Photo Credit to Edward Kivlahan
Everyone knows this fact: finals week starts on Friday. Students are cramming in their last second tests, projects, speeches, and studying. While your grades are important, so is your personal and mental health. Here are some tips on how to stay healthy and still get everything done for your finals.
- Take breaks. This may seem impossible, you only have a few days left, but it is still important. Work on your projects in short bits. Work on it for thirty minutes, take a ten minute break to walk for a bit, eat a snack, watch a few videos. Just be sure that you control yourself and you go back to working on the projector studying. Your brain will be less tolled, and it will actually make the task easier and you will remember things easier.
- Eat healthier snacks. You may want to treat yourself to that candy bar, the bowl of chips, or whatever you’re craving, but your body will be happier with you for the granola bar, the piece of fruit, whatever healthy snacks you prefer. Keeping your brain and your systems functioning will keep you going and make tasks seem less impossible.
- Sleep. Don’t pull that all nighter, you will have more negative outcomes than you think. Lack of sleep kicks in more the next day after the all nighter rather than the immediate day following. Your body puts out adrenaline, which lets you function the day after you stay up, and when it goes, you will be dragging. Get that sleep, and finish the project after. Sleeping is a necessary part of life, and crucial to staying healthy.
- Stop procrastinating. We have all been there, no doubt. You have had a week to several weeks to get something done, you keep saying you will do it or start it tomorrow, and suddenly you’re at the due date and you haven’t done anything. It happens, just take a deep breath and take the project one step at a time and get the project done. You will feel so much better once it is done, and you will thank yourself for it later.
- Make a list. Go through your class list, write down what you have left, and then make a schedule to get things done in a timely manner, and it will be manageable. Having something written down (Try not to have it on your phone, it will be easy to get distracted that way) and crossing things off gives a sense of accomplishment to getting something done, and it will get easier to get things done that way.
Just breathe, take things one at a time, and finals will be easier and less stressful. Just keep telling yourself you can do it, and you will be able to do it. Good luck to everyone!