By Jenna Grasso
Staff Writer

Once midterms end and the end of the semester is in clear sight, some of you may be overwhelmed, while others may believe all the work is easier from here on out. Whether you are overwhelmed or relaxed about the rest of the semester, there are certain steps that you want to take towards completing your first semester and knowing that you will do well once those grades are posted!

One great piece of advice is to meet with your professors. If you have not already met with your professors at all during the semester you are already behind. Communicating with teachers is one of the best ways to ease worries about your grades at the end of the semester. One, professors like when it looks like you care about their class and two, when you have concerns or find out that you didn’t do so well on your midterm, you can always go over the midterm or find out ways to make some extra points up before the semester ends.

The easiest thing for some may be to ignore their grades and decide that they are going to do great on the rest of the assignments that are due for the class, but the bottom line is if you didn’t do so well on all the other assignments you might not do well on the other assignments. Having an open line of communication with a professor, even if you didn’t do well on the assignments in the class, could boost your grade a little if it looks like you care about the class.

One other piece of advice is to plan and schedule study sessions for finals or final projects that you know are due sometime soon. The worst thing you want to do is get overwhelmed before the end of the semester. By the time you have your last final, you want to feel well rested and know that you passed your exams, rather than cramming and being sleep-deprived on your drive home for the holidays. Make study groups with other friends in your classes. Also, try to study evenly for all of you exams. You don’t want to study more for one and then be rushed to study for others, which leads to poorer grades.

The real key to success for the end of your semester is time management. Time management is essential and procrastination doesn’t help anyone. The less you procrastinate the less overwhelmed you will become which will lead to better grades in the end. What you really have to remember is, this is not high school anymore and it is going to take you more than an hour to study for most tests in college. If you get into good studying habits now, once you get to be an upper classmen, the transition to more work and larger projects will be much easier.