Balancing Your Social Life During Finals

by Donal Buckley ‘26

It’s that dreaded time of the semester again. As classes draw to a close and many of us book our tickets home for Thanksgiving, there’s one thing in the back of everyone’s minds — finals. During this period, it’s natural to feel stressed, overwhelmed, and agonized by the amount of work professors expect us to do in such a short amount of time. Hearing the same four study tips certainly doesn’t help.

We’ve all heard the same spiel: get a good night’s rest, eat a big breakfast, don’t wait until the last minute to start studying. After hearing this for so long, I’ve started to get desensitized to it. But one major problem that I’ve never seen anyone address is how people tend to isolate themselves during finals. This is for an obvious reason, of course — to do well on their exams. But, I’ve realized that it’s still possible to maintain a social life while drowning in schoolwork. It might sound counterintuitive, but hear me out: do you really want all two weeks of finals to be miserable?

Obviously, it’s important to prioritize your schoolwork. I’m not saying to throw away your tests for a weekend bender. But finals are going to be so much harder if you completely isolate yourself for two weeks.

My first suggestion is studying with a friend! It’s as simple as that. If you have a budding friendship in one of your classes, ask them to study with you. If you don’t have any connections like that, you could still do a study session with one of your other friends. Even if you’re not working on the same thing, just having someone there with you can be less depressing. For me, it’s a better alternative to sitting hunched over my laptop in the basement of Leavey. The trick, of course, is to make sure you’re actually doing work, not gossiping while pretending to do study.

If studying with a friend isn’t your thing, then hopefully time management is. Studying by yourself might work best for you, but like I said, don’t make it miserable. Don’t spend every waking minute doing schoolwork. If you set aside a substantial amount of time to study, then you should set aside some time to unwind as well. That could include hanging out with your friends. Take advantage of those study days before finals. After all, nobody has class during those days, so it might be easier to find a time to hang out. And even once exams begin, you won’t have a final every day. Reward yourself after a day of studying by grabbing dinner with friends, or take breaks by getting lunch together. It’s not reasonable to make yourself spend every waking minute preparing for tests.

With that being said, it’s most important to prioritize yourself. If you have something big due the next day, obviously the smartest decision isn’t to go out with people. But if you know you have the time, then there’s room to have fun during finals. After all, it’s probably going to be the last time you see all of your friends until the spring semester begins. You want to make these last few days memorable.

At the end of the day, you know yourself best. If this advice doesn’t resonate with you, then you know that, and you keep doing you. But if you’re looking for ways to make finals a little less awful, hopefully you consider integrating some balance into this stressful time.

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