Popping countless No Doz pills. Spending endless nights at Helen C. interrupted only by a Chinese delivery dinner. Crying for your mother. These are all common activities in Hell (aka finals week). Stress and anxiety come naturally to our sorry souls who choose to pay thousands of dollars a year to be driven into the ground by a pile of study guides, papers and books.
It is almost impossible to avoid feeling some level of pressure as finals swiftly approach, but you should not let it overtake you and negatively affect your performance on tests. According to a University of Idaho Counseling & Testing Center report, some anxiety can actually be beneficial. The increased arousal that comes with a pinch of anxiety can, in fact, enhance energy and focus your thinking. The same study also shows, however, that an excessive amount of this same anxiety can be quite detrimental to thinking and can lead to troubles focusing and concentrating on your mission.
There are some textbook ways to relieve some of the stress so closely associated with, well, textbooks. I will try to help you, my fellow students, bring your finals week anxiety levels to all-time lows even if it comes back to bite me in the ass by raising the curve in all my classes.
First of all — you've all heard it — you must start to study now as opposed to waiting for the night before morning exam. Yes, I sound like every professor you've ever had, but it honestly does help. Numerous research studies show that by studying just an hour or two per night the week leading up to the test, you will far surpass your peers who stayed up all night studying for 14 hours straight.
This brings me to my next point: Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. And then sleep some more.
Sleep deprivation leads to temporary loss in IQ levels, reasoning and memory. Now, I'm no teacher, but I'm pretty sure those three things are fairly important when you sit down to write an essay about some 500-year-old dead white guy.
Exercise is one of the best ways to relieve stress when you just don't think you can take it anymore. "Why should I exercise when I have 300 pages to read?" you ask. Well, science, that's why. When we are stressed out, we are experiencing elevated levels of stress hormones that make us feel tight and wound up. Tempers flare, muscles are tight and thinking is a tad bit cloudy. Taking a jog, playing some basketball at the SERF or just doing some good stretching helps us unleash this nervous energy that needs venting.
A slightly less scientific, yet drastically underused strategy to get rid of the stresses and pressures of the last weeks of the semester is to just take a break, step back and put everything into perspective. Yes, it's a big test. But, so what? Worrying about it ad nauseam won't improve your score. It is only one small step in your four, or five — or six? — year college career.
Pause every now and then when you're studying and do whatever you need to do to break the tension. Stand up and stretch. Call a buddy and chat for a little while. Make yourself a cup of tea. Whatever you do, just clear your mind for five minutes of biology or physics or political science. If you are relaxed and confident while studying for the test and in the same state during the test, you are much more likely to perform well than those who go into the testing room highly anxious.
Don't believe me? Take a look at the article "Statistics, Test Anxiety and Female Students" published in Psychology of Women Quarterly — yes, there is such a thing. It suggests that not only will you overachieve if you are relaxed during a test, but will also underachieve in high anxiety conditions; the interaction of anxiety and underachievement "tending to be associated more strongly… in the time-limited condition," which a final exam certainly is.
What am I doing writing this article, instead of getting my usual afternoon nap, you say? I am a hypocrite, you say. You're right! I need to go rest up so my brain can function properly for the four exams I have coming up.
I'm hitting the hay, as well as the books, and so should you.
Henry Weiner ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in political science.
