Some helpful advice for surviving finals

AROUND THIS TIME of the semester, you will undoubtedly come across a number of correspondences — newspaper articles, chain e-mails, even fortune cookies — that will try to give you “advice” to help get you through your finals relatively unscathed.

The problem we have with these pieces of advice is that they seem hardly useful as they pertain to finals.

“Get a good night’s rest,” “Eat a healthy breakfast,” “Come prepared,”— these are all some of the pieces of advice you will hear in the upcoming week.

They also are all entirely useless.

These really are guidelines to keep you alive past the age of 30 — these are daily rituals that we really all know that we should be practicing anyway.

And so, we thought that it might be useful to provide you with a few pieces of advice that we have gleaned from our years in college. We suspect they will either help you tremendously or ruin you, academically.

It’s all right though, as we don’t anticipate being held accountable for either.

One of the things that has helped me over the past few semesters, despite any advice you might hear to the contrary, is to NOT look at my finals schedule in advance.

In fact, I’ve made it a rule not to check my finals schedule until, at the very earliest, 7 p.m. the evening before any given final.

This might sound ridiculous to most people, but really, it has always forced me to study effectively.

I study for things I don’t know rather than spending a disproportionate amount of time studying for a test that I don’t really need to study for, because, frankly, there isn’t any way to consider your final that runs from 12-2 as more important than the final that runs from 2:15-4:15 if the latter class is more difficult than the former.

Speaking of studying: I have a few friends that, again, spend a disproportionate amount of time studying things that they already know.

While it has been effective to learn a few things very well and others on more of a cursory level, I try not to allocate more than 20 percent of my time studying for something that will comprise less than 10 percent of the test.

This next tip is in response to much of the healthy living advice that most of your professors and other purported experts may try to throw your way.

My warning: be skeptical.

In the academic sphere, most would say to avoid indulging in heavy drinking or most other harmful substances before finals.

However, if inebriation has become the level in which you operate on a regular basis — and don’t think we haven’t seen you in the back of the class watching the seasons turn out of a window or looking down in an attempt to deter a professor from calling on you to answer a question your clearly to intoxicated to answer — don’t make any significant lifestyle changes.

Common sense suggests that stopping smoking, drinking and partying abruptly in a reaction to finals can be taxing on the body and mind — so why disadvantage yourself going into finals week?

Lastly, you must do your best to clear your mind during Dead Days.

Rent some movies, go out to a nice dinner, enjoy a glass of wine from our campus winery — anything to keep your mind off of the exams that are going to determine a significant percentage of your grade.

Engaging in the act of stressing is a tiring endeavor. Don’t exhaust yourself.

Instead, work to accept your future performance on finals. Understand that life will go on after next week.

School is only beneficial if you truly enjoy doing it. Make things easier on yourself and be sure to not lose any sleep over what looms in the future.

If you follow these simple guidelines, the fall 2006 finals season will be a much more manageable and peaceful time of the year.

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