A week from this day of January 21, 2020, finals will begin.  That also means that second semester is coming very soon.  It’s been a decent first semester, and for our seniors, it is finally the homestretch.  So, for all the students out there, here is some advice for a successful finals’ week.

The first thing you need to do, obviously, is to study.  To minimize stress, start studying around a week before your exam.  If you would like to go another mile, this next semester, try studying hard and making sure you understand everything as you learn it in class.  This would definitely limit the amount of stress you will feel when finals near as well as the time you need to spend studying.  

For those who don’t really like to work in advance, like myself, you could just cram it the night before the exam. Using this method, it’s better to focus on the material that you aren’t confident in first.  Then, when you get comfortable with that, move on to other topics of the subject. Cramming can be very stressful, but if you do it correctly, it could also be effective!

Of course, it helps if teachers at the school make it easier to study. “I really appreciate the teachers that give us study guides. It’s overwhelming when I feel like I have to go through a whole semester’s worth of notes for multiple classes,” stated Sam Iturralde ‘23.

The second tip is to make a study guide (or do the study guides that your teachers give you).  They are very useful, since the study guides contain prospective questions that you may see on the final.  In doing study guides, you should answer what you confidently know first (or questions that you think you know the answer to).  After doing that, you should look the question up to see if you were right, then make the proper corrections. It is important to always take a second to make sure you comprehend the material. 

If there are questions that you have absolutely no idea how to answer, it would be a good idea to look up the concept in which the question focuses on.  Once you read and understand the concept, attempt to answer the question with the information you just learned, then check for correctness. Although using study guides/materials may seem time consuming and tedious, they do help and ensure that you understand the concepts behind the questions, regardless of if you’re cramming or not.

 Kataleena Huynh ‘21 said, “In the past, I’ve always tried to sleep early, and during the exam, I was definitely more focused and less drained.”

Lastly, and arguably most importantly, you need to get SLEEP the night before your exam.  Although you may not be done studying, there comes a time when enough is enough.  If you are still studying at 2 am, my advice would be to just get some rest. In that situation, I would think that it’s safe to say that you’ve been studying for hours already (if not, then that’s a different story), so at this point, if you don’t know it, then you don’t know it.

Getting sleep is (in my opinion) more important than staying up till midnight to study.  Taking a test on little sleep is not enjoyable; your brain is tired, you’re tired, and all you can think of is going home to your bed.  Additionally, there’s no need to use the information that you crammed the night before when you’re knocked out over your exam, so the bottom line here is to get some sleep.

“Honestly, I’m just trying to graduate.  My motivation is to just get through these finals and not stress at all.  Finals aren’t a big deal,” noted Tacarra Meaux ‘20.

At the end of the day, it’s important to remember that it is just a test.  Although it may seem like the end of the world to some, bad scores on your finals will not ruin your life or your chance of a successful future.  There are other factors that go into success, so even if you do bad on your final or a test, just get back on the grind next semester. Do not stress, and calm down; it is just an exam.