How to Limit Stress During Finals
Well finals time is here for me and most other students across the nation, and I am stressed. Extremely stressed. Going through finals for the first time will be an experience, to say the least, but I have done several things to try to keep my stress level at a [moderately] sane level. Don’t expect to avoid stress all together, but I’ve learned of a few tricks to help out a bit.
1. Forget everything else – My posting here has dropped off, and my online ventures are ignored. My Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4 skills are deteriorating, and I haven’t been able to use StumblUpon much lately. Oh well. Focusing on academic studies is the most important thing personally, and having 3 cumulative finals I think it is necessary to pull of a decent GPA, depending on the academic rigor of your university. I’m not suggesting that you sit in the library for 16 hours straight every day, but you do need to make social and pleasurable sacrifices to have success and lower your stress a bit.
2. Get Away – I usually study in the dorms, but relocating your study area to a quieter atmosphere will save time and boost learning. Get to a library or coffee shop to find a better study place. The ten minute walk or commute is worth it.
3. Exercise - Exercising is a great stress reliever and definitely a mood enhancer. Burning some calories from your Rockstar energy drinks would probably be a healthy thing anways.
4. Reward / Relax- I have yet to reach this step, but after a final or major accomplishment, give yourself a short period of relaxation as a reward before immediately diving into the books for your next exam. Eat some cookies, drink some be…soda, and get some rest. If you have a few days to prepare for your next exam, spend an evening forgetting everything so when you hit the books the next day you’ll be energized and refocused.
I hate finals, and the anticipation of getting dominated by my calculus test is very stressful. Just be sure to keep everything in perspective, and remember that nothing is as bad as it seems if you fail to meet your expectations. Best of luck… keep me in your prayers 
Good luck on your finals!!
I haven’t had finals for a few years now (I’m a grad student, been doing research instead for awhile), but I still remember some of the things I did to get myself de-stressed. One of the most useful things, I felt, was to get myself excited about the exam. I would say to myself, “Ok, self, here I go, this is my time to shine! The culmination of everything I’ve done this semester, and I’m going to ROCK it!! Now, time to jump into that studying, so I can ROCK this exam!!” I would also picture myself walking into the exam with a big confident smile, and then actually DO that on the day of the test, to keep the adrenaline going.
A test is not supposed to be torture, but an opportunity to demonstrate your comprehension of the content of the class. And dread is an awfully heavy load on already tired shoulders, so why not just drop it?
Seize the day!