Sleep schedule has gone to sh*t. Food dollars have been spent exclusively on your caffeine addiction and eating your feelings. To-do list has become endless. Stress level has reached a new high. These are all the normal clichés that characterize finals week. We, as students, expect ourselves to waste away in the upcoming weeks, anticipate this behavior in ourselves as if this it is something that we must go through. Yes, finals week is a rite of passage in a sense, but our approach to the inevitable deluge of stress does not have to be inherently unhealthy. Procrastination is a given, so it is given that you will be up late. There are limits, however, to the energy you can and should exert studying for an exam or writing a paper, limits that we should respect with knowing when to stop, when to listen to your body. Good mental health is something that you need to rely on for the rest of our lives, so acting sustainably now -- taking breaks when you need them, prioritizing your well-being over an A on a paper – is what truly prepares us for the real world, not a GPA that you put an inordinate amount of energy into, which subsequently primes you to work a job that you put an inordinate amount of energy into. Then what we left with? Where are we making time to be humans and not machines?

Make a list of things that bring you joy and carve out a few hours in the upcoming weeks with the intention of doing those things. Go for a walk or run, bake with your friends, play video games, watch a movie, listen to music, do things where you’re doing you. School matters, but you matter more!