With the 2019 school year wrapping up quickly and finals on their way, it’s about that time of year again where students begin to prepare.

End-of- term finals can be extremely stressful, as it is the last grade going in before another completed year of high school. Final exams can mostly make or break a grade. Here are some tips that will hopefully make studying a little bit more enjoyable and less stressful.

As a professional procrastinator, for the sake of your own sanity staying up all night long, cramming information into your brain is not your best option. Studying for a couple hours at a time and looking over the content in a variety of ways is a helpful way to make information stick.

Studying in small groups and individually both have impacts to help one retain information. Meeting up with classmates at a coffee shop, local library or even someones house are fun ways to mix up studying and make it less boring. This gives the opportunity to look over notes and study guides as a group and play games together.

Working with friends can be more fun, it is often times much easier to get off track and distracted from the task at hand. Short breaks from learning have been proven to benefit a studying student, but it’s important to keep those breaks short and sweet. Good ways to stay on track in a group of people are to set a timer for periods of time to concentrate on the material and then once time is up collaborate ideas and share ways of understanding certain topics.

With technology at our fingertips, there are many online sources that are very handy and easy to use when studying as well. Quizlet and other flashcard orquiz apps are very helpful when trying to memorize terms. Other group games, like Kahoot, create a competition out of learning to keep students involved.

Last but not least, study guides are important tools to utilize when studying for finals. Study guides can seem like busy work when end of the year class periods consist of solely working on them, but they truly are helpful because they inform you of what will be on the exam. If you study them well you are preparing yourself the closest you can to the final exam. Your teacher put these together telling you the main things that are important to know to succeed.

Study guides can be very overwhelming, as they have so much information shoved into one paper or packet. They key is go through with a highlighter and pick out the topics or terms that need the most attention. Doing this before going back and reviewing stuff you already have a good idea of what you are doing with saves a lot of time.

Hopefully a few of these tips help you do the best that you can do on this years finals.