By Emma Weidmann | Arts and Life Editor
Finals season is upon us in a matter of weeks. With Moody Library starting to become fuller and fuller with each passing day, here are some of our favorite study hacks to make finals season just a little smoother.
Emma Weidmann | Arts and Life Editor
Most people listen to music while studying. I do that too, but I have a playlist that is finals season-specfic, essentially conditioning myself to be productive when I hear those songs. The playlist is also exactly one hour long, making it easy to know when to take a break when I hear a song repeat. The other thing is that when you listen to the music while studying through the semester, it might help with recall later on.
If you’re wondering what this playlist sounds like, it’s a lot of Lana Del Rey, Phoebe Bridgers and Faye Webster, which may sound depressing, but I find it calming and stress-free.
My second tip for studying is to bring a friend. This is a technique psychologists refer to as “body doubling.” Here’s how it works — if you have someone close by when you study or get other work done, it helps to keep you accountable and reduce distractions. This works for other tasks, like cleaning or anything similarly tedious. And if you’re a complete clown like me that ends up scrolling on my phone when I’m supposed to be working, bring a STEM major friend. They don’t mess around about studying.
Olivia Turner | Arts and Life Writer
One study method I stand by is simply asking myself questions about the content I’m studying. This helps me to recognize the areas I am lacking in knowledge and to hone in on those areas a bit more. What I do is write down any questions I have on a piece of paper and then go through the material to find the answers. I then write the answers down on the other side of the paper so that I can study the questions without peeking at the answers. This method works especially well because I study best off paper and not screens, so if you’re like me, maybe this will work for you too.
I have to admit, I’m a little superstitious when it comes to studying. So, one tendency I have is to eat Skittles while I work. Yep, that’s the hack — eating Skittles. I don’t know if it’s the sugar in this candy that gives me that little extra bit of energy to push through, if the bribery motivates me or if there’s a little bit of magic in that rainbow, but for some reason, I just study more efficiently when I have a bag of Skittles at my side. It’s probably not the healthiest method, but hey, it works for me.
