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students studying imageHow to help during finals week

 

Final exams, along with reading week and thesis day, are among the most rigorous academic challenges at Reed. Parents can help guide their students through academic stress:

 

  • Encourage your student to talk about the stress and how he or she is coping with specific stressors. Unnamed worries can be scarier than named ones, and with continued stress a student’s silent worry can turn into depression.
  • Help your student distinguish between material facts (“I don’t have time to do this lab report well”) and emotional reactions or extrapolations “I won’t get a good recommendation for graduate school now”).
  • Suggest that your student focus on one task at a time. Small successes can improve a student’s outlook, even if it is writing one page of a 10-page paper.
  • If your student is considering an extension request on an assignment, encourage him or her to seriously judge whether extra time will produce a necessary improvement to the product. Even very fine works of art and science rarely feel “finished” to their creators.
  • Remind your student that work cannot be one’s whole existence. Regular eating and sleeping habits are vital to success, and taking time off from studying can increase effectiveness. Help your student remember how wonderful it feels to just be.