By LARRY BONILLA/Staff Writer
Well, here it is, after several long weeks we have made it to final’s week.
By this point in the semester you can see how well (or god forbid how not-so-well) you did, but no matter who you are, finals are no doubt a massive chunk of your grade. I know people new to college may not be totally familiar with how these things go and as someone who has done it for a while now I can give my honest advice, so in the fashion of a c-tier celebrity writing a typical “xyz number of advices on abc subject” book, I will offer you my honest advice.
Six Pieces of Advice for Finals Week
1. Have a healthy relationship with yourself during such stressful times.
The advice that you will commonly hear—and probably have heard—is “get a good night of sleep and a hearty breakfast before your exams.” You may read this, roll your eyes, and shrug, BUT this is a crucial piece of advice many people dismiss. In times like these college students’ sleeping schedules (or potentially lack thereof) finally comes back to hurt them. Little sleep is not healthy for your body nor your mind. The same goes for food. Having substantial meals at adequate periods of time are critical towards having a sound body and mind. This is important because in this stretch of the week to finals it is crucial to be on your a-game.
2. Have effective time management and awareness of dates and deadlines.
Finals week is the time to “lock in,” no more excuses. There are plenty of things to consider during this time and there needs to be a delicate balance of EVERYTHING. Consider class time, study time, meal times, work times, bed times, assignment due date times, student organization meeting times, recreational times, time to time the time times, and whatnot. Needless to say, priority is the name of the game and the blocks of time are the fields we were working with.
There is no one-size-fits-all schedule for everyone, but as long as you are giving an adequate deal of time to things that are substantial you are on the right track. You want to make sure you have adequate time to study, but you also don’t want to pull all-nighters or have study sessions that make you miss a meal. Like I said, you need to manage a delicate balance of things.
Of course, there are situations and circumstances that occur which are out of our hands. These things throw a wrench into plans and it may seem like it’ll ruin everything, but you need to remain resilient, strategically play the cards you are given, and make things count.
3. Review, Reread, and Relearn everything you should.
This is your sign to finally look back in your camera roll to find that one photo you took of the board from your lecture way back when.
Jokes aside, it is important to compile all the information you are likely to cover in your final exams. Depending on the nature of the course’s final (whether it be tests, essays, projects, and/or presentations of sorts), you may need to employ a variety of strategies.
3a. Firstly, it is important to know what the final will be and what it will cover.
In the past my professors have chosen to make their final exam only include topics covered recently while others choose to have the exam be cumulative of the whole semester. If your professor provides a study guide and/or tells you what will be covered then great, but if they don’t to be more safe than sorry assume that it will be everything covered this semester. If you have no idea what the final will cover ask your professor or potentially a peer.
3b. Secondly, review the notes you’ve taken this semester.
A strategy that I have used is gathering all my notes (whether it is written or digital) and compiling everything into a notebook while also reviewing relevant module’s in the class. And yes, it is important that this is done written, not typed. By doing this I am able to neatly put everything I learned in a cohesive format. I suggest against typing because when typing notes one is essentially using a different part of your brain to process information, and physically writing is more likely to stick with your brain. The goal of this exercise is not just for the end product (which is essentially a review of all the things necessary to ace the exam) but also in the act of doing which will help you cohesively understand the material.
3c. Lastly, gather the most relevant and/or most challenging information for further study.
Something helpful I did to find the most important things to study was to mark and compile the notes I had a hard time understanding and which ones I imagine I would have a difficult time explaining. If you are doing an essay or presentation then it may be important to gather quotes or key terms you will be using. In specifically STEM oriented exams it is vital to memorize relevant formulas and concepts that may be covered in your tests, and to familiarize yourself with them extensively. The key to all this is confidence (or at least relative confidence). After reviewing, rereading, and relearning you should be capable of the following: understanding the material and contents, being able to hypothetically “teach” it (and having the intuition to respond to potentially rigorous questions), and to confidently approach and assess which skills and strategies are necessary to complete certain problems and situations while explaining your thought process.
4. Communicate with your Professors.
Students often underestimate how reaching out to your professor is an incredible resource. Let it be known that all the office hours, the zoom meetings, openness to emails, and post-lecture Q&As from your professors, are not for naught. Take advantage of these opportunities to reach out to your professor because they help you with the material you are struggling with.
One quote my professor has echoed in his class this semester is: “no news is good news.” If you are really struggling with the material in a class and you don’t say anything, your professor can safely assume that you understand everything in their lectures. When you reach out to your professors it is likely that both of you can go over the things you don’t understand to suit your comprehension or your professor could point you to other resources that may help you.
Many students are needlessly afraid to contact their professors. They don’t want to give you bad grades, they want to see you succeed in their course. This is why it is in their—and your—best interests to reach out to them and ask for help when needed.
5. Communicate with your Peers.
A common obstacle that holds back college students often is that everyone is too reluctant to ask for help from others. Let me assure you that a great resource to use is simply communicating with your classmates. The truth is we all have hardly any idea what we are doing and in a time like this all of us should seek help from each other. Of course, this is not an invitation to rely on your peers’ answers to assignments nor their class notes, but instead to talk to your peers (who are likely to be in similar circumstances) about your understanding of the material.
For instance, if there are concepts that have been lectured in class and you know they will be on the final exam but you still don’t understand it after constantly reviewing, feel free to ask your peers. It is likely your peers may have an understanding and will be willing to explain it to you, and if not a complete understanding, a piece of it which may help build your comprehension.
If you can, form study groups with people determined to do well on their exam. Study groups are amazing because you can collectively gather and hone in your understanding of the material in the class to succeed. You could also create a study-group-chat of sorts to share confusions and understandings of the material. If you can’t do any of the above, the absolute easiest thing you can do is just to turn to the person sitting next to you in class and ask them for help. Chances are anything asking any questions about the course material and exam to our classmates may provide you something substantial.
6. Aim to Succeed.
To finish off, the best advice I can give to someone is to aim toward success. This is the most general way of putting everything I have said previously, but it rings true. The case is that often people resign themselves toward simply “passing,” or some people may not realize how much is expected from them to have success. But I’d argue this is not a healthy way of going about things.
This is all to say, set yourself up for success. Make sure you get adequate sleep and meals. Manage your time to accomplish what you need. Understand what material you need to study. Use external resources to help you gain an understanding. Don’t resign yourself to simply “passing,” instead try your absolute best and see how far you can go. The best way to look at final exams, or college, or really anything in life is to—for a lack of better words—“shoot for the moon” because “even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”
