Spring(ing) into Exam Season
Thoughts | Hannah Wan
Graphic by Cole Lachowicz
April, as T.S. Eliot hauntingly described, is the cruelest month. Serious medical diagnoses and residual distress from World War I contextualized the poet’s bleak representation of spring. However, an ordinary university student living in one of the safest cities in the world (the 6th safest city worldwide, apparently) may also find themselves empathizing with The Waste Land’s opening line.
April, the month where the final of all finals happen, is also the month for the burnout of all burnouts — one carefully refined and reworked over 7 months of UofT-grade workload. Yet, one thing that all of us here have in common is the capacity to push through and emerge as the lilacs out of a dead land. All right, enough with our beloved poetry references for now: in this article, I will give you my best study tips for a successful end-of-year season.
Tip I: Music can help, but some genres might help especially well.
My personal experience is that music with minimal lyrics tends to be more conducive to uninterrupted focus. I gravitate towards electronic music, although a number of other genres (such as classical and folk) have equally amazing picks to offer. Here is a list of 5 albums that do the job of locking me in:
Surfing on Sine Waves by Polygon Window
Ambient Techno; Acid Techno
Visions by Grimes
Synthpop; Electronic
Halica: Bliss Out v.11 by Sweet Trip
Ambient Techno; Shoegaze
Soundtracks For The Blind by Swans
Experimental Rock; Ambient
Scenery by Ryo Fukui
Jazz; Piano
Tip II: Choose your study locations wisely.
This requires good self-knowledge, but where you study usually matters a lot in terms of how well you can focus. No single location is universally the best study environment, as it depends on one’s inclinations and preferences. However, here are some factors you might want to consider to determine the kind of environment best suited to you —alongside general rules of thumb in case you struggle with choice paralysis:
Lighting: try to remember if a darker room makes you sleepier or whether it drives sustained concentration.
Generally, good and bright lighting is better at making us feel awake and sharp.
Library (or not): try to remember if you do your best work at a busy and bustling café, at home, or in a space designed for studying (i.e., a library).
Generally, it may be harder to focus in spaces that tend to be strongly associated with leisure and socialization. Going to the library, on the other hand, is a reliably good environment for studying.
Study buddies (or not): try to remember who you study well with, or if you simply study better in isolation.
If you are under a time crunch to put out quality work, studying alone has consistently shown to be more conducive to focus. However, diligent study buddies who only chat occasionally are excellent options as well. In fact, the relaxation that the occasional social breaks may bring you can be beneficial to your focus when you get back to work.
Tip III: GO! TO! SLEEP!
This is self-explanatory. Suppose you are debating between either “sacrificing” 4 hours of study time by going to bed at a reasonable time or working for 4 more hours by cutting down on your sleep. Pick the sleep. I like thinking about sleep this way: in terms of both quantity AND quality, the work that directly follows a good night of sleep (while fully accounting for the loss of 4 hours of work) vastly overweighs the work that I do during the hours that come directly at the expense of my sleep. Indeed, the negative cognitive effects of sleep deprivation are felt both during those 4 hours of sacrificed sleep and throughout the very next day. As a psychology and neuroscience student, I am only repeating nuggets from the literature: sleep is not something whose sacrifice allows you to be more productive; it’s a tool that powers you to be more productive itself!
Tip IV: Remain optimistic even in times of panic.
Finally, the most important tip I can offer is this one: Try to remain optimistic and resilient throughout the month. As someone who plans to study medicine, I intimately know the “My Future Is Ruined Because Of This One Course” monster. You are (probably) quite young and have several decades to go: time is on your side. Even if you don’t do as well as you wanted on this one or even two exams, you probably still have many courses left to improve. Even in the worst-case scenario, where your performance this month irreversibly stains your transcript, I firmly believe that you will eventually get where you want to be in life through grit and hard work. I believe in you and your capacity for resilience. Your very being is a 1 in 400 trillion occurrence, and that is enough to prove to me that you belong here.
Thank you for reading this article. I wish you the best in life!
Works Cited:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47311/the-waste-land
https://worldpopulationreview.com/world-city-rankings/safest-cities-in-the-world