By: Mitali Chaudhary

It’s time for sweatpants, bruised-looking under-eyes, and the I-just-woke-up hair: it’s midterm season. Luckily, exactly 95.87% of the stress can be avoided this year by these helpful DON’Ts for the midterms.

1. Start watching another season of whatever TV show you enjoy binging on.

There’s no use in rationalizing the hours you plan to spend on Netflix, or convincing yourself of the reason you need to watch one more episode. You know it in your bones that there’s no way you’re stopping at “one more episode”.

2. Take five-minute Facebook/Tumblr/Reddit breaks.

They’re never five minutes long – the range is more like one to two hours – and you know it. It’s no use even getting on those sites in the first place because they suck you in. No one enjoys that soul-crushing post-surfing oh-my-god-I-wasted-so-much-time-on-the-internet guilt either but we all still do it. Because this activity is so addicting, it’s better not to engage in it in the first place, since we clearly get transported into another dimension where time always breaks the speed limit.

3. Put yourself through six-hour, no-break study blitzes.

Especially the night before the midterm. Although it may seem like a good idea when it first crosses your panic-stricken brain, it’s an extremely counter-productive practice. On average, the human brain can focus on a single task for no more than a stretch of 45 minutes. Taking short, frequent breaks while studying gives the brain some time to absorb what it just learned and gets it ready for another informational onslaught.

4. Become a total hermit.

Sitting in your room all day, only coming out to forage for food, is tiresome. We’re on the edge of Cootes Paradise! Taking short walks and getting some exercise into your schedule improves concentration, gets the heart pumping, and is a good way to spend a study break. It’s also a nice change of scenery—fall is beautiful at McMaster and it’s worth venturing out for before winter comes our way.

5. Procrastinate.

Okay that sounds like the most “duh” DON’T, but avoiding it is the best way to succeed during any time of the year. Dividing your hours up into study and break time as well as time to eat and sleep (good nights of sleep are key!) will help you focus on one thing at a time and keep you on track. Honestly, the hardest part about this is making a realistic schedule—you just have to stick to it afterwards, which is pure willpower. The feeling of satisfaction that comes with completing all your tasks in a day is worth it, I promise.

And with these five tips, as well as some smart studying, you’ll be able to breeze past midterm season with ease to face the more dreaded finals. You’re welcome.

Jason Woo
The Silhouette

You are human bromodosis. You are the guy who pees in the urinal right next to mine despite there being other empty urinals. You are the opposite of Robert Downey Jr.

All joking aside, you are the worst.

Every year I tell myself that I shouldn’t hold you to such a high standard – after all, Halloween was pretty amazing this year, especially with all the Miley Cyrus costumes parading around. But here you go again, proving me wrong year after year.

In my work-induced fits of anger, I’ve come to realize that I hate you because you’re an incredible tease. The weather is too cold for fall fashion but too warm for winter wear. Sometimes it looks like you might unleash some snow, but instead you either let the rain drizzle or sprinkle us with some hail.

And then there’s what you do to me and my relationship with school, or lack thereof. With exams around the corner, I should be looking into studying, but instead I am clobbered by a wave of assignments and projects. This in turn means I’m spending an awful (correction: deathly tragic) amount of my time in the library, where I can gaze out the window at 6 p.m. to let my mind innocently wander… only to see nothing but a pitch black sheet of doom. I don’t understand the trade of one extra hour for what seems like an eternity of darkness.

Sometimes I decide to head over to Starbucks, where Christmas drinks are back and maybe the baristas will comfort me with their recommendation to enjoy a sweet today, to which I always say yes. At the end of my drink, however, I’m really just reminded that it’s November, and alas, these red cups are a part of the teasing nature of this dreadful month.

I’ve also had to retire my bike because it’s too cold, so now I have to walk like a caveman. In my walks, often marked by philosophical musings, I get to see just how drab the world around me is. Most of the leaves have fallen off the trees and the colourful fall hues have all faded to a monotonous grey.

Maybe I’m not giving you enough credit, November. After all, it’s through collective complaints about you that I have bonded with many friends. Nothing like some good ol’ fashioned talking behind a month’s back to bring us all together.

I would love to talk more about how awful you are, but I have a paper to hand in tonight. Thanks for that.

Feel free to leave whenever your cold heart desires,

A struggling student

Karen Piper
The Silhouette

Every year I listen to fellow students ramble on about how stressful midterms can be and the burden they have to bear of earning a reasonably ‘good’ grade on these seemingly purposeful academic assessments. Well, with Fall 2013 being my first term at McMaster, I generally had a positive attitude towards midterms and vowed my best to study hard and perform exceptionally well.

Of course, that is in a fairytale world where Thanksgiving break does not exist right before most midterms, where there are no group assignments due during the same period and one where you actually have no other life besides school. Needless to say, every one of us has multiple responsibilities, some more paramount than others.

However, should we blame our poor performance on midterm examinations on the fact that we have other commitments?  Now, please do not misinterpret this previous statement, I am well aware of the fact that many students do work tirelessly and subsequently do achieve exceptionally good grades. Nonetheless, every time I hear a conversation about midterms, it mainly has negative connotations.

Why is this so? Are we ashamed to admit that we do not have proper time management skills or that we failed to attend many of our classes during the first half of the term?

In Organizational Behavior (Commerce 2BA3), there is a unit called ‘Self Serving Bias’ which states that one generally has the propensity to take full credit for successful outcomes and deny responsibility for failures. Therefore, if we receive a good grade on one midterm, we accept all the praise and recognition associated with that outcome.

On the other hand, if our grade is disappointing, we tend to blame this outcome on the ‘poor teaching strategies’ of the professor, confusing terminology on the exam and so forth. As a student myself, after receiving a few midterm grades last week which were less than outstanding, I decided to do some self-reflection; for once I stopped blaming external factors for my “average” performance and decided that I needed to take full responsibility for my below par performance.

I suggest that we all do the same. It is true that midterms are unfortunately always around the Thanksgiving period. During this time, we would rather forget about our academic responsibilities and viagra canada online spend quality time with our family and loved ones. And who can blame us?

However, maybe if we developed an efficient study-schedule that commenced at least a week or two before Thanksgiving, we wouldn’t be tangled in a dichotomy between studying and turkey. Ample use of plenty idle time during the first few weeks of the term can save students from a lot of unnecessary stress and anxiety come mid-October.

In other words, procrastination is our biggest downfall. Our saving grace should be learning from our past midterm experiences and developing a plan to perform better each year by strategizing how we are going to manage our study time. Having said this, many midterms are now over! Whew! It is almost pointless to agitate over what we could have done better.

Now is the time to enforce new, productive habits that will lead to a better performance in the final examinations. I will leave you with a quote that has great meaning to me and is quite relevant to university life: “It is not about how many times you fail, but how many times you strive to succeed after failure.”

Emma Suschkov
The Silhouette

Remember in high school when there were tests and assignments due all the time?  female viagra cream Each was worth about 5% so they really piled ‘em on. And yet somehow, everyone made it through reasonably well.

Skip forward to university. Tons of people (myself included) have a day off and there are only a couple of assignments in each course per semester (generally). So it should be manageable, right?

It all feels so manageable until that one week comes when I have four midterms, two essays, and a lab due. The week draws closer and closer and it seems as though the muscles in my shoulders will never relax again. How much does a massage cost? (Don’t be ridiculous, I don’t have time for a massage right now.)

I always tell myself to start studying and working early but no matter what, there is always last-minute cramming. I subconsciously attempt to solve calculus equations while writing an essay on autopilot. Then I read over what I wrote and it’s absolute gibberish and on top of that I still have no idea what calculus is. How can I possibly be expected to know all of this information? All of the subjects are just running together.

I keep getting advice – make sure you get enough sleep, take breaks every so many minutes, blah, blah, blah – but I can’t make time for something so unnecessary as sleep when there’s a month-and-a-half’s worth of five courses’ subject matter to learn.

So, midterms, the point is this: can you try the steady trickle method instead of always coming in a sudden flood? I’m drowning, here. Help us out a little!

Pleading again for academic mercy,

Stressed Stacey

1. Say adieu to technology. Facebook and your phone are you two worst enemies, because they distract you before, during, and after you check it. Turn off yo’ phone (or at least put it some place far, far away… preferably in the hands of someone else who you semi-trust). Turn off yo’ WiFi. And hide yo’ kids.
2. Play music without words. Lyrics are very distracting because it makes you want to sing along as if you suddenly possess the voice of Shania Twain. That said, some people tend to focus better if they’re listening to music since classical music can put you to sleep entirely. So pull out your favourite Hans Zimmer score and pray that Inception really works.
3. Watch a YouTube video if you’re lost. No, not ‘What Does The Fox Say?’ There are many educational video channels, like Khan Academy, that go through a variety of academic subjects. They can be particularly helpful if you are bored of reading and need to cram learn a concept in 15 minutes or less.
4. Read the summary and important concepts sections of the textbook. They go over what was taught in the chapter without all the extraneous details. Sure you may miss out on these details, but this way you at least have something to put in your answer on a test rather than an impassioned plea to your grader.
5. Find someone in your class to teach you. If your classmate is on top of things he’ll be more likely to understand why you’re confused. If he’s not, talking about concepts still clarifies and reinforces understanding. Sidebar: Don’t pick the person you’re trying to wheel – your crush will be a distraction and you don’t need to look like an idiot in front of them anyway.
6. Depending on the subject, do practice problems. Some practice problems will go over the major types of questions that will likely show up on a test step by step. Write down the strategies that the textbook uses.
7. Avoid rereading your notes. The best way to learn is to engage with material. Write an outline of an important concept, do some practice problems, then use your notes to fill in what you missed.
8. Complain less. Do more. Complaining about studying makes for a cathartic bonding experience, but all that time can be better spent actually studying. So get it all out in 5 minutes, then get back to work.
9. Take a break. A 20-minute break to go make a cup of tea will do wonders. Your brain simply isn’t built to work hard for hours and hours. This time can also be spent making a delectable study snack consisting of Nutella and banana slices atop a waffle.
10. Sleep. If you have a headache and nothing is going through your brain, get some sleep and wake up earlier the next day. It’s a waste of time to sit at the table and not absorb any knowledge while getting increasingly frustrated.

Amanda Watkins
LifeStyle Editor

The next few months are going to be consistently hard. And if the stress of the last few weeks has left you with little playtime and makes you want to break and/or burn things, perhaps a new calming routine may be in order.

This beloved Pinterest favourite intended for asshole children who can’t control temper tantrums, can also work wonders on your own case of the terrible twenties. This mixture provides a mesmerizing snow globe-like product that is a surefire way to calm down the midterm-induced fire of your soul. Watch the glittery concoction swirl around the jar and feel yourself drift into a state of ease and relaxation. Mix together this almost fail-proof solution and use it to put your stress at bay.

What you will need:

-       PVA glue (if you watched Art Attack, you will know what this means)

-       Boiling hot water

-       Loose glitter

-       Food colouring

-       Mason jar or empty clear container (i.e. peanut butter jar, cleaned)

Directions:

-       Fill up a little over ¾ of the jar with boiling hot water.

-       Add 2/3 of the bottle of glue to the jar. Stir.

-       Add in a generous amount of glitter

-       Throw in a few drops of food colouring until the mixture is your desired colour. Stir again.

-       Seal the container. I cannot stress this enough, make sure the jar is CLOSED. If you really need to, seal the lid to the jar with super glue. The last thing you want is a boiling hot mixture of coloured glue spilling all over yourself.

-       Give it a good shake.

-       Watch the mesmerizing patterns of the glitter as it moves around the goopy substance.

This concept may sound insane, but if crying alone in Thode or screaming at innocent passerby’s has become a regular activity for you, a calm jar may help control those genuinely insane outbursts. Embrace this toddler-approved anger management tool, and find yourself on a path to self-control. Or at least have fun making a craft.

By October, most of us have midterms splattered like bullet shots across our calendar. It’s a violent, yet universal truth. Now don’t get me wrong. I am very much a fan of the several weeks marked by transitioning colours that blend so perfectly into the backgrounds of our Instagram documentations of Pumpkin Spice Lattés. But this fine autumn month, sprinkled with midterms like the cinnamon atop your latté generally demands a heavy overhaul of organization systems. Gone are the days of taking apart your entire desk and piles of binders and notebooks before the eve of the midterm, because LifeStyle is going to get you as organized as you are in your dreams! (Just go with the flow in that you dream of organizing your desk.)

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First up, tackling the workspace. Everyone knows that clutter is a distraction. Suddenly that note you doodled on in last week’s lecture becomes a piece of art worth some serious contemplation. There is no time for philosophical and slightly narcissistic musings over your own doodle. Remove any and all clutter! A clean space is a clean mind, and a clean mind can stow away all of the lovely information you wish to keep there much more efficiently. You don’t have to necessarily purge yourself of all clutter, some may be worth a lot of money one day, but at the very least put it aside for the couple hours you’ve devoted to studying. Grab a basket or box and place it underneath your desk.

Currently, my textbooks, binders, and notebooks alike are in a dangerously high pile atop my printer. This is not an organization tip to abide by. In fact, you should avoid it all costs. If you were to follow in my future footsteps though, they would take you to the land of all things Swedish – IKEA. Several pieces are of minimal cost and worth crucial investment. I’m going out on a limb here saying that a magazine rack, or some shelving unit at all, is pretty much vital to your academic existence. Fortunately, staying on a budget is never an ordeal in IKEA, and we’ve even compiled a few must-see items for you on our tumblr.

Now that your desk appears less like a pigpen (no judgment here) and more like a high-powered CEO’s office (your Porsche is waiting outside), let’s get down to the mental business of eliminating your technically immortal enemy known as procrastination. A business cannot run smoothly without some concept of time, because how could you forget? Time is money, and time is precious. Without visualizing how many days left until that next midterm or assignment, it could be disturbingly easy to slip into the lackadaisical yet urgent state of catching up on (insert your weakness in terms of TV shows here). A day timer and calendar can be used to squash this temptation, especially if you colour code each test date in a colour that screams out, “URGENT” to you, like blood red or bellowing blue.

On the note of visualizing how much time you have left, make your goals and prizes just as eye-catching! If there is a post-midterm celebration requesting your attendance, draw yourself and your friends as a rowdy bunch of stickmen with joyously colourful letters saying, “FUN AWAITS.” Or a simplistic print out of a dessert you will soon devour.

Last but not least, the world of technology can be rewired into a palace of productivity. Apps are now your angels. The Ananke Timer will reveal your weaknesses – both the known and the unknown – in that it shows you just exactly how much time you spend on “Facebook breaks” after all. Secondly, there’s Stay Focused, which sets a time limit on certain websites before it blocks you for the day. Suddenly tumblr became a precious commodity to me. Lastly, the most cruel and twisted of all for any one who is deadly serious about stopping procrastination in its tracks: Write or Die. Essentially you can be on gentle mode, normal mode, or kamikaze mode, dependent on how serious you are. Gentle mode simply gives you sweet reminders if you stop writing. Normal mode ensures continuous writing with an alarm. Kamikaze mode will literally erase what you wrote if you choose to stop writing. A little masochistic for my liking, but everyone needs a little (correction: deathly) push, right?

Keep on studyin’ and keep on smilin’ (to the best of your ability).

Be sure to check out our tumblr for some sweet additions to organizing yo’ life (including some playlists to choose from to get the brainy juices flowing).