I wish I knew how.

Any exam season is going to be stressful. But it seems that everything always gets lumped into one or two weeks every term. Take this week for example:

Monday: Mini-Exam (217)

Tuesday: Creative Writing Assignment Due

Wednesday: 30% Midterm in PSYC 307; Research Participation in HSP (online dating study lol)

Thursday: Work (I’m at the Totem Caf again this year!)

Friday: ENGL 223 Paper Due; get on a plane for Kelowna for the International Conference that I am chairing.

PLUS there’s normal course readings, meals to eat, approximately one hour lost every day in transit, facebook to surf, and all the other random things that happen and take up time, like figuring out which roommate owes who food money.

So how to deal?

I guess there’s no one way. What works for me is to make lists and schedules: from 5-7pm I’ll study for Psychology, from 7-8 I’ll eat dinner and take a break, from 9-10 I’ll work on speech writing, from 10-11pm I’ll write my essay… blah blah blah. It helps me to visualize what my day/week/evening will look like and reassures me that if I am diligent, I will have enough time to get it all done.

Sometimes that’s not enough, and I still find myself feeling completely overwhelmed. A couple of very wise people have taught me that when this happens, the best thing to do is to STOP. This doesn’t mean stop stressing, it just means that it’s time to take a step back. I often use this time to clean up my room (studies show that you will be more concentrated if your room is clean) or to put a load of laundry in or watch an episode of How I Met Your Mother (so good!) Sometimes you have to “waste time to save time.” Once I’ve taken some time away from the studying, I am waaay more productive.

Sometimes. Sometimes I’m really really not. And I have wasted hours on the internet logging in and out of facebook. (Literally logging out, refreshing, then logging back in to see if anyone’s done anything interesting.) Obviously not a good use of time.

It’s embarrassing, but I ended up having to install StayFocusd, a Chrome app that lets you set timers or block pages for a certain amount of time. It’s super helpful! I only use it during exam season and it really does help keep me on track. It’s also free, which is always good.

Anyway, just thought I’d share some tips. Hopefully the odds are in your favor this midterm season!