It's That Time Again

WOW... I cannot believe we only have 3 weeks left of school until summer break. That means two weeks left of study and one week of finals. Man, did this semester fly by or what?! For some of us, we have already completed our first year of college. For many others, you are off to a four year university already! Congratulations, that's quite an accomplishment!

Now I'll get into my study talk:
I have come up with a few new study tactics to help myself stay on track for spring semester finals. As I have stated before in previous blogs, taking mini breaks during your study hours is so so important and will actually improve how much information you can obtain.A post on PsychCentral states that "even brief diversions from a task can dramatically improve one's ability to focus on that task for prolonged periods." Why is this? After a while you begin to subconsciously lose your focus and your performance on the task declines. Your body becomes used to the task and "habituated" to the feeling of completing that task so the stimuli no longer registers in a meaningful way to the brain. So trying to study while you feel like you are losing focus will not benefit you in any way and will only make you more exhausted. So take 10-15 minute breaks and go for a walk, prepare a snack, anything that will divert your attention elsewhere so that when you return to your text books your brain will be refreshed and ready to learn again.

Another thing that has proved to be helpful for me lately, is studying right before I fall asleep. Normally I watch netflix before I fall asleep or grab my phone and go through all of the social media sites. However, I have learned that by studying before I fall asleep, my brain is able to keep that knowledge processing all night and I wake up with almost everything memorized! Not to mention, if you are having trouble falling asleep, studying before bed may help tire you out, I know it does for me!

I know finals is a stressful time, but if you start preparing now, you should be well prepared and will most likely go into your finals feeling extremely confident.So just do it! Only three more weeks and you can put your books away for three months! That is unless you are taking summer school... but thats another story!