How to De­stress Dur­ing Midterms 

MISHAWAKA– The week of midterms can be a stress­ful time for stu­dents. Some stu­dents may strug­gle to find ways to al­le­vi­ate some of this stress. 

Rachel Kennedy, di­rec­tor of the Cen­ter for Aca­d­e­mic Suc­cess, ex­plained some help­ful tips for stu­dents dur­ing these times when they are feel­ing more pres­sured.  

“One thing that helps is to set a daily re­ward,” Kennedy said.  

Ac­cord­ing to Kennedy, set­ting a goal for the day and re­ward­ing your­self af­ter com­plet­ing said goal is an ef­fi­cient way to get things ac­com­plished, while also giv­ing your­self some­thing to look for­ward to.  

Midterms tend to re­quire ex­tra study­ing in com­par­i­son to nor­mal weeks for stu­dents. Some stu­dents can make sim­ple changes to im­prove their study­ing habits. Kennedy said that most stu­dents strug­gle to build in breaks in their study rou­tines. To help with this, Kennedy said that it is best for stu­dents to study in 30-minute in­cre­ments with breaks in be­tween.  

Of­ten, stu­dents will have a large work­load along with hav­ing to study for their midterms. Kennedy ad­vised stu­dents to use the time that they have in be­tween classes to fin­ish as­sign­ments in­stead of leav­ing as­sign­ments to be com­pleted at the end of the day.  

While study­ing for ex­ams, Kennedy also added that stu­dents should study in unique ways. She said that there are many ways stu­dents can in­ter­act with their study ma­te­ri­als, such as re­peat­ing in­for­ma­tion aloud, teach­ing the con­tent to oth­ers or cre­at­ing their own tests.  

Kennedy said stu­dents should of­ten re­mind them­selves about their end goal through ei­ther ver­bal, men­tal or writ­ten cues, so they do not get dis­cour­aged by hav­ing to do tasks that seem un­re­lated to their fu­ture goal or pro­fes­sion. 

“[Re­mind your­self], this is why I’m do­ing what I’m do­ing, even though it feels very far away from what I want to be do­ing,” Kennedy said.