It is that time of the year again… This is the part of the semester when I’m looking back wondering where in the heck the time went because it feels like just yesterday I was on spring break and the week before that I was back here for spring training. I’m sure you are here to not have your time wasted so we are going to get right into this.

Skip towards the bottom for quick tips!

A quick preview of my finals week schedule is that I had two finals on Monday and one yesterday, and my last final which will be my hardest final is on Thursday. So with that said, I have taken and received grades for 2 out of the 3 finals I tool during finals week and got A’s on both.

These tests were very information dense and connection focused and so in order to study for these finals, I made a ridiculous amount of Quizlets. For those of you that don’t know, this is an online flashcard website. You can create your own flashcards, which can even include pictures, and they are available on your computer or any device pretty much. The best part about this is that it has an app and so when I am walking to class or waiting in line for something I will go through the flashcards. This may sound ridiculous because you may only get 3 or 4 cards in, but TRUST ME it helps more than you know! They also have several built-in features for free that can help you learn the material faster if you have time. In my opinion, and with the way I seem to study best, flashcards are the way to go to memorize material quickly.

To understand how the material you already learned relates to each other, that is where concept maps and what I like to call the rabbit hole comes into play. Concept maps are great for smaller amounts of information because I usually just do these on a sheet of printer paper, but you could use a whiteboard or whatever else you have. What you do is start out with one small-medium sized topic and just start creating a web of information radiating out from your topic. In a different color, I like to draw arrows to show that ne topic relates to or effect another topic.

The rabbit hole got its name because this can take hours to do sometimes. What I will do is pick out a very broad and larger topic and then continue to narrow down information about it started with the largest subtopics to the subtopic’s subtopics and all the way down to the smaller facts. If you don’t know what something means within a topic look it up, and if you don’t know what you need to know to understand that, look it up too! You can see how this can continue for quite a while if you actually have a lot of information to cover. I hope that this concept makes sense to you because I apparently am not the best at describing it.

That was how I studied for my past 3 finals. Now, here are some of my tips to get through and do the best that you can do on your finals:

1. Take Breaks!
2. Caffeine is wonderful (try to balance it out with water as well)
3. Get at least 6 hours of sleep
4. Study with friends & classmates to keep you on top of it as well as make it more bearable 
5. Start early studying early!!!!!!!!! 
6. Facemasks are a lifesaver to save your skin (just becasue you are stressed out doesn’t mean you have to show it)
7. BREATHE it will all be over soon 

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~Madison Eran~