Finals - The Dreaded Week
Any and every student dreads finals week. It is the one time of the semester where you are expected cram fifteen weeks of knowledge onto a ten page final exam, within a two hour time period. If you are lucky, one or two of your classes will not have cumulative finals. There comes a time when a student has to say ‘enough is enough’. If you have not been preparing all semester — there is simply no way that one can learn everything in the week before the final exam. Getting through finals week is about three things: preparation, being stress free, and sticking to a schedule.
Preparation is key. Make a study guide in he weeks before the final. Bring the study guide with you and make it your best friend. For study tips, see the study method posted here.
Being stress free during finals week is a hard thing to think of. However, it is not too difficult. It goes hand in hand with preparation. If you are more prepared, you will be less stressed out about the finals. Get a good nights rest the night before each final, your brain needs to rest. Staying awake all night will make your brain function worse during the exam.
Steps to a stress-free finals week
1. E-mail, call or visit your professors. Ask them if you’re performing up to par.
2. Spend time with friends who are also serious students instead of frivolous ones. You should be able to take their advice.
3. Don’t be unrealistic. Goals need to stretch you, but they don’t need to overwhelm you. If you find yourself saying, “I’ll never finish this,” then it is an unrealistic goal. “You can’t make up for the entire semester of work in a week. Make reasonable goals,” Jurich said.
4. Put some regular activities on hold for the week. For example, stop shaving the entire week before finals. Then if you shave after your last final, you will feel relieved.
5. Don’t stay up all night cramming; you will perform better the next day.
6. Be good to your body. Caffeine is fine to a point, but once that point is surpassed your performance can go downhill.
7. Another remedy for stress during finals is finding relaxing places to study. (Link)
Sticking to a study schedule is another great thing to do. By studying material for one class, and then changing to another subject for a few hours, you will force your brain to do a little extra work. This will also prevent you from getting bored. After you run through the material for each course work, take a break by going for a walk or enjoying an apple.
Finals is a scary time, but with some good time management and planning you can avoid a lot of the stress involved.
Tags: Education, exams, finals, grades, school, tests
Get SkypePro for free local calls
Here are some other related posted by this author...
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
Leave a Reply