Keep Calm and Study On. How to Keep Your Cool During Academic Stress

I don’t know about you, but with the cold weather, I’m feeling a draft of overwhelming pressure brushing on my skin already.

This semester I’m taking five classes; I’m serving as president of two student organizations; I’m heavily involved with my Communication Studies department’s social media; and lastly I work as a social media intern at EMC.

Despite all these tasks, I’m very thankful for all these opportunities to enhance my education and experience. I don’t have anything to complain about.

But just like the weather, I can sometimes experience a storm of my own. I’ll never forget my junior year when I worked three part-time jobs and was a full-time student with a tough load of upper-division classes; I was new to this type of balancing act.I remember the scarce free time I had that was spent napping rather than studying and my grades began to drop. I was burned out and beyond #stressed.

Thankfully, after a minor breakdown and few big deep breaths later, I managed to stay calm and study on.  My grades dropped, but I still had a few weeks left to put it in the work to pass my classes. It’s never too late to pick yourself back up, especially in academics. This experience taught me how to balance my priorities and bounce back stronger during the toughest times.  Now that I am in my fifth year at SJSU, I can say that I have experience in every form of being #stressed, from late night studying, lack of sleep and nearly giving up on school. Having gotten this far in college and being a semester away from graduating, here is what I’ve learned to keep my cool during times of academic storms.

Schedule in study time like you do a date

Look at your syllabi or calendar of upcoming assignments and transfer them to a checklist. With your checklist you are able to see all the work that needs to be completed by a given deadline. With shorter checklists (extra time), add a new item to study any topic for a period of time. Completing assignments and scheduling study time will help prepare you for finals.

Join Study Groups

Being in an environment with other students who are studying helps you focus and do as you see. Going to the library with friends is a social motivation to tackle hours of studying together. Studying with peers for the same final is even more academically beneficial because it gives you the opportunity to repeatedly study the information you will all test for and maybe even expose you to other answers you might not have known otherwise.

Reflect on the ROI

Sometimes no strategy is effective enough to prevent the storm of academic stress. And that’s okay. If you’re not feeling stressed, than you’re not working or studying hard enough. College is supposed to challenge you in ways you’ve never experienced to shape you into a young professional who has successfully endured an academic career and is prepared for the workforce. The next time you decide between an hour of Netflix or an hour of reading, think of the possible return on investment for what you do: short-term guilty pleasure versus long-term knowledge and academic success.

Shout out to everyone feeling academically #stressed, I wish you luck and encourage you to keep calm and study on.

This post was written as part of the #Stressed series, which is tied to LinkedIn’s student editorial calendar. Follow the stories here or write your own.