The most dreaded time of the year has arrived — finals week. Students are now starting to buckle down and study for their exams, as the first finals begin Friday. In preparation for the hard days ahead, Student Affairs and Enrollment Management has put together a “Survival List” of activities to help students through this stressful time. Each day, from Wednesday until May 14, events geared toward relieving stress from final exams will be held across campus.
Throughout the week, there will be pancake breakfasts, visiting therapy dogs, coffee breaks, free snacks in the Campus Health Lobbies, extended tutoring hours at the Think Tank and free massages. The events list with dates and times can be found on the Student Affairs and Enrollment Management website.
The Main Library is one spot on campus that is only growing more crowded as the week goes on.
“We looked at the gate counts for our libraries this past week compared to the first week of March, which was selected to represent a typical week,” said Travis Teetor, operations manager for Access and Information Services at the Main Library. “We discovered that we had 75 percent more people pass through the gates at the entrance of all our libraries.”
Teetor said he believes the library has recently become a popular place to study because there are so many different locations where individuals can settle down, such as group study rooms available for reservation and the new silent study room on the third floor. Throughout the day, students from an array of majors flock to the library and ask for assistance finding books. Teetor said because of the large amount of students the librarians interact with, it is difficult to pick out the majors or classes that frequent the library most often.
The Think Tank is another location on campus where it is obvious that finals time is rolling around.
“There is always a highlighted sense of anticipation in the Think Tank as finals approach,” said Dorothy Briggs, Think Tank director. “Finals are the culmination of a semester of hard work.”
Students come to the Think Tank throughout the year for help on everything from homework to larger exams, but finals are what bring in the largest numbers to the tutoring rooms.
“Students are anxious about finals for many reasons,” Briggs said. “Certainly, there is concern about how they will do and about how to best prepare, but there are positive reasons to be anxious, too. The positive reasons include excitement about being one step closer to realizing a major goal and anticipation of summer jobs, classes or internships.”
In order to help students in the next two weeks, the Think Tank has organized many events that will aid students with taking finals, including a finals preparation workshop, a writing palooza and extended math tutoring hours.
Life in the dorms is also becoming more hectic and quiet, as students are beginning to buckle down and focus on their studies. The Residence Hall Association is another organization that regularly supports students during finals.
“We try to offer programs that are both relaxing and reflective,” said Lysette Davis, community director for the Residential Honors Experience. “The resident assistants work hard to plan events and programs that are engaging and meaningful to wrap up the year.”
The semester’s finals are not only a test of all the knowledge that students have acquired over the past semester, but also represent this academic year coming to a close. For some, that may be frightening, while others may be excited. Either way, Residence Life tries to create events to make this transition period easier for students. Davis, who is also a UA graduate student, offered a piece of advice for students aiming to ace their finals.
“Change your Netflix password; get off of Facebook and Snapchat,” Davis said. “If you can practice focusing for periods of time without technology, it will help you for those long finals. For residents living on campus, be courteous to your neighbors who may have a big presentation or paper due by reducing noise volume.”
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