As students finish their last week of lectures, finals are quickly approaching. It’s wild how quickly this semester has come and gone. I can’t believe that finals week is upon us again.
Finals season marks a time full of studying, often for hours at a time. Sure, most of us don’t have to attend lectures, but we now have nonstop studying sessions. Our professors tell us to start studying as early and efficiently as possible, and we try to follow their advice. To add to the pressure to succeed in our finals, our university sends us emails reminding us to hustle.
We prepare as much as possible for our finals. As students, we want to perform our best and feel proud of the progress we made in our courses. Perhaps we had a bad midterm and want to make up for it with an extra-high final score. Or perhaps we missed an important aspect of the class and hope that a heavily weighted final can compensate.
With all this pressure to do well on our upcoming exams, our nerves kick in. We wonder what will happen if we don’t do well on our finals. Our emotions overtake us to the point where many of us study more, eat less, and confine ourselves to our rooms with only our textbooks to keep us company.
We may also notice that our bodies don’t respond well to these lifestyle changes. Perhaps we get more frequent headaches. Or maybe performing tasks that don’t relate to our studies agitates us so much that we can’t seem to relax.
But we can’t forgo our mental and physical health during finals season just for some higher marks. Even if we don’t fully know the material that will appear on our exams, cramming at the last minute does us no favors. Instead, we should try to absorb the most difficult information bit by bit and take breaks to make our study sessions feel less daunting.
Moreover, even though it’s finals week, we still need to partake in activities that bring us joy. Whether we choose to go to the park, explore the town, or treat ourselves to a mini getaway, keeping up with self-care can help us refresh our minds to truly absorb our exam material.
We may doubt ourselves or refuse to believe that our finals will go well, but it’s important to remember that we will survive finals week. After all, we already made it through midterms, countless assignments, and hundreds of pages of class material. And we pushed through our courses and never gave up — so why should we start now?
Finals week is a tough time, full of studying, making travel plans for our break, and showing up to all of our other campus commitments. Studying for hours on end can feel overwhelming, but in the end, we’ll survive. We almost made it through the semester, and we can finish it out strong.
Photo by Sarah Noltner on Unsplash
