By INGRID MALDONADO
With finals beginning next week, it is important to know how to handle the stress of many exams and projects being due soon.
An article in Timelycare says research found finals and midterms are the top two sources of stress for 31% of students.
Students often sleep less, don’t prioritize good eating habits, or exercise less due to the amount of work they need to get done.
All of those are important to have so students can have a good wellbeing and healthy mind to support all the studying and mental load of many projects.
One thing that can cause students to lose sleep over finals is procrastinating.
When procrastinating, students often wait at the last minute to start a project or study. It can become an easy thing to do without realizing it.
One way to combat this is to get rid of distractions with a clean workspace and a clean room. Having a messy room can add to people’s stress and can add more anxiety to already anxious students, which then affects their ability to focus, sleep and eat, explained Libby Sander in a Harvard Business Review.
A clean workspace helps students begin working on their finals and projects.
A good mentality is to just begin with one thing and then work on it in small increments.
Then they can work on something else while they take a break from the other.
While it is important to get started and get ahead, it is also important to rest and take breaks.
While stress can build for students, it is important to take time to decompress. Students can go on a walk, spend time doing their favorite hobby, or sometimes just a nap can help.
A study at Carnegie Mellon University shows each hour of sleep lost corresponding to a 0.07 decrease in end-of-term GPA.
It is not just finals week where sleep matters.
Sleep debt can accumulate over time, which can affect the student’s health.
“The less nightly sleep a first-year college student gets at the beginning of the school term predicts lower GPA at the end of the term, some five to nine weeks later,” said David Creswell a professor at the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Science, in a Carnegie Mellon University article. “Lack of sleep may be hurting students’ ability to learn in their college classrooms.”
The last tip is to remember finals week will come to an end and this stress will not last forever.