There’s no way around it—finals are rough. Whether it’s exams, papers, group projects, take-home tests, or other eval­u­a­tions, finals in col­lege are stress­ful. I think that part of it comes from a sort of group men­tal­ity that seems to per­me­ate col­lege cam­puses, small and large, around this time of the semes­ter. It took me the first year and a half or so of col­lege to fig­ure out some reli­able approaches to tack­ling finals while stay­ing as sane as possible.

1) Use study groups wisely
Study groups can be great ways to divvy up tedious exam prepa­ra­tion and allow indi­vid­ual stu­dents to play to their strengths while help­ing each other out. Good stuff. But study groups also run the risk of becom­ing inef­fec­tive, which just adds to everybody’s stress lev­els. Study groups need to be kept rel­a­tively small for the sake of equal work­loads and sim­ple sched­ul­ing. Fresh­man year I found myself in a study group for a Span­ish lit­er­a­ture class that com­prised almost the entire class and I don’t think it helped any­body. There is no shame in bow­ing out grace­fully in a sit­u­a­tion such as this one—or sug­gest split­ting the group in half!

2) Scope out mul­ti­ple study spaces
Whether you’ve stud­ied in the library all semes­ter long or not, now is when every­one starts trick­ling in and snag­ging the sweet table by the cof­fee kiosk that you covet. It’s impor­tant to have a few places on or near cam­pus that you can rely on as workspaces—I got a fair amount of work done at my own desk but also uti­lized study rooms/lounges in dorms, empty class­rooms, and even on-campus eat­ing facil­i­ties dur­ing off-peak hours. The lat­ter was actu­ally a great place to study in the non-busy time between lunch and din­ner because I could spread out my books on a big table and the easy access to cof­fee was a major plus.

3) Plan breaks and rewards
I think that I would have lost my mind dur­ing finals had it not been for late-night trips to In-n-out and bor­rowed Friends DVDs. Even when I still had a moun­tain of study­ing left to do, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to run full speed ahead with­out tak­ing a pause to com­mis­er­ate with friends or just get absorbed in an enter­tain­ing sit­com for a bit. Some­times I felt guilty tak­ing a few hours off here and there, but the times that I forced myself to work for too long with­out a break, I just ended up more exhausted and less pro­duc­tive. Tak­ing the time to recharge is crucial.

Final exam peri­ods can pro­voke a rather intense, col­lec­tive sense of impend­ing doom on a col­lege cam­pus. I am still sus­cep­ti­ble to this men­tal­ity and even now, as a grad stu­dent, find myself treat­ing each final paper as if it will make or break the rest of my edu­ca­tion. It’s not a healthy approach and I con­stantly remind myself to just take each task as it comes and try not to inflate its sig­nif­i­cance to epic pro­por­tions. Tak­ing things in stride helps keep any endeavor in per­spec­tive, which can only help in the long run.