Finals Week & Stress

“Stress: The confusion created when one’s mind overrides the body’s basic desire to choke the living daylights out of some jerk who desperately deserves it.” - Lee Iacocca.

At this point in the semester, some (if not all) students have dealt with stress. There’s worry about finishing assignments in time, passing finals and passing classes. Not only is there worry, but there’s the want to rush through exams so they will be done and summer can finally begin. Stress is a big problem that can get in the way... a lot. From what I’ve learned through this Academic year, high school stress has absolutely nothing on college stress.

There are two links that I have found that can help with both cases: stress during finals and college stress in general. Seeing as finals are coming up within the next two weeks, it’s a good idea to make sure to keep stress at bay.

How to Reduce Stress During Finals Week is the first link, providing a list of examples to try to lower stress. There aren’t many examples given, but the ones they do give can be helpful. The idea that I like the most is making a list and writing down everything. Writing down everything can make a person feel less stressed, as they have a clearer perspective of the week to come. One of the examples that I do not suggest, however, is spending 15-20 minutes doing something fun. It’s not that I don’t like the idea, because I do; but I’m sure that I’m not the only person who knows the outcome of this. You’ll give yourself a 15 minute time limit, then when it gets to that 15 minutes you’ll move it to 20, and so on until you have spent over an hour watching YouTube and playing a video game. It’s a good idea, just not for teenagers.

How to Reduce College Stress is the second link that gives tips on everyday stress. The tips given in this link are self-explanatory and should definitely work. Some of the tips are kind of common sense: get some sleep, get some food, and get some fun. When stressed some of these things don’t come to mind though, so it’s best to follow the advice given.

I wish the best to all students with their finals. Only a little more than a week left before the end of the semester!

Procrastination

Have you ever had one of those assignments that you thought you could let slide for a few days? You think that you have enough time to do it but end up procrastinating till the very last second. The entire time you’re thinking, “I can finish this tomorrow,” but you keep pushing it off until it’s a few days before the due date. I see nothing wrong with this, however, when it starts to pile up - that’s when you know it’s time to stop.
I’m going to be completely honest, I’ve pushed homework off until the last second like most people. You have an essay due in two weeks. Rather than doing it a week in advance, you’re sitting there the night before typing everything up and lying about the date it was written. I’m positive that everyone has done that at least once in their lifetime. The only problem with doing this is that your work tends to suffer; whether it suffers a lot or a little all depends upon the person and the quality.
As we near summer, I’m starting to do this more and more. There’s an assignment due in two days, but rather than working on it then - I choose to push it off until the day before. There’s that moment when you feel like what you have to do is more important than the work itself; but trust me, it’s really not. Suffering grades are not something that everyone wants to experience.

Here is a list of things to do if you cannot stay focused on your homework and the due date is approaching.
1. First off, stay away from the television. Unless, in some odd way, it’s a part of your assignment. The best thing to do is to turn off the TV and focus primarily on the task at hand: homework. You may think that you can focus while watching TV, as you are a great multi tasker, but trust me when I say that it’s for the best.
2. Turn off the computer. Of course, some may have online homework - in which case, close everything but the homework. The internet can be a great place but it can also be your downfall.
3. If you’re in a loud or crowded area, head for the library. The library can be a fantastic (and quiet) place to get work done and study. You won’t have to worry about anyone shouting, any noises (including a stereo being played) disrupting you, or neighbors being obnoxiously loud.
4. Put away everything but your school books. I believe this one is a bit obvious. It’s easier to focus when you just have the work in front of you and no distractions.
5. Turn off your cell phone. If it’s important, they will call/text you back later. There’s no cell phone involved excuse that should make you miss your homework. Cell phones can be used as a way to avoid your homework on purpose; don’t do it. Just turn the phone off and put it out of sight until the homework is done.

Hopefully my tips have helped you in avoiding putting homework off. If not, and you find tips that do work for you, please let me know! I would enjoy to hear some other ideas on how to avoid procrastination.

Finals!

"You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you."

- James Allen

Our last day of classes is almost upon us, and as the semester starts to end I find myself wondering more and more about finals.  Passing my classes is the main goal I have created, not expecting to obtain a certain grade.  Despite that most people want B's and A’s, I would be content with a C or a D, just as long as I pass the class.  Some could say that I lack the motivation but I’m willing to admit that I slacked off a bit when it came to studying, and it’s coming back to bite me in the end.  At this time of year, slacking happens a lot more because of the season.

Winter break is almost here, depending on when your last final is, and plenty of students are ecstatic at the thought of it.  There are Christmas movies playing on TV, snow is on the rise, and most are cheery after getting into the holiday spirit.  Celebrating this time of year is a tradition to a lot of the population, especially with me.  I get to celebrate my birthday five days after Christmas, and this year it’s the big landmark of 18 years! The only problem is getting to that point without having an anxiety attack because of finals.

10 Tips to Maintain Your Sanity During Finals will definitely help out during this time of need.  Sanity is something that needs to be kept in order to ignore ‘bombing’ your finals, unless your ‘sanely insane’.  It may not be understood what I mean by that, but if you are ‘sanely insane’ you’ll definitely understand.  As it states on the website, ignoring caffeine and sugar is a very good thing.  There’s no use in studying while hyped up from caffeine, especially if you’re not going to retain any of the information and end up crashing during the exam.

Listening to the instrumentals of a song while studying could also help; you could imagine the instrumentals in your head while taking the exam, and remember the information you had obtained.  Try to avoid sad songs; I can only imagine how it would work out if someone listened to “I Will Follow You Into The Dark” while studying.  There are probably other tips out there that I have yet to discover and will hopefully discover soon; does anyone have any? Remember that you can always email them to me through my Frostburg student email! :)

I wish luck to all of those with finals coming up!

Self-Doubt

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."

- Mark Twain

Have you ever had any doubts about life? Where are you heading? Did you make the right choice? What would life be like if you had chose the path opposite to the one you did take? The ‘what ifs’ are an endless sea that will lead you to no shore.  Even worse, the what ifs force you to doubt yourself and your abilities.  You’ll wonder where you went wrong and how you could have fixed it.

Perhaps fixing the problem isn’t the answer.  Maybe there never really was a problem, but you’re the only one who knows.  Never doubt yourself or your decisions.  Doubting things will never end well, so avoiding it would be best.  If you feel like you’re doubting yourself, I recommend 10 Ways To Stop Doubting Yourself.  You’ll find tips on how to stop the issue when it comes to hand.  The best thing to do is to think “I chose what I did for a reason,” and keep doubt far from your mind.

Self-doubt is inevitable; everyone will come in contact with it eventually, whether they want to or not.  You just have to learn how and when to deal with it.  I’ve been going through a lot of self-doubt these last few days.  Finals are coming up sooner than I anticipated and I’m nervous that I’m going to fail my classes:  typical freshman worry.  This worry has caused me to think about the 'what ifs'.  What if I had chosen not to go to college? Where would I be? What if I fail out of college? I’ve been trying my hardest to push all of those thoughts to the back of my mind and focus on the now.  I can stop myself from failing, but I need to keep the self-doubt at bay until then.

Now is the time when I need to figure out how to keep focused; maybe make a plan/schedule marking the appropriate study times.  There’s also the issue of studying, as I am a procrastinator, which puts a tremendous amount of stress on a person.  For once, I have no resources on how to help with this issue.  To all of the students who read this blog, what are some ways that you cope with finals? And do you know of any resources on campus that could help me out?

Good luck to everyone!

Failure

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“It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.” - Theodore Roosevelt.

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“Failing will eventually result in more failure,” is what a concerned parent would tell their child while growing up.  We were taught from day one that failure is bad, that it would ruin our chances for a good future.  I see things differently now; I have learned that it is okay to fail. Without failure no one would succeed.  The path to success is not always as happy and clear as people would like to imagine, there are mistakes that must be made to lead us to where we want to be.

Imagine if someone has their life planned out:  what classes they’ll take in high school, where they’re going to college, what they’ll do for a living, etc.  They’ll see failure as the worst possible thing to happen to them, so they avoid it at all costs.  But really, they’re setting themselves up for failure.  Their plan would go accordingly until something would happen to throw them off.  Where would they go from there? They had never taken failure into consideration and so this small setback would ruin everything.

Failing can send us back on the right path if we want it to.  If you were never really sure about what career you want and end up failing in the one you pick, you know that it wasn’t the right one for you.  It’s the same with certain ways you choose to study for school; if your current technique isn’t working, you know to change it.  That’s what brought me onto the topic of failure:  my studying techniques.

My whole life I’ve been a ‘poor studier,’ avoiding it at all costs as if it were the plague; but I’ve always seemed to do fine on my exams... until now.  This failure, instead of being a setback for me, is pushing me to do better.  I now know that what I was doing before is not what I should have been doing.  Studying is a major part of classes and I had been lacking a lot in that department.  This failure has given me the motivation to change that part of myself and become a better student.  Sometimes it’s better to embrace the failure; after all, failure is what makes us human.

My Perspective

“When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.” – Alexander Graham Bell

People often say that “some things just come naturally.”  I often wonder about this saying and its meaning; my way of understanding it is that some things come easier than others.  I may be wrong about the meaning and its original intention, but everyone perceives things differently.  College feels natural to me and I’ve adapted to it pretty quickly, therefore I feel as though the phrase is right.

During high school I had the schedule where the same classes took place at the same time, everyday, for the whole week.  The administration obviously felt the schedule to be effective, because they continued to use it, but a person can get tired out if they have the same class schedule every day with no breaks in between. When students are tired and worn down, they tend to lose focus. My college schedule is better. It is similar to an A/B block schedule:  I have the same classes every other day.  When you compare the two, the A/B seems to look like the better schedule.  However, according to an article I read, high school teachers feel that the A/B scheduling “vastly overloads their students.”  Overloading a student is not the intention of any administration, though they may unintentionally do so.

Classes are probably the easiest part for me, seeing as almost all of my past classes were similar.  Most college classes, as I have seen, consist of lecturing/note taking.  I have been taking notes in classes since middle school, so it was fairly easy to keep up with.  When you take a class that you show no interest in, it’s a lot harder to follow along and take notes.  I absolutely hate history, possibly because of all the dates you have to remember.  I’ve never liked it; I’ve always been an English/math person.  One of my classes this semester is about learning the history of the area, which tires me out easily; luckily, I have an amazing brother who lent me his digital recorder.  Even if I lose concentration, I’ll always have what my Professor said recorded.  I recommend investing in a digital voice recorder (if you don’t already have one) in-case you can’t pay attention in class or don’t want to waste paper by taking notes.  Also, for those of you who own an iPhone, I’ve heard that there is a recording app you could just download rather than buy a recorder.

Although what I’m advising may help, if you just don’t like the class and think you may fail because of that -- drop it.  It’s a big decision, and don’t let me talk you into it, but considering it could be very helpful.  I deem it pointless to take a class when you feel like you’re going to fail, it’s a waste of your time and your education.  In addition, do not overload with classes.  For every credit you take, three hours of studying time is recommended.  For example:  seven classes with three credits for each; you would have twenty one credits total.  Imagine studying sixty three hours per week for seven classes! Seven classes may not seem like a lot at first, but think about the effects in the long run:  tons of homework (no free time), you may excel in one class but lack the enthusiasm to do so in another, and having seven finals! Finals are something that, despite who it is taking them, will not come naturally.  I’ve given my thoughts and wish you readers the best in whatever it is you decide.