It’s that time of year again. We’re all getting stressed and anxious and the workload feels like it may crush us. It won’t though because we can handle it—even if we don’t think we can. There are ways to get through these last couple of weeks with minimal stress.
Getting organized is probably the best thing you can do for yourself right now. Write down the dates of all of your finals, your in-class finals, your online finals and the due dates of papers. One of the worst things that can happen is forgetting you have a final paper due the day before you’re supposed to hand it in. Refer to the Fall 2018 Final Exam Schedule (PDF).
On top of writing the dates down, prioritize your workload by how much time you need to prepare. Is there a final you should have started studying for last week because you know it’s going to be extremely hard? Put that at the top of your list. If you’ve had all semester to work on a research paper, but haven’t started it, then that should also be at the top of your list. Two weeks are going to come and go faster than you think and the stress only intensifies as you become pinched for time.
The next thing to do is meet with your professor or PAL if you’re struggling. Teaching yourself how to do something for a simple test during the semester might have been easy enough, but for a final you really want to know the content more comprehensively. Go to office hours and get extra help on topics you haven’t been able to figure out over the course of the semester (even though this would have been a good idea earlier).
Make sure you’ve planned your time around what finals you have. Writing them down is one thing, but making sure you don’t have huge events planned the day before an exam is equally important. Use your free time to make sure you’re ready and don’t feel bad about missing out on plans.
In the end, just do your best. Put in effort to make sure everything gets done and to fully prepare yourself. It’s okay to be stressed, but don’t lose all motivation because you feel like you have too much on your plate. Cry it out if you have to, call your mom or rant to your friends, but know you've got this!
-Catherine Rafuse, ’19, Psychology Major