Despite what people say, stress actually helps you when it comes to finals and schoolwork in general.

For me, stress is something in my mind that tells me to keep pushing and keep working.

Stress is probably the driving force as to why many students choose to do their work for classes and study for their finals.

When I’m stressed about grades, I am more likely to check those grades often. When I’m stressed about exams, I am likely to study for that class more in that period of time than I would for the whole semester.

It is because I am so worried about how my grades are doing by that time that I cannot think of anything else. In days when I am particularly stressed, I feel more motivated to do more of my work.

It seems that the times I am stressed and have so much work to do I complete that work in a decent amount of time instead of spending about thirty minutes on it and then giving up.

Since I am in basketball cheer, color guard, and other clubs, most of my school days in the afternoon are full. It’s hard to juggle all of the school work and activities at the same time.

It is hard to remember everything that I have to do that night, and even though my planner helps, there are still times where I accidentally leave something out. Stress reminds me of all the things that I need to do for that day, and I use it to prioritize all of my schoolwork.

Stress can be hard to deal with, but it can be used as a sort of get together. When studying with friends or a study group, it is most likely that they are just as stressed out as you are. And hanging out with these people, you all might be able to calm each other down while studying a specific subject.

Yes, there is a such thing as too much stress, which is a point that everyone gets to at one time in their life, but to make sure that does not happen, use all the free time you have in your day wisely. Rather than just watching shows or movies like ‘The Office.”

Besides, think about how relaxing and relieved you will feel after all the stress passes. Even though you have to deal with stress for the rest of your life, does not mean there will never be a break from it.

Stress is overall beneficial even if it doesn’t seem like it sometimes. If we as human beings were never stressed out, would we really be human?

Don’t stress out about finals. Trust that if you feel okay about finals, then you need not even worry.

I used to be a mountain of stress when the end of the year came around. I still am, but I don’t want to be anymore.

I’m generally considered a good student, I keep good grades, I study, and do my homework and yet every single semester I get stressed beyond belief that I am going to fail my class and have to retake it. Now that I’m a senior the stakes are higher with the thought of not graduating.

And this has been drilled into our heads since practically elementary school. My parents wouldn’t let me do the practice tests in 3rd grade because I would work myself up until I was so scared of failing, it made me fail.

Nowadays, I try to combat my test anxiety by calculating out the lowest score I can make before I fail. It doesn’t even take a minute to calculate it either, just remember your order of operations.

((Desired Semester Average) – (Semester Cumulative)(.8)) / (.2) = Required Grade on Finals

This means you can have a 93 in the class and only score a 28 on the final and still end the year with an 80 in the class.

Yes, that is a very pessimistic viewpoint, but because of a testing confidence issues I’ve developed from the years that teachers would tell me this one test would make or break my grade, it works for me.

I get that teachers need to stress the importance of the yearly testing to make sure to keep everyone that doesn’t normally care about their grades to start caring, but it doesn’t work.

Students who don’t care about their grades throughout the year aren’t going to magically want to study for a month and a half before finals to make sure their properly prepared.

The only thing it does it stress out everyone who knows the material well and will score well on the finals.

Instead, just study for finals as if they were like any other test.

Read your notes, study your vocab, and re-read textbooks if you have them. You don’t need to do anything else if you’ve consistently stayed on top of your school work throughout the year.

If you haven’t, then good luck and take comfort in the fact that you won’t be alone.