SOS: 10 Ways to Kill It During USC Finals Week

By Lauren Brose ‘15

Finals are Coming…. Are you ready to not sleep, forget to eat and have to hold off on the new season of Game of Thrones as you brace yourself for the most tumultuous week of 2015? When can we ever be ready? As a senior and a veteran of finals week in college, I’ve reflected back on the amazing times I deliriously sauntered into my finals and spilled every ounce of my knowledge onto bluebooks and scantrons. Of my successes and failures, I am confident that through following these 10 steps, your finals week will be more bearable than ever.

1. Find yourself a furry friend
Many people turn to their pets for a bit of stress relief. Every finals week, the campus is visited with an assortment of puppies and there is a good reason why. Studies have found that when people are presented with a task that normally causes stress, they inhibit the least amount when accompanied by their pet. (GIF taken from a super cool/adorable BuzzFeed post).

2. Bake a batch of yummy breakfast treats to get your day started right 
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day but also the most commonly skipped. Consider this type of meal prepping: instead of skimping out on an energy boosting meal that will only sharpen your focus and memory, bake muffins or other baked good that are breakfast-friendly and easy to consume on the go. Kate from Cookie + Kate has gotten it right when it comes to her weekly ritual of baking. She adapts an oatmeal blueberry applesauce muffins recipe from Joy the Baker and swaps out blueberries for apples. The recipe makes a dozen and they’re healthily made with whole wheat flour, oats, coconut oil, and Gala apples.

3. Tidy up your study space


When my mind is cluttered with all of the things I need to do from preparing for my finals to applying to internships to writing my newest blog posts, I feel the strong need to organize all other aspects of my life. My external surroundings also being a mess is off-putting and hinders me from maintaining my focus. By tidying up my bedroom— namely my desk— I no longer think my life is out of control. Once my study area is all neat and organized, I feel ready to sort out the mess of tasks.

4. Let the music do the talking
When I get in the zone with studying, I cannot maintain my focus without music. While many find it distracting, I find the movement of people, the sound of distant whispering and the clicking of computer keyboards far more distracting. At least music is consistent and serves as the perfect white noise. The only issue is that your perfect busy work song ends in less than four minutes! Consider this instead: 1 hour mixes. You don’t need to lift a finger, the songs are already mixed, and chances are you’ll work through it without noticing anything more than the subtle song changes. I tend to listen to music with chill beats and minimal lyrics. Why? Lyrical songs tell stories and at the moment I cannot be bothered to listen to it. So thanks but no thanks, Drake. 

Here are a few of my personal recommendations:

• ODESZA’s No Sleep mixes — there are 9 total and they’re all outstanding but I strongly recommend Mix.04, Mix.06, Mix.07 and not the most recently released one because it’s, in my opinion, the weakest among them all.
  
• Thomas Jack Presents: Tropical House mixes — There’s a ton here and he features many popular TropHouse DJ’s including Kygo, Bakermat, and Klingande. They’re all excellent.
  
• USC’s very own Justin Jay’s latest EP: Momentum — His track “You Give Me Butterflies” really does give me butterflies.
  
• Lane 8′s Fall 2014 playlist is a recent favorite of mine
• This 8tracks playlist I made last spring that, for some reason, strangers on the internet have been recently throwing “likes” at. Maybe it’s because it’s called “Mood Setter.” Everyone needs one of those. Featured: Matt DiMona, Alina Baraz, Caribou, Jamie XX, and Ryan Hemsworth.
  

5. Reward yourself with a cheeky recess at Study Hall
The only study hall that has beer just so happens to be within walking distance from campus! Take a break from having your nose between the pages of that textbook you never opened until now and indulge in their fantastic selection of appetizers, sandwiches, salads and burgers. I ordered the grilled cheese and tomato soup combo and couldn’t have been more pleased with the quality of the food as well as the reasonable prices. Plus, the staff is young and super friendly. Get on their good side and you might just get a free dessert next time you dine in. ;)

6. Study in a coffee shop
Sometimes Doheny, Leavey and even new Annenberg just doesn’t cut it. I get hungry and thirsty in the cramped study cubicles and its painfully silent. Although I previously stated people can be distracting, they are far more distracting when it’s dead silent and the only intelligible sound is the distant movement of another human…. At coffee shops, I am out of my bedroom/stuffy library and in a breathable environment with other productive students. 

7. Form a study group
This is not for the group of friends who gossip and talk about off-topic things that have nothing to do with the big final coming up. Instead, find student(s) in your class who you mesh well with and will also benefit you by studying with. Teaching and quizzing each other will be a great way to distinguish how familiar you are with the topics. Or, you can consider that student in class you always wanted to talk to but never had a reason to. Invite them to study with you and show off how intelligent you are through prepping for the final. That’s a total win-win if I don’t say so myself.

8. Let yourself go
Honestly who cares about what you look like on campus during all of finals week. With the exception of the occasional student who doesn’t ever sleep and brushes their teeth in Leavey library’s bathroom, most students are getting less than six hours of  sleep each night. They’re practically rolling out of bed in a daze and slide into the closest comfortable outfit that’s within an arm’s reach. Instead of picking out the perfect outfit and doing your hair and/or makeup, opt in to getting an additional hour of sleep!

9. You gotta learn some *Self Control*
Self control is for those shameless Netflix junkies and masters of social media. It’s for students who type “facebook.com” as if it’s second nature on their internet browser. Self Control is a free app that blocks specific websites for a set number of hours. Deleting the app won’t cause the clock to run out— once you set the timer there is no turning back. On my Self Control, I have nordstrom.com, uo.com, facebook.com, netflix.com, and sometimes soundcloud.com. We’re all guilty of a bit of procrastination… But when it’s crunch time, just know you have a little help with Self Control.

10. DEMOLISH those finals

I said demolish– not bomb (those two words intimate monumental differentiation and certainly do not have the same meaning) !!

Good luck and, as always, Fight On! <3