How To Handle Exam Season

The clock is winding down, and you begin to get that sinking feeling in your gut. Why? It’s exam season. It’s only a matter of time before you’re so overwhelmed by the sheer volume of work you’re convinced your professors collaborated in order to make your life a living hell. Why else would it all be due at the same time?

So, like many of you I’m sure, I used to ask myself: how am I supposed to handle all this work in such a short amount of time?

Welcome to a student’s world; where life is an unhealthy mix of relaxation followed by short periods of pure stress and anxiety. Over the years I learned that this pattern is something that I cannot avoid and will have to face more than once every semester.

So how do I deal with the workload? Obviously I work myself to the bone, but surviving “hell-week” takes more than just relentless studying; it takes the right mindset.

To quote somebody from my past, who was probably the smartest student I have ever met:

“Everything gets done eventually”

That saying has been engrained into my brain and has helped me get through so much. The bottom line is encouraging in its simplicity: no matter how much work you have to do, it will all be over at some point. Imagine the end of your “hell-week” and how good you will feel once it is all over. Use that as your way of getting in to the right mindset of how to deal with the workload knowing there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

No one can motivate us to study­—that is your own responsibility—but university, much like life, is all about the little things. One little thing I can leave you with is that simple message that helped me so much, with the hope that you can use it to help yourself get through those tough academic periods in the same way it helped me get through mine.

And so, one more time kiddos:

“Everything gets done eventually”

Randy Jama is a Career Peer Educator with SFU Career Services, and a 4th year Health Sciences student at Simon Fraser University.

*Lead image by CollegeDegrees360 on flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)