Finals Week: Almost Home for the Holidays

For all my fellow college friends, I know your struggles.  All that stands between us and our winter break is a week of hellish exams.  And since I care about you, I have some suggestions to help make the week a little better for you.

Try your best to stay rested.  I could rant for novel lengths about the poor health choices of the average college student, but I’ll limit it to one.  Sleep.  I know you’ve got five or six exams to study for, and there aren’t enough hours in the day to fit it all in your brain, but sleep is so important.  Being exhausted is only going to make it harder to take the exam.  Also, when is the last time you stayed up until 4am and remembered everything that happened (on a sober night)?

Eat candy.  There are plenty of studies on the effect of Peppermint on your memory.  I once had a teacher in high school that passed out peppermint candies during our tests.  I never made an experiment out of it, but my best grade that year was in her class, and the material was the hardest of all of my classes.

Study little by little.  Your brain works really well if you take a large amount of information and chunk it into bits. For example, you remember phone numbers in three chunks, 555-555-5555.  So if you plan accordingly you can study a couple chapters a night instead of trying to cram it all in last minute. 

Study at night.  I know there have been studies done about the ability to remember things you studied right before bed, but I’ll give you a personal example.  One night I was on twitter, lying in my bed half asleep.  I scrolled through for less than a minute and saw Kim Kardashian with her questionable picture, a friend's post, and a Harry Potter quote.  That night I dreamt that my friend was trying to convince me to stop judging Kim because we all were in Gryffindor House and needed to start acting like a family.  So, if you want to memorize your notes, just fall asleep reading them.  Sweet dreams, right?

Relax.  “Wow, never heard that one before,” Calm down, Person I just made up.  I can almost guarantee you have a couple minutes in your day where you can be alone and relax.  Whether you just sit by yourself for ten minutes and listen to music, go to your room for a power nap, or watch some funny videos, the key to preventing a mental breakdown is finding something to look forward to everyday.

Since luck is for the unprepared, I won’t say ‘good luck’, instead… May the odds be ever in your favor.

Keep reading every day until Christmas to celebrate Blogmas with me.  Don’t forget to subscribe via email, and thanks for reading!