Finals and Procrastination

Finals strike fear in the hearts of many scholars of our generation. It is an entire week of testing for 6 different classes on what you learned. This week is one not to take lightly. It feels like the fate of all of the school years to come resting upon these bubbled answers or written explainations. For people who have studied hard in the previous weeks and constantly practiced the information learned will not really need to do too much extra studying for these exams. But for the majority of the population of students, procrastination feels too good to be true until a couple of nights before the first final exam. You find yourself cramming information into your brain that takes weeks of repitition to master, and studying for 3 hours each night for each subject. For these procrastinators, here are a few good tips that I followed. Create flashcards for every subject possible. They are usually for key term definitions or for learning a different language. Quickly review these cards twice a day (not in a row) and for short amounts of time. Also be sure to shuffle the cards after every time of use so that you don't memorize them by the order they are in. But most importantly, make a finals study schedule and detail it with the information you need to study that day for each subject. Create this study schedule so it covers the two weeks prior to finals week and the studying needed during finals week. Even though this schedule is hard to follow, try your best and keep it in a visible area so whenever you have spare time you can complete a couple items on the schedule. After you are done reviewing the notes, using flashcards, and other studying, take a nap because your brain processes the information more thoroughly in your sleep. Then, finals will no longer be so intimidating to you. Rather, it will be a week to focus with short days and light studying.