Tips, Tricks, and Good Practices to Ace your Final Exams
By Siddharth Bharani-Dharan
Final exam season is just around the corner for thousands of Grad Hoyas. Typically, this means late nights, early mornings, cramming, lack of sleep, and several coffees per day. When studying for these exams, we may lose track of many things, the most important one being the attention and care we give ourselves. We may end up putting all our effort into studying without realizing that a lack of sleep and nutrition can also hinder our performance.
There are several steps we can consciously take to thrive during this important period of the semester. Listed below are some good practices during final exam season:
- Getting adequate sleep
Sleep is already one of the most important things for students, and becomes even more important when studying long hours. Resting our body and brain for at least eight hours can improve efficiency, productivity, and the ability to remember your study materials.
- Getting proper nutrition
It is common to forget to eat proper food and hydrate when studying for long hours. Instead, we may resort to snacking at odd hours.
If you are one of those people who enjoy sitting in the library from sunrise to sunset, making sure you bring meals and healthy snacks with you for the day is a must. It can be helpful to meal prep ahead of time. Proper nutrition helps our brain and mind, keeping it alert and able to focus while studying.
- Creating a study schedule
Final exam season is often overwhelming for students because there are so many exams in a short period of time. Figuring out what works best for you and how to manage time is absolutely crucial.
A common practice for students is creating a study schedule. Devoting a certain amount of time per day towards each subject can allow you to adequately study for many different subjects at once. It can also help prevent any sort of panic so you don’t feel very prepared for one exam, but unprepared for another.
This period of time is crucial and Georgetown University has many resources to support students. If you still feel a little lost or need some more guidance through navigating this challenge, the university’s Academic Resource Center has published several resources regarding studying and test taking strategies.
Good luck to all of our graduate Hoyas studying for their final exams this semester!