December 2025

We are fully into the Holiday Season! For most students, that also means we are in the Final Exams Season, with high school seniors also in the height of College Application Season. It’s all exciting, and also exhausting. So here is a shorter-than-usual December newsletter for you.

If you are making plans for your upcoming winter break, please check out the What Should I Be Doing Now? page updates, including a special page for seniors.

—Benjamin

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Here are some blog posts from the archive that are good for this December:

Practicing gratitude. Gratitude is on my mind lately. Because of Thanksgiving, of course. And also the wave of articles I’ve seen lately about gratitude being essential for good mental health. Like this one. And this one. And this one. I work with stressed-out high school students for a living, so mental health is always on my mind.

Making new year resolutions? Focus on the How, not the What. A large goal, any large goal, is essentially a Marshmallow Test. Can I resist the temptation to give in to easy treats in order to get a larger reward later? Can I resist the urge to check my social media feeds in order to do better homework and have higher quality studying? Can I avoid the temptation of…everything else…in order to keep an established weekly time for my college search? They’re all marshmallows. More abstract and more important marshmallows, but essentially marshmallows.

How to handle bad news. If you got bad news, you may not know what to do. You may be overwhelmed with questions or disappointment. So here’s some advice on dealing with the bad news.