Thanksgiving Break offers five days to chow down on turkey (or tofurkey), explore the mall, and stream Netflix on the couch for hours. Used effectively, it can also be your best tool to get ahead on studying. I’m used to doing things at the last minute. After three years, I’ve learned enough from my mistakes to adopt five simple strategies to make finals prep easier (without sacrificing relaxation).
1. Review every syllabus.
Before packing up your room for a trip home (or settling in for an extended weekend on campus), take ten minutes to reopen the syllabus for each course. Double check the date and time of your finals, determine which assignments you have left to complete, and make sure you’re not missing any assignments from previous weeks.
2. Sync your planner with your email calendar.
It sounds like a needless extra step, but I often find that I’ve plugged something into one agenda without including it in the other. Make sure that both your Chatham planner and your Gmail or Outlook calendar have all of your finals added and any critical due dates included. Even if you prefer paper and pen, using your email calendar gives you a backup plan in case you lose your planner. I’ve done that. It’s not fun.
3. Inventory your course materials.
Make sure all of your textbooks are safely on your shelf and all of your PDFs are safely on your computer. Missing a critical source for your Tutorial? Now is the time to find out.
4. Plan out your study schedule.
At the end of a semester, chances are you have a good sense of what’s going to show up on a final. Setting study goals now ensures that you have enough time to tackle all of the material. If you’re feeling particularly ambitious, try plugging in actual dates and times for studying into your calendar. Even 15 minutes each day can make an enormous difference in your finals-week workload.
5. Invest in meaningful relaxation.
In high school, my teachers always emphasized “purposeful breaks” – time set aside specifically to unwind. It’s easy to spend all of Thanksgiving Break worrying about what’s to come. Block out time to do nothing: it’ll allow you to fully enjoy break without the guilt.
What tips do you have to prep for finals week? Share them in the comments!