Although we all strive to do well on our midterms this should not occur at the expense of our physical and mental well-being
With exam season fast approaching, many students are slowly starting to forget about their own well-being. All-nighters, avoiding breaks and skipping meals will be the daily norm as libraries are filled to the brim with students focused on achieving one goal - getting a good grade.
Under the pressure of succeeding in rigorous university classes, students are forced to prioritize their GPAs above everything – but at what cost?
Under no circumstances is it okay to place your academics above your mental well-being, especially during high-stress periods like exam season. In fact, during times like these, it’s important to prioritize yourself to avoid psychological distress.
Under no circumstances is it okay to place your academics above your mental well-being, especially during high-stress periods like exam season. In fact, during times like these, it’s important to prioritize yourself to avoid psychological distress.
You should not be pushing through deteriorating mental health for the sake of an exam. By doing so, students are making themselves susceptible to psychological distress, academic burnout, and isolation from the damaged relationships. Indulging in these typical exam activities infrequently may be okay for the time being. However, when consistently making these activities common practice many long-term adverse health implications accompany that.
For example, you may have skipped lunch today because you have an exam at 4 p.m. You may think that using this extra time to study might help you do better on your exam than if you were to grab lunch.
In the short term, you are now starving during your exam which may distract you and make it difficult to concentrate on the exam. However, if you continue to skip meals you are putting yourself at risk for health issues such as mood swings and brain fog. Over time, more concerning consequences can arise too, like fainting and muscle loss, contributing to more illnesses that can cause you a trip to the emergency room.
Experiencing these extreme health implications will only worsen over time if students continue to study all night and isolate themselves from friends and family.
Even though exam season is riddled with anxiety and stress, it is important to understand that the habits we develop during these academically critical periods will have long-term negative impacts on our health. When our health is impacted, our performance on exams is also negatively impacted.
So, what really are the benefits of neglecting our wellbeing?
Although skipping study breaks may help you perform well on your first exam, it’s very likely that continuing these habits will prevent you from performing well on future exams. Additionally, you may begin to experience insomnia, psychological distress, and increased stress levels. Overall, these short-term practices not only have negative health implications in the long term, but they also impact your performance on exams as December progresses.
As hard as it may be, students should not sacrifice their well-being temporarily for exams as the consequences follow us well after. We must recognize that regardless of the intentions for indulging in these practices, there are very minimal benefits to experience during exam season.
We must recognize that regardless of the intentions for indulging in these practices, there are very minimal benefits to experience during exam season.
In fact, prioritizing our well-being can demonstrate academic benefits that will allow us to excel during exams. For example, eating nourishing meals throughout this stressful period can increase mental alertness and stabilize your energy levels allowing you to perform better on exams.
With exams quickly approaching, it's important to remember that sacrificing your well-being to upkeep an ideal GPA can lead to unhealthy habits appearing in the long-term concerns. Taking care of your health, such as eating well and taking breaks.
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By: Kaiwen Song
MCAT? Thank God that’s done! Autobiographical sketch? Just needs another look. Supplementary essays? Completed and edited! Now I just pray that my reference letters arrive on time.
This September, many of my peers and I applied to medical school through the Ontario Medical Schools Application System. In addition to the full application, OMSAS requires that three physical copies of completed reference letters be received by Oct. 1 — not sent by, not postmarked on, but received. Although many medical schools understand the variability of mail delivery times and use Oct. 1 as a flexible deadline, certain schools don’t. The University of Toronto medical school this year is notable for declaring on its FAQ page that if a reference letter arrives at OMSAS even just one day after the deadline, the corresponding application will not proceed to file review.
As you can imagine, the weeks leading up to the deadline were a very stressful time. In addition to taking the MCAT, completing our autobiographical sketch, and writing our supplementary essays, we also had to take all the necessary steps to ensure that our reference letters arrive on time. Unfortunately, as students, we can only do so much. We begin by asking our potential referees early to provide them with plenty of time to write it, as well as for the letters to arrive at OMSAS safely before Oct. 1 through the postal system.
As the deadline approaches, we start to send carefully worded reminders to our referees — forceful enough to express the reference letter’s importance, but restrained enough to not offend. Although we understand that our referees lead busy professional and personal lives and require time to complete the letter, we can’t help but feel uneasy since our entire applications are on the line. At the time, it felt supremely unnerving and frustrating – all of our hard work can be undone by something outside of our control.
Upon further reflection, I am surprised to say that I actually believe that the University of Toronto medical school’s strict deadline is fair. If the deadline was flexible, up to what point should reference letters to accepted? One week after the deadline? One month? There must be a clear deadline to ensure that all applications are processed in a timely manner, and Oct. 1 seems perfectly reasonable.
That being said, I would like to advocate for the change from physical reference letters being mailed in to electronic references sent through email. The biggest source of stress regarding references was the unpredictability of the postal system. Reference writers could send the letter weeks before the due date, but there’s still the chance that it could arrive later than the deadline, especially if the letter is coming from another province or country. If a letter is lost in the mail, students have no way of determining whether that occurred, and there may not be enough time after this discovery to ask for another letter. All of these issues can be addressed by switching to an electronic system, such as the one used by the United States’ undergraduate college application system. Students are asked to input their referees’ email addresses into the system, and their referees will receive a secure link in which to comment on the student’s suitability for their applied program. As soon as the reference letter is submitted, the student will receive notification of its completion.
An electronic system for receiving reference letters will streamline the process, reduce the anxiety of students at a very tumultuous time in their lives, and ensure that all applications can begin to be processed in a timely manner. As anyone can tell you, applying to medical school is hard enough already. Let’s not make it harder than it has to be.
Photo Credit: Ontario Universities' Application Centre
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Matthew Greenacre / Student Health Education Centre
One of the best pieces of advice given by a professor must have been when Dr. Valliant told his first year chemistry class about to take a midterm to “think by the seat of your pants.” Though it seems like an odd phrase, it makes sense. Often when students come to a question they find unfamiliar, something that they cannot remember studying, they get anxious and waste time sweating and fumbling to search their memory. Instead it helps a lot more to sit back, breathe, and think about the question. Just wing it. After all, it’s just a question, and this way you might reason through it.
Test anxiety, or simply worrying about presentations, papers, and readings can be absolutely debilitating. Students can easily become overwhelmed, fret about doing their work and wind up watching seasons and seasons of online TV instead of beginning a paper or cracking their textbook open. Then when there is no other option but to frantically pour over their notes, or pull an all-nighter writing, the student often winds up unhappy with their work. Finding yourself in this situation is not simply about intelligence, or a matter of having a poor work ethic. Indeed, it’s quite the opposite. It is the difference between striving for success and being driven by the prospect of failure. The subtle difference between these two states is all about one’s attitude to work. Being able to see it as a challenge that one will enjoy taking on, like a puzzle, or it can just be, well, hard work.
Making the switch can be much harder for some than others. For many students, it can be as simple as taking a deep breath during our exam, being okay with not knowing the answer, and then giving “thinking by the seat of your pants” a try. However, those who might find this unthinkable, and who have a lot of trouble quelling their anxiety on a day-to-day basis could really benefit from taking the time to sit back and actually clear their mind.
A long history of studies going back to pioneering work of Jon Kabat-Zinn (a professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School) in the 1970’s and ‘80’s have found that meditation reduces stress and anxiety, and even chronic pain. Now, before dismissing this article as a sneaky attempt to get you into saffron robes, lighting incense and hanging around with hippies, please note that meditation does not have to involve any of those things, unless you really want it to. It is really is more about taking a deep breath, letting go of your worry and being able to deal with your problems. Also, for most of us, stress is mental, not physical pain like as hunger, so it makes sense that we should be able to use our minds to release this stress.
Mindfulness-meditation in particular is about being able to let go of your fears by focusing on the moment. Because, when you think about it, fears are just a manifestation of the feeling that something bad will happen. By being in the moment you do not make those pessimistic assumptions in the first place. That does not mean that you no longer think the thoughts that worry you, but rather you just calmly choose not to follow these trains of thought. What is known as focused attention meditation is the painstaking practice of focusing on a single thing or sensation, noticing when you’ve been distracted by something else, and then bringing your attention back to what you are supposed to be focusing on. By practicing this, you train yourself to see the problem in front of you clearly, helping you figure out how to solve it, while learning not to automatically get nervous about the “what if’s.” Research at universities in Beijing, Oregon and Dalian have found that meditation effectively improves one’s attention and self-discipline, which is not surprising if one is spending an appreciable amount of time focusing intently on something very boring, such as breathing.
So given that, it’s understandable that meditation is not everyone’s cup of ginseng infusion, but if you are having trouble with stress it is important to take the time to deal with it. This time is never wasted, because less stress lets you focus and be more productive when you are doing work. Exercise is one of the best ways to relieve stress, as is spending time with friends. However, if you are interested in meditation resources to learn more about it and help you get started are posted on the SHEC Blog, which you can visit at www.shecmcmaster.tumblr.com.
