This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Nottingham chapter.

So it has descended upon us once again, every student’s greatest enemy: the exam period. A time in which your tutors seem to expect you to write roughly 20,000 words on a subject you know next to nothing about and take exams in which you are also similarly clueless. Unfortunately, it’s a necessary evil and I guess it would be good to have a degree at the end of all this. During this stressful time, the fun stops as you become a robot working your life away in the nearest library. But does it really have to be like this?

Well, for the lucky few who need to be creative and solve problems imaginatively, I am here to tell you- no. You don’t have to accept a miserable alcohol-free month. You may drown your sorrows in a small(!) volume of alcohol, and yes, it may actually help you with your work at the same time!

According to researchers at the University of Illinois, intoxicated participants solved a set of creative problems quicker and more successfully than sober participants. Peak intoxication for the best results was at 0.075 blood alcohol concentration. Naturally, reaching this blood alcohol concentration varies for every individual (due to weight, gender, and a whole host of other factors), but this is about the equivalent of 2 drinks.

For a rough guide on this, see the chart below:

(Please note that one drink here refers to the standard drink which is about 12oz of beer (5%), 5oz of wine (12%) and 1 shot of spirits (40%) therefore simply pouring surplus quantities of alcohol into one very large glass is not advised. Sorry!)

It is commonly known that alcohol affects your concentration negatively. However, researchers believe that a reduced focus allows us to access more distant ideas that may seem irrelevant to our sober selves.

Someone has even come up with a product using this discovery (you really can buy anything on the internet, can’t you?). Aptly titled beer (‘The problem solver’) allows people to reach the optimum blood alcohol concentration to allow you to work more creatively. On the bottle label, there are helpful measurements that allow you to work out how much you should drink.

One downside to this discovery, of course, is that for tasks requiring greater concentration such as memory recall or solving complicated calculations, alcohol will not help you out. But fear not, the exam period won’t last forever, and soon we will be free to wreak havoc again, consuming copious amounts of alcohol while partying the night away.

Edited by: Tia Ralhan

Sources:

Can Drinking Alcohol Improve Your Grades?

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