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.