Exam week can be pretty intense. All you want is to pack up your shizz and go home to party for a month, but the word “cumulative” is making you want to throw up in your mouth. Can you slide by, or is exam week going to destroy the grade you earned busting your butt on every paper you wrote this semester? Everyone has their own study tips and ways to deal with stress, but here are some surefire tactics to avoid if you really want to make the grade.

1. OD’ing on Caffeine

If caffeine were illegal, I’d be a certified crack whore. So I know that overdoing the stimulants can only end poorly. There have been times where I drank so much coffee that it had an adverse affect on my body, and I passed out facedown in the books. Or I got so hyper that I alphabetized my DVD collection instead of hitting the books. Overdoing the caffeine can also keep you up for hours after you’ve shut the books, and you’ll be super groggy when the time comes to put number 2 pencil to paper (if you don’t sleep through the entire final!).

Another major caffeine no-no? Taking energy pills such as Stackers. You’ll be more concerned with the heart palpitations you’re having than the exam itself. You don’t want to pull a Jessie Spano in front of the whole lecture, hall do you? Read More »

Alright, what the hell, you’re in this four-hundred person lecture and just your luck, you can’t spot a single familiar face. Now what?

Spend the rest of the semester in studying solitude? Stalk a TA to answer all your simple assignment questions? Maybe you’ll just skip every class and hope your professor puts the notes online.OR, you could grow some balls and MAKE some friends. Doesn’t class go by a lot quicker when there’s someone you can pass notes to during?

It does, trust me.

So sure, it’s a little intimidating when there’s more people in your Philosophy lecture hall than there were in your graduating senior class of high school, but don’t worry, a bunch of the kids around you are looking for someone to strike up a conversation with as well. It’s really quite easy:

Ask questions.
From ‘Do you have any idea what Professor Sherman is talking about?’ to something as simple as, ‘Can I borrow a pen?’. Simply asking a question can kickstart a classroom friendship made in heaven. How else are you going to make study groups and pass the class? Or even better, get an invite to that kickass Men’s Soccer party this Saturday. Read More »