12/7/11

WILW- Surviving Finals

It's dead week. And for those of you who don't know, dead week is the week that literally leaves you feeling dead, because you spend every waking second studying your booty off and cursing yourself for not paying more attention in class. Or at least that's what I hear...

Being the incredible student that I am, I never ever skip class, I always sit in the very front row, and by this time, I've had my reviews color coded and completed for weeks.

I wish.

However, there are a few things I do to make studying this week a little bit more bearable.

1. Take study breaks. The general rule is something like a ten minute break every twenty minutes, but at that rate, I'd never get anything done. So I tend to do a ten minute break every hour. I set a timer on my phone, and a goal for how much studying I want to get done. If I get done before the timer goes off, then I get that extra time as break time.

2. Highlighters. I'm really anal about my note taking. I'm the student who sits there with every color made on her desk. I use different colors for different things that I need to remember. And no, I don't highlight everything. Just the stuff that is important. It makes things a million times easier when you go back to read over your notes. I especially love it when everyone else is stressing over their notes the three minutes before the final, and I can casually read over everything that I've highlighted. It basically breaks down to:
  • Green is dates
  • Blue is vocab
  • Pink is rules to remember
  • Orange is people
  • Yellow is anything the teacher swears is going to be on the test
Just trust me on this, and do it. It makes life so much easier.

3. Index cards. This comes from my days as a pageant girl. I used to carry around index cards with practice interview questions on them, and I'd review anytime I wasn't doing anything. Now I do the same thing with my review questions.

4. Don't overload. All work and no play makes for brain death. Seriously. If you don't take some time to let yourself relax, then everything you're studying won't stick because your brain is too focused on trying to just cope with no sleep and high stress. Last year, when Cody could tell I was getting to that point, he'd grab me and start slow dancing with me. So I highly recommend finding a boy to do that for you. Or rent my boyfriend. Whatever is easier on you.

5. HAVE A SILLY STRING WAR. Do I really have to explain this one?

6. Make sure you know what scantrons or blue books you need. Nothing increases your stress out of no where like walking into your final and realizing you bought the wrong scantron, and the bookstore is all the way across campus. Not that I've done that or anything. Those eight times I was sprinting across campus were for exercise....

4 comments:

GingerPeachT said...

Hahaha
I love this!!
I'm using my 200 notecards now to study too lol

Courtlyn Ash said...

girls I'm right there with you!!!
blogging would be considered my "play" time hahaha

Ashley said...

I practically lived off of notecards for all finals in college. They worked the best for me! Good luck with all of yours!!

jessica said...

This is an awesome list! I've never tried to do the color coded thing, basically because I could never keep up with that many highlighters (my writing utensils always seem to escape my bag, ha). I really ought to try to start doing that though! I hate it when professors color code their notes on the board and I realize that it would make it so much easier if I could do that too! But all I carry is pencils.

Notecards are my method of survival!! lol