Finals Week Craziness

Finals week. Sigh.

3 finals, 4 papers, 40 pages.
Boundless sleepless nights and mental breakdowns. But it's over.

Here's what's got me through:

1. A really good playlist. Studying to the right type of music is so important. I have pretty decent taste in music, I'd say, so I make a lot of my own playlists. However, I've found a number of websites that help with this kind of thing. If you want endless supplies of music you don't own, I'd recommend Spotify. Not only is all your favorite music right at your fingertips to make playlists with, you can also share them with your friends. Stacey has shared some of her excellent taste in music with me, so it's pretty sweet. Another great website is Pandora. Basically, you can choose any song, artist, album, or even a mood and it'll create an entire station based off of that. I've found a lot of great music this way. Last, you can use Songza. This site has a personal song concierge that will choose music for you based on the time and day of the week. You can also browse music based on a mood, genre, or activity.
2. Good food. This is definitely for when you don't want to go out for food and just don't have the time or energy or motivation to make something yourself (AKA finals week). Seamless is the best website for ordering food to the dorms. There's an almost limitless variety of restaurant to order from, and if you order in a group, you can forgo the minimum delivery charge. Great for those late night study sessions. Also, all week at the dorms, they had free food, from Shake Shack to breakfast food for dinner.
3. Somewhere quiet to do work. As a Macaulay student, you have access to the Macaulay building on the Upper West Side. It's a beautiful brownstone on 67th street. Fancy. There's a library to do some quiet work if you just want to get away from the dorms or Hunter. There's also very fast Wi-fi and there's usually some type of food there.
4. Self control. No, I don't mean the virtue. Yes, it's great if you can keep yourself from going on distracting websites. But for most of us, distractions abound. Tumbling or looking up cute baby animal videos at 2 in the morning may sound like a good idea until it's actually 4 in the morning and you have a final tomorrow morning at 9 that you haven't studied for. Avoid those moments. Get Self Control. It's this free app for Macs that blocks specific websites that are distracting. You'll thank yourself later.
5. A way to manage your stress. Macaulay offered a puppy-petting event for a couple of hours during finals week, as well as mini massages. Petting dogs for an hour in the midst of my craziness was so cathartic, I couldn't even tell you. It's easy to get stressed out when you have a ton of finals to study for and papers to write. Just take a breather. Walk out to the park by the water. Do some yoga in your room. Take a nap. Listen to some relaxing music. Don't overload yourself. Everything will be fine, I promise.

Additional tips:

1. Drink some caffeine. Tea, coffee, something. You'll be more attentive while you work.
2. Don't pull an all-nighter. It's almost never worth it. Cramming doesn't work. All that time you spent trying to study for the test was useless because your brain was only half functioning then. Moreover, your brain will shut down further as you take the test. Being sleep deprived by 24 hours is equivalent to being legally drunk. Don't do that to yourself. Get a good night's sleep and do your best based on what you know.
3. Find someone to study with. If you have someone you're in class with, study together. Bouncing information off of each other and explaining things to each other will improve your understanding and memorization of concepts and facts.
4. Don't stress too much. You know more a lot more than you're giving yourself credit for.