Kara DeConno said she is stressed out and struggling to complete the final two weeks of the semester.

With the holidays just around the corner, finals become more of a burden. DeConno faces two ‘extremely difficult’ exams in biology and chemistry, and she’s feeling a bit tense.

‘I’m very stressed, since these are the two courses that count most for my major,’ the freshman biochemistry major said. ‘It seems like the work never ends. Having bio and chemistry together is double the work.

‘The holidays definitely become a major part of the stress of the time. I just want to be home, even now.’

Yep, it’s that time of year. Holidays are imminent, but every class has an exam barreling down on you. Students – and even professors – are trying to cope as they aim to reach their winter break as soon as possible.

Sleep has become foreign to freshman architecture student Mark Shahlamian. Shahlamian has to complete two finals plus a grueling final project within two weeks.

‘The stress never ends in our program,’ Shahlamian said. ‘There is continuous work for two weeks before finals week, and then you get a week’s rest before it’s time for finals.’

The architecture students worked vigorously before and after Thanksgiving to complete a final project for which they had to design a building. They were constantly designing and redesigning everything about their projects and had little to no time to do anything else, Shahlamian said.

‘I stayed up for three days straight,’ said Shahlamian, ‘and I barely went to my dorm or saw my roommate at all last week.’

In addition, Shahlamian has three more finals, two related to his architecture major. ‘It’s extremely relieving to get the project over with, but then you have your finals almost right away.’

The end of the semester can even be taxing on professors. While students have to grind through the studying process and take the finals, professors are busy grading their work even after students have left campus.

‘For many professors, the real stress is not the workload – which can be onerous – but assessing final grades,’ said public communications professor Bob Lloyd. ‘Even professors who have done this for years can agonize over how they rate a student’s work. That’s because final grades are permanent and based on a professor’s judgment.’

Students can’t help but take the grades personally, which leaves many professors double-checking their math and their policies, Lloyd said. Even after grades are finalized, there is always one student who questions the decision.

To get through this period, a student unquestionably needs to find a way to deal with anxiety and uneasiness.

‘You have to manage your time right and not save all studying for the last minute,’ DeConno said. ‘That just makes it more stressful.’

Shahlamian said he and his fellow architecture students coped with stress in a variety of ways.

‘We would socialize a lot, play games and watch movies to take breaks from all of the work. We were all really good friends, so it was very helpful to escape from the work sometimes.’

Published on December 6, 2007 at 12:00 pm