productivity and low academic achievements also can be combated once you try your hand at gardening.
Bottom Line
So, if you want to become a more efficient learner and start earning better grades in college, you should definitely turn to gardening. Doing so will help you calm down the restlessness of your mind and focus on your studies.