Seminars Help Students Conquer Tough Schedules

As the semester ends stress levels begin to rise due to finals. For freshmen, this is their first time dealing with the stress that final exams bring on. For everyone else, it is just another opportunity to try and remember everything we were supposed to have “learned” this semester.

With exams only three weeks away there is help for students who need it. The Center for Academic Enrichment and Excellence held a seminar Tuesday Nov. 6 to cover the topic “Making it through the final stretch.”

This is just one of the many seminars the CAEE is presenting to help students reach academic success. Students can come for multiple reasons.

“I was worried about my final exams,” freshman biology major Christine Van Duyn said. “[thought] maybe it would give me some pointer.”

Julie Hopkins, a gradate student at Virginia Tech, lead a group of students through some tips to make the up coming weeks easier to handle.

“ A lot of times students come to college and they have known how to study in high school but they don’t know how to study when they get to college because its different,” Hopkins said. “Just coming in and hearing some things about how to be successful in college helps students.”

Hopkins makes the seminar very inviting and her warm personality allows students to open up about the anxiety they may be feeling.

Hopkins gives several tips on how to study, visit your professor, take care of yourself, and even how to cram even though you shouldn’t. Time management is a priority when beginning to study for finals. Students should know what they need to study and plan their time wisely in order to fit everything in. Making good use of reading day is also important to get a good start.

Talking to professors about how they will structure the exam and what students can do to achieve their desired grade is also helpful.

Students should be very aware of taking care of themselves. Eating right and taking breaks is an equally important thing to do during exam time. In order to study you must be healthy. Too much stress can lead to a loss in concentration and illness will make studying almost impossible.

Students find these seminars helpful.

“It definitely gave me a couple of tips up my sleeve,” sophomore marketing management major Thomas Medina said.

“It’s really cool, it’s really laid back I don’t want it to be like a lecture type format. All I can tell you is what worked for me,” Hopkins said. “It’s fun, it’s really good to come and kind of commiserate with people and be like ‘I’m really stressed about finals, none of my friends are and I don’t want to be the only one. It’s kind of like a support group.”

Students who need help can find multiple resources at the CAEE including tutoring and other weekly one-hour seminars. Found in Femoyer Hall the seminar for “making it through the final stretch” will be held 3 more times in the coming weeks, Nov. 8,12 and 15.