Here’s to the end of finals week! I’m sure that I’m not the only one that’s dancing around my house in celebration of fall semester finals being over. Being a freshman, I didn’t exactly know what to expect for my first round of college finals. I’m not sure who decided that cumulative finals were a good idea, but I’d just like to have a little chat with them. Cumulative finals are the worst tests to study for because it's like a review of the whole semester in one test, but then you realize that maybe you didn’t actually know it as well as you thought you did the first time so you have to go back and reteach yourself the whole semester in a matter of three days.

Finals and college students are not friends, that’s a fact. If you thought that high school finals were hard, you’re in for something else now. I’m not saying that college finals are something to get all worked up about, but you’re going to need to put your plans on hold for a week or two so that you can study all the material and pass your classes. You didn’t put all this work in all semester just to fail the final, so it’s super important to study as much as you possibly can.

The worst part of finals week is the time in between finals, especially if they’re spaced out the way that mine were. I had one final on Monday at 8 in the morning and then my next final wasn’t until Friday at 1 in the afternoon, so I had some major time to myself. Luckily for me, I live close enough to school that I could come home to study and destress between finals, but the waiting and studying is so difficult due to the fact that you’re anxious and excited for finals to be over.

I think I speak for everyone when I say that cumulative finals are the absolute worst creation of all time. It’s hard enough to study for a midterm exam which only has part of the semester’s information on it, let alone the entire semester on one test. And of course, whatever you think is going to be on the test and you spend extra time preparing for will not show up on the test. I must have done 20 practice problems for a type of calculus topic and then when I went to take the final, there wasn’t a single question on that topic.

A major tip for taking your final is to just take your time and breathe. Don’t start to get worried when you see other people get up and leave, you have so much time for these finals. I had a teacher in high school that always told us ‘everyone reads at different paces, so don’t be worried when people finish before you’, and that is one of the best pieces of test taking advice anyone has ever given me!

So, now that finals are officially over, enjoy your break, take some time for yourself, make some money, see old friends, and just have a good time because pretty soon we’ll be going back.