Midterm week leaves one with a lack of eloquence or anything articulate to say - when one's head has been poured into a Biology book or sat with the same six sentences attempting to revise a final draft for a paper, a decent amount of intelligence exits the brain. Your diet switches to whatever the Bobst Library vending machine will give you with a Campus Cash swipe and you eat peanut M&M's when you're feeling healthy because they have more protein than the Skittles you've subsisted on in past days. Instead of a bed, you rely on the Lower Level couches in Bobst and hunt for the soft chairs in the Washington Square Starbucks like a lion searching for prey. You decide to block Facebook from your browser after you waste forty-five minutes clicking through photos of your old roommate's summer vacation instead of reading your notes on interviewing clients. You wonder if there is life outside of the anatomical photos in your biology book. As you hunker down in the Kimmel Center's excellent 7th floor study lounges, you look at the massive views of the Empire State building and wonder if you too will ever be able to walk amongst those of this world who have concerns that do not include meiosis and mitosis.
If you cannot tell, midterm week has given me my usual state of near-exam-time psychosis, yet as I culminate my sophomore fall semester deadlines, I have learned a few lessons about how to survive when you have more due dates than days in the week.
Lesson 1: McNally Jackson in Soho is probably the most productive place to pound out a paper. It's a quiet neighborhood, there is always space available, and you are in a room full of very interesting books that inspire you to type out a decent publication rather than rambling on while watching Gossip Girl in another window on your laptop.
Lesson 2: Themed music, however corny, can be extremely productive. I want to work with refugees and am endlessly inspired by the stories and strength of the population I am most interested in, Northeastern Africans. So it is a little known secret that I like to play some of my favorite musicians from that area when I am working on an ethnographic paper or plowing through a chapter on the Nervous System - even if it is not related to the assignment, it reminds me what I am working for.
Lesson 3: Sleep - as social workers, we learn the constant lesson of what happens to those who do not rest as much as they should and we hear about the dangerous toll that exhaustion takes on a body, yet we fail in actually doing it ourselves. But despite the fact that one is positive they will perform better if they stay awake till five AM and take an exam at 8 AM, statistics and personal experience show that passing out on your desk is not a key factor in passing a test.
Lesson 4: Work hard, then work a little harder. A good friend in Social Work informed me of this simple mantra she keeps typed into her phone and I am often reminded of it as I plan out my "study breaks" during midterm week. I am prone to rewarding myself for work I probably have not completed, such as taking an hour long trip to my favorite bakery (Milk Bar on 3rd) for cookies when I have only done about ten questions for a class. So now, when the craving for Corn Flake Marshmallow cookies arises, I tack on 30 extra minutes of studying before I allow myself to dig in.
Lesson 5: Don't panic. Panic is what makes you forget your #2 pencils when you enter a bubble-sheet only exam and panic is what pushes you to lose any sense of joy during the week.
Good luck!