Here we are again, at a moment in our lives that we have to simultaneously worry about the livelihood of our GPAs, getting home in a timely manner and/or moving. It doesn’t seem fair that all of these things build up at the end of the school year but hey, that’s life. If you are like me and begin suffering small panic attacks due to lack of academic self-esteem you may be looking for ways to keep calm, cool, and collected. Here are some quick and easy de-stress methods to get you through finals:
1. Organize: Although keeping yourself organized during finals seems obvious, I cannot stress how important it is to keep the area around you organized too. If your study space is cluttered it may add to the stress, providing distractions and keeping your blood pressure up. The last thing you need when studying for a final is to have misplaced your keys. Take this advice and do a quick 15-minute clean up before you sit down to hit the books. You’d be surprised at how much more focused you can be with a clean study space.
2. Exercise: Sometimes when we get mentally or emotionally overwhelmed we need to quickly blow off some steam in order to continue heavy academic concentration. Clearly, we don’t want to distract others by running laps around the library but there are other ways to wake our body up and get it focused. If you are studying in the library and get stressed, take a walk; use the stairs to walk down to the GSU and back. This simple break and get the heart pumping and the mind ready and eager to absorb information. If you are studying at home a few yoga poses can really do the trick.
3. Power Nap: As much as we may need to pull all nighters every now and again, sleep deprivation is an easy way to ensure a poor test grade. While most of the time getting a full 8 hours during finals isn’t possible, small 20-minute powers naps can help you to refresh your mind and body. Three or four of these throughout the night can help your brain stay alive and kick in so that your grades don’t suffer from exhaustion. If you have trouble sleeping or taking naps, products such as the ones on cbdarmour.co.uk/raw-original-cbd-oil-3000mg.html might be able to help.
4. Music: Listening to music while studying can help you stay awake while also giving you some important cognitive benefits. Listening to classical music while you study is a well-known booster for the brain. Research has proven that listening to music with a strong beat can stimulate brainwaves. A slower tempo will provide you with a calm state of mind while a faster tempo can promote alert thinking and strong concentration. Different kinds of music can also trigger different responses in your breathing and heart rate, creating a small distraction that helps your stress melt away.
5. Visualization: This technique is a personal favorite of my mother, who says that it helps her to find parking spaces on the busy streets of Brooklyn, but not to worry folks it can easily apply to prepping for finals too. Procrastinating on a paper? Close your eyes and try to visualize yourself sitting down and typing your little heart away. If memorization is what you need, visualize yourself in your classroom acing your exam. The feelings of calm and success stemming from these visualizations will put you in the mindset needed to crack down on your studies. Staying optimistic through positive visualization can often help keep panic at bay.
The wonderful pieces of advice seen in this post can be found at:
http://stress.about.com/od/studentstress/tp/school_stress.html
