ANNA GAGLIANO
Copy Editor
With finals week fast approaching, you may find your motivation dwindling. It’s been a long semester, and the comfort of returning home might also have you stressed about how you’re going to cope with all that studying from your childhood bed. To make your life a little easier, which is not something this year has been famous for doing, here’s a list of some ways to maintain your sanity in the midst of your finals.
1. Sleep
When you don’t get enough sleep, your body can’t function properly. A lack of sleep can make you feel groggy in general, but it can also hinder your academic progress by affecting your memory and ability to concentrate and retain information. It can be tempting to pull an all-nighter when you want to cram for an exam, but you’d be doing yourself more harm than good. Give yourself a set bedtime during finals week and stick to it, making sure to get at least seven hours of sleep.
2. Exercise
Since classes have gone completely remote, you might have less of a reason to get out of bed. Getting active could be just the fix for your stress, though. A brisk walk around your neighborhood is just enough for your body to release some happiness-inducing endorphins while imitating stress processes, like fight or flight, and subsequently working through them so you’re left feeling relieved of your study stressors.
3. Play with your pet
A study done by Washington State University revealed that just spending 10 minutes petting an animal can cause a large decrease in one’s cortisol levels, a common stress hormone. Put down your laptop for a second and play with your pet, or put on your favorite mask and go visit a friend’s animal. Either way, animals have a way of increasing your production of relaxation hormones like dopamine and serotonin while reducing stress and anxiety. If you have the time for it, you could even volunteer at your local animal shelter to get some feel-good face-time with animals while contributing to a great cause.
4. Drink less caffeine
It seems like a collegiate rite of passage to down gallons of coffee or energy drinks during finals week to help you power through study sessions, but this could leave you feeling shaky and anxiety-ridden. A little bit of caffeine is healthy in moderation, but it is still a stimulant that will have you feeling high in one moment and crashing into exhaustion the next. Contrary to popular belief, caffeine won’t prevent you from ever feeling sleepy, it’ll just make you forget that you’re sleepy in the moment due to a rush of adrenaline and dopamine. Once this rush wears off, you could crash and feel even worse than before.
5. Make a plan
Diving into your studies head-first can easily overwhelm a person, so making a plan to manage your time will be extremely helpful in warding off stress. Plan out what you’re going to study, when and how long you’re going to be studying it. Make a goal of what you’d like to accomplish during your study sessions and devise a schedule to achieve it, though don’t be hard on yourself if you don’t quite make it there. In addition to blocking out learning times, be sure to schedule moments where you can relax for a bit. Studying doesn’t need to be all or nothing, and giving yourself little breaks will allow you to keep your cortisol levels low.
Try out some of these tips and see what works best for you and your personal stress levels and study habits. The most important thing to remember as we approach the last weeks of the semester, though, is to be patient with yourself and your professors. These are unprecedented times and the only thing we can do is try our best. So before you open your books again after the break, take a deep breath and know that you got this.