“I usually just do the reviews, like, the day before, and I just practice the problems and read over the homework,” said pre-business freshman Tammy Tran. “I still keep up with my work, you know? So I guess that’s over a long time. At a certain time, I’ll just stop. Even if I’m not finished, I won’t continue. I value sleep more.”
“My favorite way to study for finals would be to find a good, calm, quiet location and pull up all the things I have to do,” said exploratory studies freshman La-Sean Caselberry. “I don’t necessarily pull up everything and have this giant pile of things to do. I just choose the things that I feel are my weakest subjects.”
“I don’t study like normal people,” said electrical engineering freshman Taher Hozefa. “I understand the concepts, so basically I don’t use the textbook most of the time. I just go online, and whatever it is I don’t understand, I type in google. I look at the Wikipedia or look at some videos and I’ll try to understand it using that.
“(Worst grade) in college? Like a 75. I mainly studied online, like their homework assignments, looked over the practice problems and examples,” said sports administration freshman Travis Lavallee, who was glad his professor dropped the lowest grade. “I got an 82 and an 89 after those, so it worked out.”
“I’m just trying to get through this class to get to my other classes,” said pre-business freshman Teresa Cao.
College is a hectic time in general, but no part of the semester is as stressful for students as finals season. Everyone has a different method of surviving these last few weeks of the school year. Some prefer cramming to extended study, and some prefer caffeine-induced insomnia to a healthy sleep schedule.
Sometimes, no matter how hard you study, it won’t be enough. The heartbreak of getting a bad grade is hard to deal with, especially given all the hours wasted trying to learn the material. For many students, a successful study session has as much to do with the environment as the method of study. Some like it perfectly quiet, others prefer it a little bit noisy. Some like it warm and sunny; others want it slightly chilly.
The Cougar interviewed several UH students about how they deal with this frantic time of the year.
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