By Jenna Grasso
Staff Writer
The end of the semester is one of the most bittersweet times for all students. It’s the time where you have to leave all your friends you’ve made throughout the year to go home, work and be with your family again. Not only can the thought of going home be stressful, the end of the semester is nothing but added stress. Extra credit, rewrites, and assignments are all on your mind, while trying to balance having a good time in your four years at college.
For the end of the semester, there are some ways to stay sane and balance the life of classes, work and friends, so you can succeed in your last semester before you head off for a relaxing few months of no school and warm weather.
One excellent way to make sure you get everything done is to prioritize. You want to put assignments for the classes that you are doing the worst in first. This is better than doing them last, rushing through them and hoping for the best. Prioritizing work for your worst class will make it easy to balance all of your homework and projects, and it will help you concentrate. Remember, it is always a less stressful when you have an idea of the grade that you are going to come out with.
Of course, going out and having a good time with your friends in college is a main priority for most students, but be realistic with the times that you actually have to go out. Now that the weather is getting nicer, you are automatically going to be distracted. Instead of going out on a Tuesday night, stay in and work on the rest of your projects and save one day of the weekend to relax and not worry about homework and projects.
Always utilize teachers and the free appointment and advisement hours that Hofstra offers. Teachers like when students care about the class. Not only does this help you network and connect with good professors that can help you later in your college career, the more clarity you get on a project or an assignment or the more the instructor is willing to help you, the less nervous you will be handing in an assignment you “think” you completed correctly. Just checking in with a professor can bring down stress levels and you keep calmer during finals, and it will improve your grades too.
The most important tip is to relax and remember to always utilize the facilities at Hofstra to get your finals work done as efficiently as possible. There are an immense amount of facilities including the Writing Center, meetings with teachers and tutors that can help you complete your projects to get the best grade possible.
The most important tip to remember is to concentrate on one thing at a time. The more things you are trying to do at once, the worse your tests and projects will turn out. You need to be able to focus on assignments and tests to work efficiently and get the grades you strive for.
