Okay so all my college freshman readers hold on to your chair because this is going to rock your world. In a few short months you are going to experience your very first finals week and you will never be the same. You will be so sleep deprived you will burst into laughter for no reason, do cart wheels in the library at 1am, and make a left at a red light. You will live off of caffeine and sour gummy worms. Your hair will be 98% dry shampoo, your hand will have a permanent cramp, and your blood type will be sugar free Red Bull. I am not telling you this to frighten you, but to prepare you for the inevitable.
The secret to an easy, well easier, finals week? Bust your booty all semester.
By now you get the gist of how all of your professors operate. You can anticipate how you will be tested and how your papers will be graded. This makes all the difference. I always think the first tests of the semester are the worst because you are going in blind. Use this to your advantage. Alter your studying to how the professor tests you. It makes all the difference.
Okay so you aren’t sitting pretty with your current grades. Meet with a tutor or your professor directly and make a plan. I am telling you finals week is SO much better when you aren’t worried you are going to fail the course.
Remember my post about failure? Re-read it. Is failure the end of the world? No but learn from my mistakes so you don’t have to push back your graduation like I did. Skip the parties for a weekend and hit the books. There will be hundreds of over crowed parties with bad beer and loud music but the only take you can retake a test is the following semester. No party is more important than your education.
So how do you start prepping for finals now?
- Get Organized. Do I even need to mention my day planner? (You can find FULL details on my OCD here and here) I have a binder for my classes with my notes from my passed exams. After a test all my old notes go in the binder and I label all of them with sticky notes. If I need to reference them quickly I don’t have to spend 15 minutes searching for what I need. So where are my currently notes? In my purse in the CUTEST envelope ‘folder’ from Target. I take my notes/laptop/day planner with me everywhere. Why? You never know when you are going to sit in traffic for an hour or how long the wait is at the nail salon.
- Plan your study time. Schedule it like a meeting or a hair appointment. Would you EVER miss a hair appointment? I didnt think so. Study Study STUDY. Aim for an hour a day. It doesn’t need to be balls-to-the-wall all nighters all the time. Look over your notes on the treadmill or read them once through right before bed.
- Stay on top of it. Try your very best not to save all your studying for the week (or day) before your test. Cramming doesn’t help you long term and all that information you shoved in your head will be long gone come finals.
- Turn off your phone while you study. Seriously. I used to do airplane mode but I one time I messed up my settings and I didnt get texts for two weeks. People thought I was ignoring them… trust me it wasn’t worth the DRAMA. Save yourself the trouble and just turn it off. Instagram and snapchat will still be there in an hour.
- Live a Little. Go out, have tons of fun and make memories. Okay to be honest…this is my weakness. I can be super hard on myself. I am not paying for my education so I feel like I am disrespecting my parents if I am not giving it my all 24/7. I am notorious for constantly having my nose in in my notes. I rarely go out during the semester, especially now that I live at home, but I swear I’m working on it. If you get all your planned studying done… go out.
Finals don’t have to be the end of the world. If you are going into them with decent grades it is because YOU put in the work ahead of time. I promise it makes finals so much less stressful when you have more time to sleep because you have plenty of ‘wiggle room’ in your current grades. Take an hour today to plan out your study schedule to make finals week a breeze. You will thank me come December.
Honestly some of my favorite memories with my roommates was 1am in the library during finals week. We laughed so hard partly because we are hilarious but mostly because we were running on 45 minutes of sleep. It sounds crazy but I actually miss it. Happy Studying!!
xoxo,
K
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