When Finals Are After Christmas

It’s every student’s nightmare, that’s why it has been done away with in most areas of existence for some time now. But for those unfortunate enough to still suffer through final exams in the new year, we have some tips to help you get there and get out in one piece.

• Know What It’s Worth
  • Go to your class syllabus, go on grab it right now. Check and see what percentage this final exam is of your final grade. Any higher than 25% and I would be extremely concerned if I’a wuzza you. If not, try and relax. Even if you bomb the exam, it’ll only move your grade a little bit.
• Evaluate Time Constraints
  • This here’s a biggie. If your final exams are starting on Monday and you still want some New Years fun, you’ll need to buckle your bum down. Assuming you have 3 to 4, you will want to study the difficult stuff first. The reason being, your brain will get exhausted after the first round of studying regardless of what you look at. So you might as well focus on the things that take longer to absorb and skim through the easy items last.
• Get Friends Together
  • As long as they want to study too. Using some common sense here, grab the friends that you know will want to work for a decent grade rather than take Snapchat videos of you all afternoon. Having a group study can be very beneficial in a time crunch, especially because your friends might know something you don’t. Like, say, the professor mentioned that this or that wasn’t as important to study so it could be largely ignored.
• Tell Your Family
  • Unless you live in a dorm over break, your rents and siblings (alright they’re a stretch) should respect what you have to do and leave you alone. Now if they don’t, we recommend you follow our next point.
• Leave Your House
  • Home around the holidays is probably a pretty crazy place, even if things are calmed down the week between Christmas and New Years. However, there are probably still a handful of things going on if family is in town or if your parents took work off. Look and see if the library is open or if you can get a brick through that 1st floor window to climb in. That might not be the most sound advice to tell ya the truth.
• Eat Well
  • Sugar. If there’s one thing in abundance around this time in my house, it’s cookies, chocolate, and other ridiculously good dessert items that contribute exactly nothing to a productive study session for the average human being. The worst thing you can do is go down on the box of chocolates and get a huge sugar high a few minutes later that effectively lasts an hour and proceeds to knock you out.
• Gather Your Notes
  • Make sure you have everything and all questions have been asked of your professor at this point. An email might get through, but I’ve had my fair share of unanswered panic emails trying to solve a problem that’s been hinted at for the test.

Maybe the most important of all of these, keep in mind that your professor probably celebrated something in the last week too. Chances are they will have some sympathy for you, or at least you hope!