The word itself, final. It means the end of all, the last determination of your whole semester performance. But this shouldn't define your whole semester, right? All semester you work so hard to hand in homework assignments, raise your hand and talk in class, and do well on projects. Then comes your final-40% of your grade.
40%-10% lower than half, making up basically the entirety of your grade. Whether it's short answer, essay, multiple choice-it stinks. It's even worse if it happens to be cumulative. Your whole semester in one final examination.
Let's not forget that you have about for or five of these grade deciding tests in one whole week. How can your more than half of all of your effort be placed into this one thing? This one thing that keeps you up all night, has you buying endless amounts of coffee, paying for study guides online-making life just a little bit harder.
After Thanksgiving break it's so hard to bounce back. You have a week of classes with a little bit of reviewing and chatting with professors knowing it's the end of the semester and you're going to need a better grade. But these professors are smart, they know what you're doing. But hey, still doesn't hurt to try to get that C+ moved to a B-.
College is hard. You put so much work and effort into your five or six classes all semester, not to have it all be based off of one final piece of work that you spend a countless number of hours trying to cram everything in within one or two weeks.
You need to breathe. You need to get up and walk around. Take a trip to Chipotle or go buy some Ben & Jerry's. Sitting and studying for six hours isn't going to magically make you know the answer to Aquinas's theory on complex hedonism- taking your time to absorb the information and not stressing so much is going to.
Cramming sucks, but losing that extra hour of sleep to get on campus earlier and just settle in and relax a little could be the best thing possible for you. And just think, it's a whole week of suffering and then you are winter-break bound. A whole month of hanging out with family, your pets, and hometown friends. What more could you ask for?
So remember don't stress, just do what you can, and one grade doesn't determine the amount of knowledge you have gained.
