Midterms are upon us at SBU, and this is the time in the semester when most of us forgo sleep, eating and exercise for the sake of last-minute studying and homework.
If you are anything like me, and, by that, I mean a human being, you need sleep. For one, logically speaking, sleep allows us to feel awake and alert to address complicated problems that might appear on the midterm we’ve been cramming for all week. Secondly, without sleep, our memory suffers. The National Sleep Foundation says long-term memory is consolidated during sleep. If you want to remember anything you’ve studied over the last few weeks, you need to sleep for your brain to be able to hold on to it.
Don’t forget to eat either! The human brain runs on glucose (and ketone bodies in a pinch.) What does this mean? We need a regular amount of food throughout the day in order for our bodies to keep bathing our brains in energy juice to keep it from shutting down. Without a regular supply of food when we feel hungry, the brain slows in its higher functioning, eg-thinking, and completing complex tasks like that mid-semester project and remembering facts becomes more difficult.
Now that you are eating all that food and the stress of midterms is swirling about, you need to exercise! It doesn’t have to be extreme but to take a walk around your building in between assignments can release endorphins and relieve stress. And we want to relieve as much stress as we can over these four years. Chronic stress affects memory and can increase a person’s chance of developing depression. If you have the time, a trip to the gym would make a nice, healthy break and have the added benefit of loosening muscles that may have tensed up from stress.
Another way to avoid stress is by not missing deadlines! Work AHEAD to deadlines, instead of letting them catch up to you. Take a look at your calendar. This week is looking crazy, right? Well, use the deadlines as tools in scheduling efficiently. Think to yourself, “Ok, by Wednesday, what would I wish I had done? Oh, definitely my writing assignment and the organic chemistry lab report.” At that moment, you will realize what work is crucial to be done and what can be left until later. In business operations, they call this “Completion by Earliest Due Date.”
Good luck with midterms! You can do it!
