With final exam season rolling around, it is key to stay on top of our academic game – one last sprint before the finish line so to speak. In this blog post, I want to share tips, tricks and advice with you to ensure that our academic year ends smoothly.
How to Avoid Burnout While Studying
1. Know Your Work
Now, this might seem obvious at first. However, truly knowing what you must do – as well as how you would do it – can greatly improve your overall time managing.
Furthermore, rather than just being aware that you, for example, must write an essay for a class, you now have the understanding of what the relevant topics are, as well on which essay question you would like to focus on. This takes the ‘fear’ and anxiety of having another deadline away, since you know your work.
2. Prioritising and Planning
With having your work figured out, whether it might be an essay or a final exam, you can then examine what holds the utmost priority to you. This can be decided by due date, contents, as well as how certain you are in your skills.
By prioritising in an alphabetical system, you can furthermore visualise where you need the most on. Example: (A) for finding suiting literature for an essay, (B) on summarizing lecture notes, et cetera. This division into A, B, C, etc. can be however small or broad you need it to be, as long as it makes sense to you. You can then go on a plan your work according to the prioritisation; for example, planning that you manage to do an (A) task and two (B) tasks on one day, and so on.
Feel free to plan your week ahead, but don’t go overboard – leave some room for flexibility so that you are not stressed to finish tasks.
3. Time Limits and Breaks
Besides prioritising your work, it is also important to set yourself time limits for your work. Rather than just relying on “I will get it done today” give yourself a concrete time limit, e.g.: two hours. Best to set a timer as well. This allows you to really focus on your tasks. Plus, you can look forward to your free time that is promised after – because even if you have not finished, you have worked for a specific amount of time and made progress and that’s good.
With all this talk about work, breaks are elemental to mention as well. Take breaks! Go for a walk, make yourself a cup of tea or coffee, chat with your friends or anything else you’d like. Not only can you focus better afterwards, but constant working on your finals won’t do you good at some point.
4. Continuous Effort
Of course, you could pull an all-nighter and cram everything right before the deadline … or you could do little but continuous work, reaching your deadline with a possibly better work as well as with much less stress!
5. Editing
If you are writing an essay, make sure to create some timely distance between your last written word and editing – this allows you to look at your project ‘from a new perspective’; and you might notice details you would have glossed over otherwise. You can also ask a friend to read over your paper, gaining a second opinion. If you’re learning for an exam, why not ask someone to quiz you on your knowledge, strengthening your understanding of the matter at hand.
And that’s it! These are the tips and tricks to be well prepared and equipped for finals! Of course, you yourself know which methods work best for you, but why not try some of the advice presented here? Who knows, maybe it will be a new standard for you to implement.
Best of success!
By Annemarie Menche, Germany
