How to Avoid Burnout Headed into Finals Week

When heading into finals week, many students experience a lot of anxiety and stress. If not dealt with properly, this can lead to feeling overwhelmed and eventually it can lead to burnout. Burnout is easier to prevent than treat, so here are some tips to help you make sure you are taking care of yourself heading into exam season.

Get Enough Sleep

Sleep is one of the greatest factors in keeping your body physically and mentally healthy. It’s recommended that you get at least seven to nine hours of sleep each night leading up to finals. Sleep helps your brain to retain information, increases your attention span, and helps you feel more alert. Sleep deprivation can have negative effects on your mood, concentration, physical health, and memory. You should also try to avoid an excessive use of caffeine. While caffeine can help you feel more alert, this doesn’t mean that it is a good decision all the time. Avoid excessive amounts of caffeine as it can have negative effects on your mental clarity later in the day. Also try to avoid it late in the day so that you can get a good night’s sleep.

Have a Schedule

Creating a plan to help you organize for the upcoming finals with help make sure you maximize your time, as well as help prevent you from overworking yourself. It can also help reduce procrastination, which would most likely lead to stress and sleep deprivation. Making a schedule means you can tailor your studying to what works best for you. If you study best in the morning, you can frontload your studying, while if you are someone who prefers to study at night, you can complete other tasks like laundry earlier in the day so that when you study there’s nothing distracting you from preparing for exams. Make sure that the schedule is adaptable so that if it is not working for you, you can change it to something that better suits your needs. It is important to remember that just because something works for your friends, doesn’t necessarily mean it will work for you.

Be Proactive about your Mental Health

Taking time out of your day to take care of yourself and let yourself reset is crucial to avoiding burnout. This can mean different things for different people. Consider taking time to go to the gym, hanging out with friends, listening to music, or taking a nap. There are also several mental health resources on campus that you can utilize to maintain your mental health during such a stressful season. You can schedule individual sessions at any time with the counseling office on campus. There is also Let’s Talk, which is a shorter, less formal consultation option on Thursday afternoons, and Fit and Fur Fridays with the comfort dog Nico in J-Top on Friday mornings.

Finals season can be a stressful season, especially in the spring semester. However, remembering how far you’ve come since the beginning of the semester is something to be proud of. Despite the struggles that come with exam season with final projects, tests, and moving out of the dorms all clamoring for your attention, it doesn’t take too much work to take care of yourself and avoid a burnout. Consider the best way you can take care of yourself in these next few weeks, make a plan, and stick to it. 

Learn more about Concordia’s mental health resources here.