Tag Archives: stress

Dealing with Midterms

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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!

I’m Alive

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I promise I’m alive. But I’m also at home and quite honestly, blogging wasn’t my first priority. Sleep was.

It’s been a bit of an odd Christmas. My family takes a trip to Mexico most years and we are due to leave in two days. I’m stoked and very excited, but at the same time, my family is in crisis mode because of a very shitty thing we call cancer. I don’t want to talk about it.

Anyway, it’s made me rethink the whole Christmas thing. And I arrived at the realization that even my very down-to-earth family was “consumed” by the consumption aspect of the season. (See what I did there?) This Christmas, we got together with my dad’s side of the family. It was sort of this big family reunion, with people I hadn’t seen in over a decade sharing a laugh, a cry, a regret. It was really special even though the event itself, to say goodbye to a beloved uncle, was really upsetting. Realizing how much love one family can hold really made an impact on me. Especially during the holiday season, as fake as this sounds.

A lot has been weighing on my mind lately and I think maybe I just needed a place to write it all down. Organizing my thoughts seems to help. That’s lesson number one, kids: write it all out. Then have a good cry and maybe write more.

Sometimes that’s all you can do.

Happy Holidays.