The time most students dread has arrived—finals season.

What could arguably be one of the most important periods of a college student’s life is also one of the most stressful. With high stakes assessments piling up, deadlines nearing, and the impending thought of studying for your final examinations of the term, this period is certainly not a time where one can just sit back and relax.

I remember my first taste of finals season as a freshman in university. There were many memories of tears of frustration, breakdowns due to stress, and the many nights I had to sacrifice sleep just to get my tasks done.

I’m sure many other students can relate to just how taxing finals season is. I recall the heavy pressure and the weight of the realization of what this stress about the finals season meant for me as a student.

“If I fail, it’s game over,” I remember thinking.

For us university students, the thought of failing finals season is something most of us cannot bear. We are afraid of doing worse than we might have done during the prelims season, and so we exert so much of our energy into doing better, being better for the second half of the term, even at the cost of our physical and mental health.

Breaking free from bad habits

(Photo from Pinterest)

For most, the realization sinks in once they view their grades from prelims. So, the goal now is to perform even better than they did then. But this task is not that easy, especially when there’s so much at stake.

One might be worried about maintaining a scholarship, or disappointing their parents, or being out of the running for Latin honors. Whatever the reason, they know they can’t afford to fail, especially now.

In my case, I have my own reasons for pursuing greatness in school. And so, I study, and I continue to study until I know the material like the back of my hand and am confident that I cannot get it wrong. Sometimes, though, I push myself too hard to the point where I begin to skip a few meals and miss out on hours of sleep just to make sure my work is perfect and that I’ve thoroughly studied all the material.

And while it’s great for students to be putting in their best effort into their academics and school life and making sure they can get through finals season with flying colors, we shouldn’t forget to make one thing our top priority: our health.

The overworked, burned out college student aesthetic may have suited me just fine at first, but once I began to forgo eating and sleeping and taking care of myself in favor of putting my grades first, I realized it was high time for a reevaluation of my habits and my lifestyle.

Finals season is hard, yes, but getting through it would be even harder without nourishment and sleep. I learned this the hard way when I inevitably got sick as a result of my bad habits. And so, along with making sure my grades are okay, I also began to take care of the state of my physical health.

Silencing the voices in your head

(Photo from Pinterest)

However, learning to take care of ourselves isn’t easy when our mind is telling us to keep going and to keep pushing forward. Getting our physical health back on track involves steps like drinking water, taking vitamins, and getting some exercise. Having good physical health will positively influence your mental health, and vice versa.

But taking care of your mental health might be hard when you possess a fear of failure, which seems to be prominent in many students, myself included. Because of this fear and the pressure to do good in school hanging over my head, I constantly worry about the state of my grades and always find myself thinking about what I can do to improve them.

As time goes by, this voice only gets louder, especially during finals season. This voice would tell you that your efforts thus far aren’t good enough. I know mine would whisper in my ear that I have to try harder and do better than I did before. As such, the voices parading themselves to be impostor syndrome would worsen as I begin to fear the people around me would realize I am not as good as they believe me to be. These voices would find ways to compare me to my peers and pit their achievements against mine to see who is doing better in life.

Now that it’s finals season, the voices in my head are constantly reminding me not to fail. And to do that, I have to keep working, keep studying and keep striving for perfection. But listening to these voices—I’ve realized—won’t do me any good, especially at such a crucial time in my life.

Although the pressure of finals is real, and I know students like me can’t avoid stress and the occasional failure, reacting to them negatively won’t do us any good. If we are in a constant state of stressing ourselves over our grades and our performance this finals, we are only allowing these voices to rule our lives.

It’s not easy to shut them out, but I think the first step to silencing these voices is to know that no matter what happened in the past or what will happen in the future, I have to believe that I am good enough. No matter what the voices tell me, I have to believe I am deserving of rest, that my failures are okay, and that I can do better and be better without having to sacrifice so much of myself in the process.

It’s good to want to improve, but I’ve realized that we can’t allow ourselves to give into the pressure and stress of finals season. In the end, we must all strive for improvement and strive to do better but also remember that we should strive as well to take care of ourselves amidst this difficult season.

Take a break; relax. Finals season is tough, but it doesn’t have to be as terrifying as we make it out to be. This is only one period in the long span of our lives. We don’t have to sacrifice so much just to “do better.” I think we’re already doing great.

The world kept going before finals season; it will continue to do so after.