5. The official freshman guide to finals: By peers; for peers

On these final days leading up to finals (pun intended), study habits spring into full force. This is the time where students buckle down, lock themselves inside their room with Cheez-its and a textbook and start hitting the books. While Quizlet and notecards are great study tactics, they can often be a bit mundane. Dare I say, boring. But, what if I told you this did not have to be the case? What if I told you that you didn’t have to abstain from sunlight and joy for days at a time? This list encompasses not-so-bland study habits and tools for freshmen acquired from your peers that can make your preparation successful and pleasant and contains the means to survive what could arguably be one of the most arduous tasks of high school: finals week. 

Environment:

Lauren Barron, junior: “I coordinate study groups at a coffee shop with my friends, and it actually really helps me. The Wolf is my favorite. It’s particularly quiet, and they also have acoustic music which is kind of relaxing. [My friends] help me learn things I don’t understand, and I help them learn things they don’t understand. We help each other on topics that we are weak on. We typically do this two weekends before finals and the weekend before finals. We sometimes do it after the half days on finals week too.”

Zoey Womick, junior: “I make timelines with colorful markers on a whiteboard in the library to prepare for history finals. There are already timelines in the textbooks, so you just need to make sure you don’t go out of order. You know when the events happened, and it helps you fully understand the relationships between them. When there are questions about the time period on the final, you won’t get confused.” 

T.J. Fleming, senior: “Sip and Study is a good opportunity because freshmen don’t usually know how to prepare for finals. Teachers will be there, and it will give them a better feel for what they’re about to walk into. I walk around and help. I’m vice president of ASAP, so I look over the students in my club as well. I went when I was a freshman. It was good. Teachers helped, and I felt more prepared and comfortable. I went in with a lot of low management, and when I left, I knew what I needed to study more.”

Preparing to study:

Grace Fassler, sophomore: “About a week and a half before finals start, I delete all of my social media apps. I usually pay a lot of attention to my phone so taking those apps away just really made me study better and pay attention a lot better. I did it last year, and I’m going to start deleting tomorrow.” 

Emma Caplinger, senior: “Every finals week I get a notebook that is specifically for finals, and I split it into sections based on class. Then, within each section for each class, for each final I’m taking, I will rewrite notes, practice problems, that kind of thing. Sometimes I will put in old homework problems and things like that into this notebook. Then I can take it to my other finals, and if you finish your test early, you can use that notebook to study for other tests. I have a pretty good collection at this point of notebooks full of key terms for all of my classes. It has been wildly, wildly successful. I don’t know how I got this idea. Freshman year I was like, ‘you know what, I have this spare notebook, I’m just gonna do it.’ It has really helped me organize my thoughts and understand what is going to be the most important thing to study for each test.”

Studying:

Tre Bell, sophomore: “I usually try to get all of the terms and definitions together to try and make a song about it. I did it for history last year and chemistry. It helped me really well because I was on the border for some classes, and I ended up with an ‘A.’ It helped with my understanding of all the terms because there are a lot of terms to remember.”

Angie Jia, senior: “Some of my classes create shared Google Docs, and we assign everyone a section. Then everyone fills in the terms for their section for everyone to study off of. It is much quicker than doing all of the studying on your own.”

Dawson Ren, senior: “I study for about an hour or two, and I take a five-minute break every thirty minutes. The most important thing is you can’t get on electronics because then five minutes will turn into an hour. During my break, I stand up or go get a snack. People make fun of me all the time because whenever I’m in class and everyone is dead, I’m like, ‘stand up, we’ve got to do some jumping jacks.’ You have got to get your blood flowing.”