Oh. My. Gawd. I hope you aren’t as stressed out with finals as I am; I don’t think I’ve ever been more excited to get home and snuggle with my puppy while catching up on the Real Housewives episodes I’ve unfortunately missed thanks to studying!
Studying along with prepping to take an exam can really put us down and make us start to feel not-so-hot. I have come up with several ways to beat the study blues…take a quick break from your studying, relax and take a look at some of my ideas!
- Eat Whatever You Want When You Want
Literally in the last few days, I have downed so much food but I don’t care because well, it’s making me feel better. To be completely real with you, I have consumed: Frappuccino’s, crème-filled donuts, bagels (with regular crème cheese of course), Poptarts and Haribo gummies. If you didn’t know, Subway is having customer appreciation month and selling $2 meatball subs…so add that to my list too because I’ve already been there twice in the last three days. Call me what you may, but this stuff makes me real, real happy and it could make you happy too!
- Get on a Good Pandora Station
I don’t know how to work i-Tunes nor will I ever attempt to become that techno-savvy. Instead, I listen to Pandora; it’s awesome because you pick the genre/artist you enjoy listening to and the Pandora gurus hook you up with a vast assortment of songs. I always choose a happy/uplifting station, like Jack Johnson, and it really gets me out of my sad-funk from studying. Check it out here if you haven’t heard about it! (I’m sure you all have though!)
- Take Selfies on Your Laptop
I will hesitantly admit I kind of do this a lot…except in my defense, I send my selfies to friends; I promise you I don’t just take a selfie to admire my great genes my parents provided me with (note sarcasm, I’m not that narcissistic). Anyway, I tend to randomly send funny pictures of myself to friends and it puts me in a good mood. Plus, you may receive a picture back…it’ll be sure to be funny too, ending your sadness from studying.
- Prepare Ahead of Time
I always start studying at least a week before finals because that way, I am never overwhelmingly stressed out. Sure it sucks having to study for days in advance, but it’s a whole lot better than getting super upset because you left studying the night before an exam. It’s nice too because then you can study at a slower, more in-depth pace, thus, allowing you to retain a whole lot of information.
- Count Your Blessings
I am sure you are all aware of the recent shootings at an elementary school in Connecticut. Imagining what that community and the families directly affected are going through right now makes me so sad; no innocent human deserves to have to go through that. With that said, rethink about your study blues…there are many worse problems and issues going on around the country and world. We should all feel fortunate that we were all given this awesome opportunity to attend UW; studying for an exam seems so unimportant when you think about more terrible situations that others are going through.
I wish you all best of luck on your exams, and don’t worry about them…it’ll all turn out okay!
Happy holidays,
Brienne