With the end of the semester just around the corner students find themselves more stressed as the week goes on.
Some students stress out just knowing they are going to be stressed out. The excitement of the holiday season seams to disappear for a few weeks. Statements such as “It’s just not a fun time” can be heard echoing through the library.
We have been taught all our lives to get eight hours of sleep a night, drink eight glasses of water a day,and fuel our brains with food. Why is it then that we put aside our healthy habits during the most crucial week of a college semester?
“I get about four to five hours of sleep a night during finals week,” sophomore Lauren Koch said.
Most students claim they sleep less before a final, instead of getting the recommended eight hours of sleep. Are students staying up and studying all that time, or are nerves preventing us from sleeping? Does the amount of sleep really affect our grade? All depending on the class some students study as little as an hour per class and others anywhere from seven to 10 hours.
“I won’t study more than an hour for any final. If I haven’t learned the information during the course and review days I won’t ever learn it.” Remarked a sophomore student, a junior commented “I don’t think I can study enough, I’ll keep going till, well, I just have to call it quits.”
The stress of finals and the high level of concentration and focus needed to study hard puts some students in jeopardy of a well balanced breakfast before a final exam. “My eating habits do change that week, it all depends, I can eat a lot more or not eat at all.”
Beginning last Friday the dorms became “mortuaries”. Resident Advisors enforce morgue hours, which are essentially round-the-clock quiet hours.
“I don’t do work during morgue hours; it’s just too quiet!” Jennie MacDougall, international business major, said.
Indulgences such as ice cream or a candy bar, riding around on a shopping cart through the grocery store to take a break and have some fun or singing a song out loud in the car, will give the brain the break it needs from the books to make the time spent studying more effective.
No matter the student on campus, finals week just is not the same as any other week during the semester.
Whether it is a relief that winter break is soon to come, or if it is the most stressful time in the year, the daily habits and routines students usually practice become far from normal. After all it is just a week, it will be over soon, or so we all hope! Good luck.
