Here is my secret to how I deal with midterms: I don't. I had my midterms this past week but I know a lot of people haven't had theirs yet, so I thought I would share my strategy for getting through the week. This is either advice or a warning of what not to do, take it as you will.
The first thing I like to do is take on as much work as possible. Because if you're going to be stressed you might as well be as stressed as possible. Why do anything halfway? So on top of my midterms I decided to make mums for my high school's homecoming, spend half an hour each commenting on the papers of the kids I tutor, and do a project meant for three people by myself because I hate group projects.
The only way to get this much stuff done is to use absolutely every minute of your day. Waking up at 7:30 every day and starting to study is an aweome way to get some stuff done and let yourself become sleep deprived much faster. Also, you can take things that you normally considered to be breaks, like lunch, and just work through those too. It's not until you're in college that you consider eating a luxury and that you don't deserve to take longer than twenty minutes to eat if you aren't studying at the same time. But everybody needs to take time to breathe sometimes, so I like to pretend that other things I need to do are me taking time for myself to relax, like showering or walking to class. If you can manage to convince yourself that you are taking lots of breaks than maybe your body will start to believe it and you will constantly feel refreshed.
Speaking of getting in the right mindset, I like to think of midterms as working out. It hurts at the time but you will feel super great later. Who cares if you're tired and in pain if it means that in a week or two you will recieve mediocre grades on everything that you do? Which brings me to another secret: if you only have time to do one thing really well, just spread out your effort so that you just do kind of okay on everything. That way, you can try really hard for the rest of the semester when you don't have ten things going on at once and slowly pull yourself up from C's to B's or A's in all of your classes. And of course, always spend more time calculating your grades and seeing how bad you can do on all of your tests than actually preparing for them. Happy Midterms!
