Tag Archives: finals

Final Papers and Summer 2018 Plans

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Based on my time spent here at Trinity and the number of assignments I have turned in, you would think I had done absolutely nothing since arriving here. The truth is, I have read nearly ten full length books, in addition to poetry and other excerpt readings, but have not had any essays to turn in. For many courses at Trinity, your only assessment is a final paper at the end of the semester. Some courses have final exams as well, but as a visiting student I only need to submit a paper by December 15. During the former part of the semester, this fact made my time feel much more leisurely, as I was just focused on completing the readings assigned to me and, when I could, reading ahead. This made my weekends freer and I could relax, spend time with friends, and even travel! Now, as the end of the semester is looming, I am realizing just how much work I have to do before I leave (similar to how Joey must have felt in this scene).

Because the credit system is different in Ireland and I have to take enough credits to be considered a full time student back at Scripps, I am taking six courses. This means that I have to write six essays by December 15.

As I mentioned in some of my earlier posts, professors have distributed essay topics and even had assignments where we were required to think about our topics and even write an outline for what we wanted to discuss. I have just had another professor do this and I am very grateful to him for it because it will help give me some extra motivation to get a start on some rather daunting deadlines.

While on the topic of looking towards the future, I have started thinking about what I might want to do during summer 2018. Although it seems far off, applications for internships and lab positions are already being posted, many of which are due early next semester. If only applying was as easy as the gif below suggests. 

Because I am a chemistry major, I will need to do research in a lab that I will later write my thesis on. I have found many programs that offer lab positions for undergraduate students that I am interested in, where the next step is to figure out which ones I will apply to. My list is currently very long, so I will need to narrow it down. I found a position through the National Institute for Health that I am particularly interested in, as it focuses on public health, something that I have been interested in learning more about.

My current worry is whether or not that would produce enough hard data for me to write my thesis on it. If not, I have many other options, and may even end up in Claremont to do my research. This is when I am very grateful that I have the advisor I do, as I know he will be supportive in helping me make a decision that best suits my academic interests and future goals. I am also grateful for the other resources that Scripps provides in helping with these sorts of decisions, such as CP&R, which has helped me with internship applications in the past.

If you are worried about summer plans, please know that you have a kindred spirit in me. If you are feeling lost, please don’t hesitate to contact me or the staff at CP&R. That’s what they’re there for, and they are awesome! Cheers to the final weeks!

Final Papers and Looming Deadlines

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Hello Scripps! I hope all is well in Southern California. The weather here in Dublin has been getting chillier, and I’ve been wearing, wait for it…. scarves! And a coat! Both of which are practically anomalies in Southern California.

As I’m sure it is for you all in Claremont, things are ramping up here in Dublin and professors have already started to discuss final papers. Eep!

Here at Trinity, and at many European institutions, humanities courses are graded based on just one, or occasionally two, essays that students turn in at the end of the semester. This past week, my professors have begun talking about these final essays and I‘ve found myself feeling more stressed than I have been all term. The fact that we are halfway through the term has set in, and the fact that I have to write six long papers has done a good job of scaring me into beginning to think about my essay topics.

Thankfully, most of my professors have given us assignments that require us to start thinking about potential topic ideas. This is convenient, as I’ve now had to start thinking about my topics and will receive feedback from my professors as well.

This is somewhat different from Scripps, where I will often stop by office hours to talk with a professor and discuss an idea for my essay. Here, where the class sizes are so large, it is hard to get individual attention during office hours. Thus, having a piece of writing that contains your topic ideas allows them to give you feedback and is a sort of substitute for that one-on-one time you might be used to in office hours.

I have also found that catching professors after class can be more effective if you aren’t able to make their office hours, or if they are too crowded for a one-on-one conversation. If I have a quick question about something that was discussed during the lecture, I will stay after to ask the professor, which I find to be most effective because the idea is fresh in my brain and then I don’t have to worry about trying to get to their office hours. Just like the professors at Scripps and the 5Cs, professors at Trinity are always more than happy to discuss topics from the lecture or answer any questions you have about the material.

One thing I was nervous about, coming to Trinity, was how accessible the professors would be, and they have proven to be very accessible. Particularly when it comes to emailing, I was warned that oftentimes, professors wouldn’t respond promptly and was nervous that I would have a hard time getting in touch with them. I don’t think I’ve ever gone more than 24 hours without receiving a response from a professor, which I would compare to the response time of professors at Scripps and was very pleased that it didn’t live up to its expectations.

As it’s the middle of the semester at Scripps as well, I’d like to empathize with those back home. Even though I’m in a different country and have been able to travel, I’m still spending my days in the library, doing lots of reading and writing, so just to emphasize that it’s not all play over here.

Please let me know if you’d like to talk with me about Trinity or study abroad; I’d be happy to share about my time here!

Beating Finals Week Ahead of Time

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There is a lot of stress building up as we move into finals week, so I have started compiling a list of ways to combat that stress and use time productively.

  • I normally try not to reward myself for finishing another page on my essay or finishing a worksheet, by watching an episode of TV or scrolling through Facebook, because it often disrupts my thought process. But I feel that in times where stress is high and you’re working on so many things at one time, it can help to give yourself a break once you meet some sort of deadline that you’ve set for yourself. It is also proven that you should not study for too long without a break, as your brain can only focus for so long on the same thing. Taking short breaks will keep your mind fresh and help deter writer’s block and other lethargic thought processes. This leads me to my next point…                               
  • Set small deadlines for yourself. If you can make some sort of schedule that plans out small workloads for each day leading up to a final exam or paper, it will make everything you have to accomplish seem much more manageable. In order to organize yourself, it often helps to write down everything you want to get done and then write out when you will do each item on your list. This always helps relieve stress for me because I generally only have one thing to do on each day leading up to an exam and then I am not cramming.
  • Besides your small rewards for meeting smaller deadlines, it is so important to take time to relax. It may be hard to find the time to do so, but it is very beneficial in the long run. Allowing time for your brain to rest, allowing yourself to think and talk about something that is not directly related to your studies, can help rejuvenate your brain.
  • Eat well and get some exercise! Food and physical activity can help reduce stress so much. Exercising will help produce endorphins, which are natural mood elevators, while also reducing the cortisol levels. Certain foods can make you feel bloated and uncomfortable after you eat, which makes it harder to study and stay focused. Eating protein will help keep your brain sharp and fruits and veggies will help keep your eyes focused.
  • Make sure you are drinking water! I always seem to have a problem with this and find that I feel so much better when I drink more water. Whether or not I’m actually less stressed is questionable, but I do feel good about drinking something that I know is healthy.                                                          
  • Stick to your schedule once you’ve made it. It’s so easy to forget about it or lose yourself in other tasks when there’s a lot going on, but making sure you follow your list for the day will help make sure that you get everything done. This will help reduce stress, simply because you aren’t waiting until the last minute to accomplish these tasks.

Have any tips for the weeks leading up to finals? Share/comment below!

Coffee, Coffee, Coffee: Finding Warm Comfort During Finals

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Earlier this week, I found myself attempting to count sheep and invite sleep at 3:00am with no luck.  I was exhausted, but my eyes wouldn’t stay shut, and my brain simply wouldn’t turn off.  Finals and projects and papers and homework and assignment after assignment danced behind by closed eyelids.  As I continuously tried to slip into dreamland to prepare for my early morning internship, I found myself craving a good cup of coffee.  Strange, I thought, that I would be craving something to keep me awake as I was falling asleep.  After another few minutes of pondering, I realized that it wasn’t caffeine that I was craving, it was the comfort of a warm, familiar beverage at a time of stress and anxiety.  I eventually fell asleep and enjoyed my cup o’ joe in the morning.

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Continuing with this coffee theme, yesterday at my internship there were a variety of new faces and protocols coming at me from left and right.  I felt overwhelmed and stressed (likely brought on from dehydration, exhaustion, and a plethora of other factors that seem to plague me in these dark days), and I once again felt myself craving coffee, a comfy chair, and a warm blanket.  Like a ray of sun shining through my cloudy, anxious morning, I was then literally sent on an office coffee run for the first time in my intern career, and I won’t lie, my triple shot latte made me feel warm, fuzzy, and wired.

These types of comfort cravings have been happening a lot lately. I find myself thinking about warm places, blankets, and other aspects of comfort constantly. With finals just around the corner, and final projects and papers and everything in between popping up every hour, a little bit of comfort is all my body seems to want, need, and crave.  Because instilling in myself a sense of comfort can often come from something as simple as a cup of coffee or tea or a blanket, I’ve been really trying this finals season to give myself the security that I’ve been craving.

And with that, I reach my big point of this post. We spend so much of the semester and our academic year being uncomfortable.  Our ideas are constantly challenged, we are academically pushed, and we can even be socially strained at times. I do believe that we are all the stronger because of these things, but it doesn’t mean that we are invincible.  In a space where we are so stressed and overwhelmed, the small moments of undeluded comfort are things that we should take, cherish, and enjoy.  Self-care and mental and emotional health are so important always, but finals week is typically when they start to go down the drain.  As the lack of sleep and the heightened feelings of anxiety and stress kick in, we tend to go into survival mode, but survival mode needn’t be wholly terrible.  This finals week, I know that you’re already being challenged so much, but still I challenge you to find comfort in the little things. Find comfort in the things that make you happy, find comfort in the things that bring you joy, and take that comfort and turn it in to hard work and passion, and finish the semester on a high note.

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Here’s to a productive and proactive finals season, and I wish you all the best of luck.  Have a good cup of coffee under a blanket for me!

‘Tis The Season

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It’s that time of year again. Every ad on TV has a new spin on Santa or the perfect gift of the season. Even though it seems far too warm (for my East-coast self) to declare it the holidays, the houses decked in golden twinkly lights and pop-up Christmas tree lots have decided otherwise. My Spotify has started suggesting the ‘Holiday Hits’ playlists again, but it feels hard to get into a festive spirit when I glance at my planner.

Every day that my countdown-to-home calendar ticks down, my stress levels rise as it means one day closer to home, but one day fewer to finish the remaining mountain of papers, projects and finals. The more I stare at my planner, the less and less plausible it seems that there enough hours left to get everything done. Along with thinking about internships, study abroad and staying on top of extracurricular commitments, I’m sort of searching for the “pause” button on the world (and cursing the evil-Kermit inside me who thought it would be okay for me to take a break over Thanksgiving).

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Me: You should start getting ahead over the Thanksgiving holiday. Me to me: “You’ll have plenty of time after break. Ignore it all.”

Not gonna lie, I reached that time of year when I found myself in a professor’s office, reaching for the blurry outline of a Kleenex box through barely-suppressed tears. Partially because I was confused about the assignment, but mostly because I had let myself think about everything due for the rest of the semester at once.

Seeing page after page of inevitable work stack up and loom over me at once is a great recipe for me to curl up in bed in the fetal position, scrolling through BuzzFeed until I’ve mindlessly absorbed every article and Tasty video published in the last week.

New plan. As unreliable as Post-It notes may be as an agenda, I needed to break down projects into smaller parts. A tip slightly stolen from my wonderful roommate, I took a sticky for each project so I could see it on its own, and broke the project down into smaller parts. Smaller blocks makes it a little easier for me to see progress without drowning in everything all at once.

If online is more your thing, Trello is also an awesome tool to make due dates seem less daunting. It allows you to create cards or checklists for each element of a project that you can color code and “cross off” your list each time you complete a part of the list. Something about the fact that it’s an app makes the agenda look more fun and less-frenzy inducing than my planner sometimes does.

Breaking everything down into bits helps, but not nearly as much as being surrounded by a supportive environment. The positive Post-It notes scattered around Toll are a tiny reminder that it’s all going to work out, and that I am truly lucky to be in this space, as stressful as it feels in this moment. Friends and bosses at work have made sure to remind me that grades do not define you, that the majority of campus is also in a similar state, and that it will be break very, very soon.

We’ll make it through the next few weeks, even if it’s just one little step at a time. In the meantime, I’ll trying to play a few Christmas carols to try and channel that positive holiday spirit (maybe interspersed with my serious studying playlist?).

https://open.spotify.com/user/spotify/playlist/7CG7k1hXjVmeYMdt8lQRa7