One of the most over-seen, non-utilized, and under-appreciated ways to prepare for finals is beginning the preparing process on day one.
Many students have a common misconception that you can only begin to prepare for finals in the few weeks prior to that dreadful date of a final test, assignment, or paper. This essentially results in a collective mindset that finals are inevitably going to be beyond stressful in the weeks building up to the actual finals. It’s time we start changing our perspective on that subject and strengthen the concept of being proactive.
The first week of school is usually referred to as ‘silly-week’ by students. This derives from the actual term which is ‘syllabus week’. Syllabus week is typically a week during college where professors go over the syllabus.
Due to this mindset that a syllabus is not important, syllabus got shortened to ‘silly’ and ‘silly-week’ usually consists of students making new friends, partying and overall being thankful that the first week of school for many classes comes with no assignments (things were different this year, obviously).
Contrastingly, some professors hand out several big projects on day one that will not be due for weeks or months after syllabus week. Many students respond to this by going to the destructor of getting through college with minimum levels of stress: Procrastination.
Procrastination starts on day one if you do not take syllabus week seriously and from there, the downhill-snowball effect begins. I must point out, there are plenty of students who do not procrastinate. If they are the majority, they sure are the definition of what a silent majority is.
How often do you hear students talking about their excitement or lack of stress for finals week? For me, I have a better chance of winning the lottery than hearing those kinds of words. Being proactive is the solution if you struggle with preparing for finals.
To properly prepare, start from day one and do your best to be proactive and avoid procrastinating.
Categories: Editorials, Opinion
