After powering through my first week of finals in college, I realized that the horror stories of stress and loss of sleep were not stories at all-- they're true, very true-- and if you weren't stressed about finals themselves, you were stressed about seemingly everyone falling apart around you. Personally, I had both kinds of stress, and I caught myself wondering if I broke a leg jumping out of my second story dorm window, if I could avoid finals altogether.

I had a total of three finals that I needed to go to the classroom for-- some students had more, some less. The entire week, all I could think about was how stressed I was-- how it made me wish that if I could just sit and procrastinate and maybe ignore the existence of the stress, that it would go away. Many small situations that I would normally let go, I found myself getting irritated and annoyed over, including the sound of my alarm going off in the morning, a small fit with my boss over a missed shift, the out of tune strings of the ukulele sitting on my desk, an incredibly awkward interview for a new position.

On a similar note, I realized that many people react differently to stress; one friend dealt with stress by surrounding herself with the comfort of friends, one by pulling all-nighters to study, one by going over the information again and again. For me, I become easily irritated and a little snarky-- and always hungry. I stopped paying attention to what I was eating, however, and I are just about anything that was put in front of me.

There comes a point where too much stress inhibits one's ability to do much of anything, much less take a final. As I write this article, I feel as stressed as I was when taking the finals-- the thought of the stress simply stresses me out, if that makes sense. In any case, while stress can be a good motivator and has hormonal advantages such as increasing cortisol and adrenaline, too much stress inhibits the body, leading to anxiety and a whole other slew of problems.

So, what happened?

I knew if I kept letting the stress consume me like this, I wouldn't be able to concentrate on my studies. At that point, I had stopped going to the gym that week to make time to study and as I stated prior, I ate whatever was in front of me-- needless to say, if I had kept eating like I did during finals week, the Freshman 15 would have been a very real reality.

Before studying, I needed to focus on my health. I made a list of small, realistic goals to achieve every day in that week, including drinking at least 32 ounces of water by noon, 64 oz by midnight. And because I was not motivated to go to the gym for my usual duration, I tried to go with friends-- this may have been the biggest game changer, as one of the best stress relievers is exercise. I felt energized after a short run and my focus and memory noticeably increased. Additionally, by completely cutting out sodas and sugary drinks (except a daily cup of coffee from our local coffee place on campus), I lessened sugar intake and therefore suffered less sugar crashes.

Arguably, the most important thing during finals week is to take a break. The brain can only process so much information at once-- therefore, rather than attempting to cram, one should study the material over the course of a few days in small chunks. Doing this, alongside getting enough sleep, incorporates the learned information into your long-term memory-- where you can easily recall information with small cues, whereas your short-term memory can only hold up to seven items at once.

Ultimately, it's important to celebrate and make time to be around others after your efforts. Not only does it make studying and taking finals so much more bearable and rewarding, it also takes a huge weight off of your shoulders, as if you've formally finished finals week. Personally, I got psyched for opening night of Rogue One (which I LOVED, but we can save that discussion for a different article).

Now that I've been through my first week of finals, hopefully future finals weeks will not be as awful!