This semester, it seems William and Mary is deliberately trying to make finals more fun. With massage chairs in the library (8 of them!) and a different type of treat given out every night of finals tests at 9pm (coffee, cider, power bars, candy canes, you name it…) the school appears to be making a conscious effort to help the pressures of final exams be more manageable. Our library is also open 24 hours for the second year in school history—pretty cool, right?
Tonight there is even a trivia game hour with free Dunkin Donuts Munchkins and Barnes and Noble gift cards as prizes.
There has been an increased focus on mental health at W&M in light of three suicides at our school in the past year, and this feels like part of the campaign. Even professors, for the first time in my memory, are wishing students a “stress-free and sane” final exam period.
While I personally have enjoyed the massage chairs and the free food, I feel like the academic focus of our library has been a little lost. The first floor feels more like a party than a place of study. But overall, I can’t say that the whimsical programming hasn’t helped with my own stress levels. Massage chair breaks every couple of hours and free candy do a lot to lift a mood when you have been in the library for 20 plus hours.
I guess we’ll see if all these school sanctioned distractions result in higher or lower final grades…
Is your school doing anything like this? Or, is my school just trying to debunk William and Mary’s reputation as the place “where nothing has been fun since 1693” while simultaneously working to help the mental state of stressed out students?
Let me know!