While everyone is getting ready for Turkey Day and Christmas season, there is another time of the year that is coming up quicker than we expect: Finals season. This semester has been a whirlwind. Not only have we had to balance a pandemic and online school, but also election week. With that in mind, studying for finals may seem harder or more stressful than ever before. But no fear, I have a few tricks up my sleeve for study break ideas. Hopefully with these tricks in mind, you will be able to study better!
Tip #1:
One way to take a break from studying is by exercising. There have been studies to show that exercise helps people stay focused on things and it helps with anxiety and stress. Whenever you feel like you’re overwhelmed, go for a walk outside. If you live in a cold climate state, there are numerous ways to exercise indoors. You could go to an actual gym or you could just bring the gym to your home. In this age of technology, there are so many ways to stay active. Because of COVID, there has been more of a push for online based exercises on YouTube or similar streaming platforms. You don’t even have to exercise hard or for every long; 30 minutes of a mild jog or fast walk would do the trick!
Tip #2
Another way to take a break from studying stress is to do a comfort activity. For example, reading my favorite books is my comfort activity. Even though I have read these books 20 times, I always feel relaxed and calm when I read. Everyone has their own comfort activity. It could be listening to a specific album, or watching a certain movie or TV show. The trick with this is that you don’t want to be sucked into taking a long break. This is why I recommend reading, listening, or watching things that you have already gone through. This way, you know exactly what happens in the movie. You can always break up episodes of a TV show and watch them every hour of studying. For example, a typical drama episode is like 45 minutes long so for every hour of studying,  you could get 45 minutes of a break. For me, I read for 30 minutes every hour I spend really focused on my studies.Â
Tip #3
This last tip is a bit strange, but it works! Cleaning is a great way to get your mind off things while also doing something productive. For me, putting on some music and just cleaning my dishes is a great way to just jam out to music while also doing a kind of mindless activity. There must be some activity that you don’t mind doing! Some people like mopping, sweeping, reorganizing, or even vacuuming. There are so many mindless cleaning activities that you can do to just forget about studying. You could clean your dishes and then reorganize clothes and BAM! You’ve spent like 30-40 minutes cleaning and not thinking about school.
 Overall, There are so many things that people could do to take breaks between studying sessions that don’t just involve mindlessly going through Instagram or Tik Tok. I wish you all a wonderful finals season!