Nothing is worse than midterms or finals season. It feels impossible as you cram for a million different tests while balancing assignments and clubs and everything in between. The true cure for all that stress is only sometimes at BU: puppies.
Across the country, hundreds of colleges bring in puppies during these nonstop stressful segments of the semester to ease test anxieties and give hardworking students some love. Just a few minutes with a puppy could make the hours of studying and working worth it.
Many might think that the phenomenon of stress puppies is a myth, but their curative abilities are very real. According to AnimalSmart.org, a site dedicated to facts about animals, the stress-relieving hormone, oxytocin, is released when playing with an animal.
HowStuffWorks.com did a study where patients awaiting operations spent time playing with dogs and petting them. These patients’ anxiety levels decreased 37% during this time because it “helped distract them from their concerns.”
With science like that, it is a huge mystery why BU does not have dogs available to us on days during the peak stressors of the year. Though dogs do not make studying any easier or balance out our workload, they would give us a chance to unwind from this whirlwind of late nights and note-taking.
BU does not completely disappoint when it comes to stress puppies. In 2013, an organization called DOG B.O.N.E.S. brought therapy dogs to Mugar Memorial Library during finals season. Students could come to the library and spend 10 minutes with the dogs to keep their minds off of their work, which, according to an article from BU Today, helped a lot with stress.
Every finals season, some dogs visit the Hillel, the on-campus Jewish community center, for students to de-stress and relax. Though finals are just as stressful as midterms, there is less of a background workload and there is the comfort in knowing as soon as they’re over, winter break is in full swing. Midterms is dead-center in the semester with no breaks in sight afterward.
It doesn’t seem far-fetched for BU to bring in some dogs during every test season. Aside from finals, we should have some fluffy friends visit campus to help students get through the relentless struggle that is the midterm season.