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Finals are upon us, friends don’t let friends procrastinate

It’s that time of year again. Students suddenly discover that they haven’t opened their textbooks since midterms and they have six weeks of reading to catch up on.

As the finals crunch looms ahead, students are facing stress and anxiety in preparation for final exams.

Jared Moreno, a liberal studies major, said there are differences between finals given at the community colleges he has attended and Cal State Long Beach.

“A majority of the finals in junior college are multiplechoice, where you know the answers are somewhere, your A through C,” Moreno said. “A lot of finals here at Long Beach are essay questions, where if you don’t know the answer, you’re screwed.”

While transfer students have some experience dealing with finals at the collegiate level, freshman students can feel overwhelmed by the experience.

Marcella Arroyo, a freshman business and accounting major, is definitely feeling the finals pressure.

“In the back of my head I’m like ‘oh crap, I have to study’ and I’m not doing it,” Arroyo said. “I have to write down my final [test] dates because I have no idea when they are.”

Studying for finals has changed during the transition from high school to college as well. It’s the first time Vanessa Oliva, a freshman art history major, has studied for finals in a group setting.

“In high school, the people in my classes were usually my friends,” Oliva said. “If we studied in groups, we would never have gotten anything done. Not knowing the people in the group forces you to study.”

Finding the will to set aside a time to focus on finals is an obstacle that many students have to overcome.

“I should find all my notes, if I wrote any,” Arroyo said. “Man, I suck at this whole class thing.”

Arroyo is not alone in her frustration. This consistent trend of procrastination is a contributing factor to student stress. The definition of procrastination is to avoid a “specific task or work that needs to be accomplished,” according to the “Overcoming Procrastination” pamphlet given out by the Counseling and Psychological Services at CSULB.

“I’m a big procrastinator, so I waited till the last minute to turn in a lot of my assignments,” Moreno said.

“I meant to start studying last week but I started studying today,” Oliva said.

Many students are accustomed to cramming during the few days before finals rather than spreading out review time over a series of weeks.

“As far as studying goes, I study a lot the night before my exam,” Moreno said. “That’s basically what I do.”

Pulling all-nighters is nothing new to students, but it can be detrimental to retaining information needed in order to perform well on finals. Deborah Bernal, a nurse of Student Health Services at CSULB, said lack of sleep will affect how well students remember and process information.

“You’re going to feel tired all over the body, but the most important thing for a student would be that the neurotransmitters that are very important for learning, for retention, for focusing [are] diminished,” Bernal said.

While he thinks spreading out study time is more efficient, Moreno isn’t sure whether he could essentially follow this learning regimen.

“I think it’s a lot easier to study ahead of time, but I don’t know what the chances are of me actually doing that,” Moreno said.

Arroyo is more optimistic about her study habits.

“I’ll work on this whole school thing next semester.”

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