Right about now it's every student's least favorite part of the quarter: dead week. Everyone is stressed, getting no sleep because of studying, getting stressed because they aren't studying, and it's just a horrible time all in all. Every student has to go through this at least a couple of times a year, and dead week doesn't have to as bad as it sounds. There are just a few things that every student can do (force themselves to do) to make this time a little less depressing and stressful.
One of the biggest things that we deal with is just the fact that we simply "don't have enough time to study all the material." We all know this isn't true, we just save it all 'til the last second. Nobody wants to admit it but let's be honest with ourselves. We also all know that the fix to this is to just start studying earlier. Duh. But how do we get ourselves to do this? There are a lot of study tips I have looked at but these are the best, in my opinion, and I am really lazy so that should show you all how well they must work.
First of all, setting a reminder telling yourself to start studying or working on something helps a bit, because if you are anything like me, you will feel guilty and unaccomplished if you ignore a reminder. Something else is using motivation. By this, I mean you can tell yourself "once I finish this assignment I can eat" or something like that. It could be eating, watching T.V., reading (if you're into that), showering, seeing your friends, etc. This sounds stupid but those really are the two best techniques I have found.
Scheduling and planning times to study is a great way too, but I know for myself, I am not organized enough or motivated enough to stick to something like that. But honestly, the idea of getting your homework out and doing it is a lot more painful than getting opening your backpack and getting to work. Along with these study tips, just try and force yourself to study all of your material throughout the quarter or semester, and just save yourself the stress and panic of trying to relearn courses in a week.
Besides studying, everyone needs to make sure they have time to do actual enjoyable things during this time. So, if you were able to make this time by studying beforehand as we discussed earlier, you need to do things that you enjoy some of that time. Hanging out with your friends, going hiking, going shopping, going on walks, whatever makes you happy and gives a sense of fun to your life. Doing this will improve your mood and just make you feel better mentally, without having only the stress of exams on your mind. This will help ensure that this is not just a few weeks of sadness or anger or anything like that. Doing things that make you happy is important to do at any point in the school year, but it is extremely important during such a physically and emotionally draining part of it.
The last thing is to save time for yourself. Yes, it is important to save time for your friends and family and all of the other things we talked about, but it is also very very important to have some time just to compose yourself; Just to take a minute and relax, and tell yourself that it is going to be okay. Just remember that dead week and finals week is just that: a couple of weeks. It is not going to go on forever. And that time the next month, you won't have a care in the world and it will all be okay.
This time of the year sucks. It is easy to just feel like there is nothing you can do, and like it's the end of the world. But in the end, it's just a few tests, and it will be over before you know it. If you can find a way to just think this way all the time, and manage your time for studying, and seeing your friends, doing regular things that you enjoy, and having some time to yourself, then these weeks won't have such a negative impact on you, it will just be a normal couple of weeks with some bigger tests at the end.
