Students make the most of workshops before finals

About 30 students attended “Making the Most of Finals Week,” one of the workshops in the Fall 2007 College and Life-Long Learning Workshops series Tuesday night at the Teter Quad.\nThe workshop, which was put on by the Student Academic Center, specifically focused on organizing time to study for finals.\n“It is a hectic and stressful time, so we are offering very practical suggestions to allow people to feel that they are controlling the time rather than the other way around,” said Matt Van Hoose, School of Education instructor and discussion leader. “Ideally, this is a time when above and beyond all the stress, people can appreciate how much they’ve learned in the course of a semester, and that can only happen by being proactive and confronting that in a strategic way.”\nFreshman Matthew Keach attended the workshop and said he felt it was very helpful because of all the added pressure of receiving good grades.\n“I’m pretty nervous about finals because it weighs so much on the final grade,” Keach said. “He explained how to plan accordingly well.”\nOther students also said the tips presented in the workshop were beneficial.\n“The session offered helpful hints on how to do better,” said senior Ashley Norman, “It had a lot of ideas on how to prepare and for time management.”\nThe best advice the workshop instructors gave the students was similar on all sides. \n“Take the time to thoughtfully schedule your studies from here until your last exam and create that schedule on a critical assessment on where each exam falls in a prioritizing ranking,” Van Hoose said, “And breathe.”\nGraduate teaching associate Brandi Kraft, who also helped organize the workshops, agreed with Van Hoose.\n“Breathing is good. The most important thing for most is to remember (is) to eat and sleep during finals,” Kraft said. “There is a difference between two hours and eight hours and how well you’ll function.”\nThis workshop was the last of this semester, but more will be offered in the spring. For more information, go to http://www.indiana.edu/~sac/programs.html.