Stress Relieving Tips for Finals Week

Stress at finals time is inevitable, but it is also really bad for you. If you are feeling stressed, your recall diminishes, your body gets sick or burdened, and your confidence in your ability to perform well on tests declines. This is all very negative especially when finals matter so much. Thus, it is important to practice stress relieving tips when preparing for finals. Consider the following:

Tip one: Eat, sleep, and exercise.
At finals time, the normal student ends up cramming for tests late into the night. They fill up on junk food like chips and delivered pizza, and they stay awake by guzzling caffeinated beverages and taking energy pills. This puts a lot of stress on the body, and added stress is the last thing you need. In addition, it makes it very difficult for the body to reduce and relieve the stress it already has. So, instead of chips and candy, snack on fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts, and whole grain crackers with low trans fats and sodium. Make sure you eat regular meals. Make sure you do not stay up all night studying, but try and get a full eight hours of sleep, preferably getting to bed no later than 11pm. In addition, when you start to feel bogged down and can feel the stress building up in your body, then take a half hour to get some exercise in. Exercise in a natural stress reliever, and will help you feel invigorated the rest of the day.

Tip two: Choose a great study group.
A good study group can help you fill in the gaps in your studying and give you insight into things you did not know before. In addition, they can help keep you motivated to study and get through all of the material. All of these things are great for relieving stress. A bad study group, however, will distract you from studying, and leave you further overwhelmed and behind. So, choose your study partners carefully, and arrange times, places, and subject matter you will be discussing. Doing so will keep you on track, and help you feel confident in your abilities to be prepared for the upcoming test.

Tip three: Organize a study plan.
One of the leading causes of finals stress and anxiety is the not knowing what is going to be on the test, and how you are going to go back over an entire semester’s worth of information and learn the right stuff. Eliminate this stress and relieve much of the other stress of finals by having a study plan. Outline how much time you have to dedicate to studying, and then outline what areas you need to cover. Then divide it up into the time slots. This way you will have a plan for how you are going to accomplish covering all the material, and will not feel nearly so overwhelmed.