By Karen Tang, General Member
Whether this is your first year of writing university final exams or your last year of graduate school, as mid to late December approaches, there can be a certain level of stress and anxiety for students!
Oftentimes, it can feel anxiety-inducing when it comes to preparing for your final exams. You might not know where to start, or you already feel overwhelmed and maybe burnt out from the semester. Here are some general tips to get you started on tackling studying and preparing for finals!
First, it can be helpful to make a list! Put everything you need to do on it, such as reading Chapters 13 and 14 for your biology course, to writing your final paper. Be sure to include the basics, like showering, eating, and keeping hydrated! These small acts of self-care can often be neglected when you have your head in the books. However, the adrenaline rush of checking something off (even if it feels small) will help you carry on to the next item on the list.
Learn to ride your waves. We all have different times of day or week when we feel more or less effective. Figure out what yours are and plan to do your most challenging work for those times. Leave mindless, repetitive tasks (e.g., checking your emails, scrolling through social media) to the times when you are least effective.
Likewise, learn your prime place to study. As an extrovert, I know that I work best from home. You will never find me at the university or local library when I am cramming for exams. There is a good chance I will run into someone I know and then keep chatting and chatting….and then I won’t finish studying for the day! If I want a change of pace from studying at home, I am also a big fan of cafés since there is a lower chance I’d run into someone I know there. The café ambiance can also really help set the mood for productivity.
Next, be realistic! Most of us know (probably from personal experience) that cramming for an exam is not the most feasible (or realistic) endeavour. This is totally the same for studying and preparing for exams. If you try to cram into one day more than you are actually realistically capable of, you will feel like you are constantly falling behind, and that isn’t great for keeping morale up, nor is it being kind to yourself.
On the note of being kind to yourself, ensure that you rest and take time off. If you don’t take time to recuperate and rest, it will just slow you down to a barely productive state anyway. Then you start beating yourself up about your lack of studying, and then you cry over your textbooks about how you have failed at studying. Rest is both healthy and productive!
Similarly, reward is essential as well. It is vital to reward yourself in both small and big ways! Small rewards might be pushing through a particular gruelling chapter of physics and enjoying a sweet treat afterward or reading the next chapter of a pleasurable book (hopefully not a textbook). Large rewards might be going out with friends or trying a new restaurant after a particularly long day of studying! Likewise, I am a big fan of rewarding myself by taking evenings and weekends off (if possible) for self-care and rest purposes.
Best of luck studying and preparing for this exam season! You are almost at the finish line for this semester!
Resources and additional study tips:
https://mcgraw.princeton.edu/undergraduates/resources/resource-library/preparing-for-finals
https://learningcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/preparing-for-finals/
https://www.lib.sfu.ca/about/branches-depts/slc/learning/exam-prep/exam-prep-5-strategies