Managing Finals Season
This blog post was written by Peer Career Ambassador, Sydney Huang ’20.
As the semester is nearing an end, there is still one looming obstacle standing between us and winter break: finals. Saying finals are stressful is an understatement. Although I can’t make finals disappear, here are some tips and tricks on how to make it a little more manageable.
1) Start early. This is pretty self-explanatory but give yourself plenty of time to absorb the information. This way you can plan on going into office hours and ask questions ahead of time.
2) What I tend to do is make a daily schedule. This way it breaks up the studying into chunks and I don’t feel overwhelmed. I find that the worst part about studying for finals is not knowing where to start. Find out what will be covered on the exam and plan your workload accordingly.
3) Keep good company. Studying is a lot more manageable when you are with a study partner. Find on that will keep you on track and are in similar classes. That way you can bounce questions off one another and make studying a little less mundane.
4) Because I am a visual learner, I make myself cheat sheets. This way I am thinking critically about the information in order to determine if it is important enough or not to include and I have a condensed sheet with all the key concepts that I can carry around with me and study anywhere I go. I don’t know about you, but I feel a sense of accomplishment when I finally finish a cheat sheet. If you are not a visual learner, find a method that works for you.
5) Start with the topics that are worth the most. If your professor tells you what percentage of the test is going to be on certain topics, study the biggest chunks first. This way, even if you run out of time to study everything, you would still have a better shot at getting a good grade.
6) Allot yourself some time to relax. Just because it is finals doesn’t mean you can’t have any fun! Take care of yourself and hang out with friends. Just make sure you are managing your time.
7) Get plenty of sleep! You are more likely to retain information if you get enough sleep. Don’t let all your hours spent studying go to waste because you pulled an all-nighter.
I hope this was helpful in some way. I wish you all the best of luck on your finals and go blow it out of the water.