It’s time for those late nights at the suddenly-crowded library, equipped with some sort of caffeinated beverage and trying to study while scrolling through Instagram.
Whether you are an overachiever or an end-of-semester-crunch student, finals week is the one week when we work hard to get to the next round of college. Will you pass your finals or will you be defeated by the pressure to succeed? How do you prepare for your finals?
“I write out a quick, sketched answer,” Margaret Thompson (junior, Agricultural Studies) said. “I’ll read over the notes right before class so that it’s fresh in my mind.”
“I love to have big tables to spread out all my work— that way my head can make sense of it all,” Santosh Hass (senior, Social Sciences) said. “Open table, open mind.”
“I find it easier to do flash cards ahead of time so I can spend 10 minutes studying instead of two to three hours because I don’t like to do that,” Moonisah Ali, (senior, Communication Studies) said.
“I prefer going in a quiet area to study because I can’t study with other people unless we’re studying the same thing,” Deechrizel Taracatac (senior, Business Administration) said. “I’d be on the third floor at the library if I could.”
“Coffee is our number one friend,” Susan Yang (junior, Sociology) said. “It’s the elixir of life,” agreed Alicia Munguia (senior, History).
Here are some study tips to assure your academic success:
1. Use a coding system. It helps to come up with an acronym to remember difficult processes.
2. Learn what time of the day you are most productive.
3. Put your phone somewhere where you won’t be distracted by it. Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat can wait until after you’re done studying.
4. Set a goal and reward yourself after you complete it. Study for an hour and eat some Hot Cheetos as a reward—but make sure not to get the red Cheetos residue on your papers!
5. Prioritize whatever final, essay or presentation is most important or most challenging.
6. Make good use of your planner. Schedule times to study for each final.