Dear (potentially) frightened students,
Congrats! You have just survived (almost) your first semester of college! You’ve made it through all the crazy nights where you stayed up until 2am talking with your new best friends and sharing details of your life with each other. You've survived all papers and homework you forgot you had and the morning of scrambling to write it. You've made it through waking up, like, ten minutes before your class and sprinting across campus; it's okay we've all done it. You’ve survived almost four months of eating more frozen food than you thought possible and actually growing tired of the dining hall food. Your parents are so proud of you, or at least they will be until they see your first semester grades, where you will get the lecture of a lifetime. I am a sophomore in college, so I think that I have “some” experience with dealing with exam time, which is now coming up for you guys.
My first piece of advice is to not pull all-nighters. I know it is sooo tempting to because all of your friends are doing it, but honestly if you don’t know it by at least 11pm, you’re not going to not know at 3 am. There is no point in pulling them because you are going to be SO tired the next day and there is a very high chance that you might not remember majority of the information. Also before your exams, make sure you get plenty of sleep; you remember more information when your brain and body aren’t focusing on keeping you awake. Also do not, under any circumstances go out the night before your exams. If you drink (only if you're 21 or older) and you don't study the night before your exam because you think that you can just "wing it" and do fine, you're very wrong. I repeat: do not go out and party with your friends the night before your exam.
Second, you must eat something. When you are studying for your exams, you are not going to be studying for an hour or two like you did in high school. You are going to be studying for at least five hours at a time and if you have two exams the next day, you aren’t going to leave your study space at all. A tip for studying for exams or any test is start studying at least a week before, that way you can actually understand the information you have to know instead of just memorizing facts and then forgetting them. Back to food. You must eat while you are studying. At this point it doesn’t matter if you eat like crap because your brain is working too hard that you won’t care. If you don’t eat, you won’t have the energy to study or prepare yourself for your exams and you will get sick and won’t pass. Also the amount of water you should drink is double the amount of coffee you drink. Remember: coffee is not food.
Third, the libraries can be intimidating. I know how scary it can be when you walk into the library ready to start studying and you don’t see any open tables. Trust me there are open computers and tables, you just have to walk around to find them. There are certain tables that are never used because they don’t have any plugs and/or sun, but there is never anyone sitting there. Also if you have an open lobby in your dorm, do not study there. You will get nothing done, you will get so distracted and not remember anything. If you have a closed lobby, then by all means study there, just keep in mind that random people may come and join you. During exam time, you will make so many new friends. There will be people everywhere who are slowly losing their mind like you are so be sure to say hello to them. It’s always good to reassure someone that they’re not alone in this time of exhaustion.
Fourth, your family and friends who have already taken their exams may start to annoy you. During this crucial time of information cramming, I know that this is not welcomed. They will give tips on how to study for a certain class or offer to help you study for your tests. They may help you. Keyword is MAY. Your parents will give you tips that they used when they were taking their exams in college and some of them will work but they probably did that about twenty years ago. They will want to call you at all hours of the day when you are studying or writing papers and want to chat and you will have to be the mean kid and say that you can’t and it’s okay. Your friends who are finished with their exams or didn't have any will want to hang out; don't do it, study. Be the good student you know you can be. This is your time to make your parents and most importantly yourself proud and prove that you belong in college. This is your time, not theirs; you only get one first semester of college. Don't screw it up.
Fifth, Take time to relax. As you are cramming information from six different classes into your brain to remember a week from now, you may think that you are losing your mind. You may start to hear things and see things that aren’t there. When you reach that point, that’s when you need to take a break. When your hand starts to cramp, take a break. When your eyes hurt, take a break. If you study and study and study and your only break is when you sleep, eat, shower, or use the bathroom, you will go crazy. It is important that you take breaks. Here’s how to know how much time you should spend in your break. If you study for three hours, take a break doing something else for an hour. If you study for an hour, take a fifteen minute break. Take about a third of the time you are studying and use it to do nothing. Some things you can do are: color, watch a show, (a single episode), listen to music and stare at your wall, go hangout or call your parents, just lay in your bed, take a nap, etc. The list is endless, it’s all the stuff we do when we procrastinate doing things.
Lastly, It’s okay to not get an A on your test or in the class. I know that when you were in high school it was easy to an A on everything but now you’re in college and it’s a bit harder if you haven’t realized that yet. Even if you study your butt off and do all the quizzes and study guides and every possible thing you could, there is a chance that you won’t get an A on it. It’s okay to not get an A, it’s very difficult to do that and in order to do that, you have to know every possible thing to do so.