Have you loaded up on coffee and Red Bull yet? Are you surrounded by textbooks and a mound of empty wrappers from stress eating? Yes, collegiates, finals month is here, and it might be hard to believe the radio right now when it croons that it’s the “most wonderful time of the year.” The usual advice you’ve been hearing since middle school—don’t cram, don’t get distracted, and work hard—can feel downright useless by now. But have faith! With the right study habits, you can get a lot done without feeling burnt out. Try these unconventional study habits to motivate yourself over the next few weeks.
1. Little prizes after certain amounts of work. You might be in college, but now is the time to treat yourself like a child (or maybe a puppy). Set up little pieces of candy or whatever you prefer, and don’t let yourself have them until you’ve completed a certain amount of tasks. If you set them in spots along certain papers or textbook pages, you’ll literally work your way toward them.
2. Isolation. If you’re easily distracted and don’t trust yourself with suggestion #1, try cordoning yourself off in the most boring and empty room possible. The procrastinator in all of us likes to stare at our posters, try on old clothes, reorganize our shelves… anything we see in our dorms or bedrooms is suddenly fascinating. Remove yourself from the temptations.
3. Say everything out loud. This will work best in an empty, boring room, where you won’t annoy (or confuse) your roommates. Hearing yourself say what you need to know will help more than staring at papers or screens. It’s almost like being the professor, and you’ll feel more confident in what you know.
4. Make everything relatable. Elementary school teachers were right on the money with the use of acronyms and songs—they work! Come up with your own, or relate certain keywords or phrases to something (or someone) in your life.
5. Move! After a marathon study session, you may realize you don’t even know how long you’ve been hunched over your books and your laptop. Listen to your parents’ voices in your head nagging you to improve your posture. After every thirty minutes or so, get up, run around, or break into crazy dancing if no one’s watching (or even if someone is watching)! It’ll get your blood flowing and make you feel like a person again, not just a studying machine. Go into a super kick-punch-dance routine to get that stress out! No judgment here. We’re all in this together.
Good luck!