Welcome back to our 8 Weeks of Connection series!
For the 8 weeks leading up to the new year, PPR highlights different team members as they share how they’re building connections into their holiday season!
This week, PPR Intern Manal Chaali shares how she’s reconnecting with a favorite pastime and carving out time for herself this hectic finals season.
The stage is yours, Manal!
The weeks leading up to finals have a way of making everything feel rushed and leaving you lost in studying and work, especially when you’re juggling endless assignments, the pressure of exams, and other commitments. But this week, I realized I really needed a break. So, I decided to hit pause for a bit and treat myself to something long overdue: a trip to a café with a book in hand!
The last time I really sat down to read for fun was back in the summer, lounging by the pool. Since then, it’s been all textbooks and no novels. But this week, I decided to change that and picked up Tales from the Café by Toshikazu Kawaguchi—the same book I was reading poolside. It’s the second book in a short series about a café in Japan where customers can time travel (but only under some pretty strict conditions). It’s a sweet, heartwarming read, and I couldn’t wait to dive back in.
Sipping my latte at Foundation Coffee, a charming spot near campus in Fairfax, Virginia, popular with George Mason students, I realized how nice it was to disconnect from school and reconnect with something I genuinely enjoy. It felt so refreshing to just sit back and read without the constant feeling that I should be doing something else. Plus, I remembered that with winter break coming up, I’d have more time to dive into the last two books of the series. I’ve even started planning a list of cafés in Northern Virginia and D.C. to visit while I finish reading. And who knows—maybe I’ll finally get to that list of books I saved on TikTok, too!
Getting back into reading has been such a great way to break out of my “finals season” slump. It helps that I’m not reading anything intense, just something fun and easy to help reset my brain! Hopefully, when the new semester rolls around, I’ll remember how important it is to take little moments for myself, even when things get busy.
Now, it’s back to tackling finals week, but I’m really glad I took that pause!
