Finals are a tough time of the year. If you have been an average student throughout the semester, then finals present the opportunity to salvage your GPA and come out looking like you understood the class a lot better than you actually did. If you have been a good student all semester, then finals are the time of the year when you work hard to make sure you do not accidentally undo all of your hard work. There is no getting around it: finals stink.
What makes finals even more difficult is the extra spare time you have to study. Now an outsider might see that having one test a day and a reading day right in the middle of the week as a bonus in terms of getting studying going, but they are wrong. As is the case normally when you have more than enough time to do what you need to do, procrastination generally sets in. Often the argument can be internally made that since I have 48 hours to study for this test that I can start in 24 hours. After you spend 24 hours not studying you find yourself in a situation in which you need to sleep, eat and check Facebook so much that all the studying you thought you could get done in the 24 hours is reduced to just a handful.
It is often commented that “Finals Week” sounds a lot like “Netflix.” This is because you have more time than usual during finals week to catch up on a show you have been missing. One of my friends used his finals week last semester to marathon “Breaking Bad.” While this study strategy is not advisable, it is particularly appealing.
I find my greatest struggle is focusing when I need my computer to study. It is all too easy to get started reviewing a PowerPoint presentation that your professor has put up online and end up scrolling through Facebook and Tumblr like the zombie Internet-addicts we were born to be. It’s a battle against the urges to get distracted online, or watch all four seasons of “The Walking Dead” or experiment with new cooking recipes instead of studying that defines finals week. In the end it is necessary to remember the words from Disney’s “Hercules”: “I will beat the odds. I will go the distance.”
