The Lessons I Should Have Learned Freshman Year But Didn’t Until Junior Year.

                                                 

            As the semester dwindles down, so do most students’ motivation levels. Whether it is raining, hailing, freezing cold, or gorgeous outside, students tend to find themselves finding reasons to skip their classes towards the end of the semester around finals.

            After a semester’s worth of work, it becomes really easy to let stress and procrastination take over and become unmotivated.  During my freshman year, when stress hit, I avoided all my work and spent 100 meal points at the convenience store and watched every season of Friends.

If you don’t want to be like how I was freshman year, you should realize that the keys to success during finals week is to keep stress and procrastination to a minimum level and stay motivated.  Your tests will be over before you know it, and you’ll get to go home and make questionable looking gingerbread houses and Instagram poorly constructed snowmen that you and your friends made.

            Until then, here are some key pointers on how to avoid the stress and procrastination, and not lose your drive before finals week.

·      Cut yourself off from all social media

 It’s so easy to find yourself on Facebook looking at someone’s pictures from 2008 when you’re avoiding doing your work. Also it's really easy to find yourself stalking your ex's new girlfriend Facebook, Instagram and Twitter account; I've been there and its a road that takes thirty to fourty-five minutes to travel.  However, there is a cure – deactivate your Facebook. You want to ensure there are no ways of you seeing pictures or updates of a party you’re missing out on. Stay focused on your studies – you’ll get your time to celebrate soon.

·      Hide in the library from everyone and everything

Trust me when I say that windows are your biggest enemy when it comes to studying. You’re going to find yourself analyzing the tree right next to you and you’re going to snap out of it and realize you did absolutely nothing for the past 45 minutes. Grab a huge coffee, go to a room with no windows, and get to work. It’s really hard to be unproductive in a place filled with people being productive.

·      Don’t spend all your time studying

The National College Health Assessment recently surveyed 17,000 college students around finals time and 15% of the students reported that they have “felt so depressed that it was difficult to function”. If you’re on a 24/7 study binge, your brain will suffer from information overload and you’ll find yourself stressed, depressed, and not well dressed. Write down a study plan and every two hours make “reward” breaks where you can put your mind at ease and go through Reddit or watch this week’s episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians.

         
You're going to be fine and everything is going to work out. Now get off of Elite Daily and stop taking Buzzfeed quizzes and go study for your exam that's in 7 hours. You got this.