This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Cal Lutheran chapter.
After a chaotic Fall Semester, we have officially made it to finals week. For many of us this means a lot of stress and a very tiring week. Having gone through finals week last semester from home, I managed to find the best four ways that helped me. Here are the four tips that helped me tackle finals week:
1. Blocking out time before & after your exam
- Block out 30 minutes before taking your exam and 30 minutes after. By blocking out 30 minutes before your exam, you are able to settle in a quiet work space, ensure your laptop is charged and ready to go, or possibly review last minute information. The 30 minutes after is the time I take to take deep breaths, let go of the anxiety I get at times, and clean up my work space since I tend to snack during my final exams.
2. Notes
- If you’re lucky enough to use notes during your finals, make sure they are organized in a way that is easy to find specific information during your exam. It takes up your exam time if you’re flipping through a ton of notes looking for one answer. A technique that helped me last semester was typing up my notes, making sure the title was in bolded letters as well as the sections in the chapter. Now when coming across a tricky question, those big bolded typed out titles and sections will allow you to access the information needed to answer those hard questions on the exam in an efficient way.
3. A Quick Review
- Remember these quick reviews shouldn’t be for you to cram all of the semester information right before your final. It should be to glance over those big key facts and topics discussed. I struggle with memorizing diagrams or important statistics. If my professor mentions a certain diagram or statistic will be on the final, these are some of the items I will glance over during those 30 minutes I block off before my final exam.
4. Study Buddy
- A facetime call with a study partner will be a life saver. I would have facetime calls with my study partner the night before my exam so we can review information we were still struggling to understand. With each other’s help, we would explain the material in a way that led us to understand it. A benefit from this is it also helps with destressing.
I hope these tips are helpful! Don’t forget to take care of yourself as well. But most importantly, don’t forget you are doing an amazing job.
