I know finals week can be beyond stressful. A little bit of stress is good: it can help to motivate you to do your best, and it can be a reassuring reminder that you care about the things you are doing. But, as we all know, stress can be detrimental to being our best selves. Amongst my friends, peers, coworkers, and classmates, I have noticed many people normalization unproductive and unhealthy habits, using finals week stress to justify their actions. Frankly, finals are not a reasonable excuse not take care of yourself or treat the world with the respect you normally would. So here are some tips that we all need to work on to make finals week more bearable for ourselves and for the people around us.
1. Eat the Nutrients your Body Needs.
Personally, I fluctuate between to unhealthy extremes when I’m stressed. Either I am am so busy doing other things that I will forget to eat, or I will stress eat while doing other things. Both of these prove counterproductive during finals. Our bodies and our brains need fuel and the better we eat the better we are going to study and perform on our papers and tests.
2. Get Sleep.
No one should be pulling allnighters during finals week! This is the time in the quarter when your body needs sleep the most. I know some people think they can write better late at night, right before a deadline. But there is a difference between writing well and not knowing how badly you write, because you don’t give yourself enough time to look over and edit your work before the deadline. Sidenote: can we all stop bragging about staying up all night writing papers. I’d be impressed if someone was so passionate for their subject that they pulled writing allnighters weeks before something is due, but when someone tells me they pulled an allnighter immediately before a deadline, I just think they are bad at time management and I feel bad for whatever professor or TA has to read their paper.
3. Please Please Please Shower/Maintain Personal Hygiene
Unless all your finals are submitted online and you don’t plan to leave your house, FINALS WEEK IS NOT A REASONABLE EXCUSE NOT TO SHOWER! If you are in the library studying or in a class taking a final and you have not showered in days, people will smell you. And it will make their studying/final-taking all the more unpleasant. Trust me, no matter how busy you are, you have five minutes that you can use to take a shower. You don’t need to dress nice or put on makeup, but there is a minimum of acceptable cleanliness of which you should remind yourself before you leave the house. This can help your performance to. I always find that by acting put together during finals week, I can convince myself into the confidence I need to perform better on my finals; whereas, when I give up on hygiene, I might as well also be giving up on the test.
4. Treat the people around you with respect and courtesy
Showering is not the only thing to keep in mind for the people around us. I have seen far too many people use their finals stress to justify rudeness to those around them. We are all studying for finals, and many people who work on campus have a minimum number of hours they must put into their jobs over finals week, no matter how hectic their finals schedule is. So please be kind to the people you encounter, especially those who are just trying to do their jobs.
Finals week can be rough, but with these tips, you can make it somewhat more pleasant for yourself and those around you. If you people you know not taking care of themselves or taking their own stress out on others, say something to them. A little concern can go a long way. All in all, please just be courteous to yourself and those around you, and good luck on your finals!
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