Surviving Midterm Season: Tips and Tricks for Success

Midterm season is overwhelming with 3 midterms, extensive studying, and strategic planning for exams and quizzes.

### Surviving a Stressful Midterm Season
* 😓 Midterm season is approaching, and the stress of having **multiple midterms, quizzes, and assignments** to prepare for can be **overwhelming**.
* 📝 Strategies for studying effectively include **rewriting notes**, creating **cheat sheets**, practicing with **past midterms**, and solving **practice problems**.
* 🕰 Managing time wisely is crucial, especially when balancing **midterm preparation with regular coursework**.
* 🏃 Taking care of physical and mental health is essential, including **taking breaks, getting enough sleep, and avoiding burnout**.
* 🎶 Listening to music, changing study spots, and studying with others can help maintain **motivation and focus**.
* 🧠 Dealing with the pressure of academic validation involves **setting realistic expectations**, **learning from mistakes**, and **not letting one bad mark define your self-worth**.
* 🎯 Keeping a positive mindset and staying determined to do your best can help you **get through the challenges of midterm season**.

so next week is literally terrible. I have three midterms. My first one is the weak days. I could take you up. What do you say? We're going to the moon. Are ready and I overwhelmed like always [Music]. Feel the you're why was that literally like one of the most stressful things [Music]. Hey guys. So I know you guys have all been waiting for this midterm season. Today is the official start. I have three midterms. My first one is next Wednesday. Next week Wednesday. And then I have a double midterm week 2 weeks after. So I'll be done all my midterms prior to November. I will say I'm a pretty seasoned exam taker considering I took over 30 exams last year. So far I am just going over. I printed out all of my digital notes for my first midterm. Most of my exams this year I am allowed an AG sheet, which basically means I can write whatever I want on the piece of paper and bring it with me to the exam. It just means my exam is going to be a lot

harder. That's another thing you kind of just have to keep in mind. Definitely comes with practice, definitely comes with experience of taking exams. But for now, I'm just going to write down some notes that I missed during class. We're just going to start our midterm studying right now. Wishing you guys all luck for this midterm season and let's get grinding. Welcome back, guys. It's voiceover Serena and yes, midterm season is upon us. So, I hope you guys stick around because I'll be telling you guys all of my exam and studying tips and tricks. Since this midterm season was especially difficult, I came home around like 2:30. But it's almost 12. I'm just really worried for my midterm because there's just a lot of material that I have to cover and I don't completely understand everything yet. And my midterm is on Wednesday and today's Monday and I've been studying since Saturday sort of for this midterm but there's like just so many chapters we had to cover. It's like 11 lectures.

worth of material, but yeah, basically I have to write a cheat sheet. This is one that they had for previous years. I also have previous midterms that I'm going to study. So the first thing I usually do when studying for midterms is to rewrite or to revise my notes. I typically take digital notes during lectures, so I like to have it on a physical copy as well. Usually, this means printing out all of my digital notes and then condensing it on a physical piece of paper. I came back from school about like an hour ago. I just had lunch. My main goal right now is to finish my formula sheet. I get one. I have a lot to do today. We going to try and stay focused, stay productive. I do get distracted. I do take breaks. It's not just study, study, study. So I'm going to write out most of my Aid sheet if I can right now, go over the last lecture of notes that I haven't done yet, start doing practice midterms and practice problems because that is the best way you can study is by actually applying.

all of that knowledge. A lot of my studying usually consists of actually doing practice problems. This is especially helpful if you're in any STEM-related courses, simply because just revising your notes really doesn't help your brain to actually understand how to apply it. The main study method to remember is to learn, to revise, and to practice. Today is midterm 1. I came home at 11 to study. I was working on two other practice midterms, but I am going to do one right now, just get through as much as I can of the entire thing. I'm just going to try it out, work with my cheat sheet, and yeah, after this, I'll just probably do Cal because I cannot be studying this for like 5 hours straight right before my midterm. I need to do other things as well. And with that practice, you should totally do practice midterms. It might be hard to get access to some past midterms, but maybe just ask around and see if there's any upper years that might be willing to give you their midterm from

last year, I find that it's way more helpful to see the actual types of questions that might actually be on your exam. I always bring some sort of noise cancelling device because after that exam, you best believe I am bolting out of there and I'm not listening to a single thing anybody says to me. I put these on and I run home anyway. Wish me luck, guys. My essentials to actually bring to my midterm are always water bottle, obviously, bring a pencil case with multiple pencils, multiple pieces of lead, and an eraser. I guess location of your desk in the room, make sure your desk is. I would never sit next to a friend or anything like that. I sit usually in a corner or near the back. I sit near a clock. I always bring, oh yeah, I always bring like an analog watch or sit near a clock. There's usually clocks in the room and usually I just try to get in the zone. That's my biggest thing. Wish me luck and I still have more midterms to study for and I still have

to come home and do my assignment so yay midterms taking exams while learning other stuff at the same time and still having my quiz this week. Sometimes I also like studying with a study partner or just a friend. This often times doesn't always work especially in bigger groups or if you have the tendency to just talk the whole time. So definitely choose the person wisely and really just understand yourself and know if you're going to get distracted. Oh no wait, I accidentally calculated C in the first part. Oh really? Yeah, yeah I did both because I just took my answer from the first one and put it in. Okay, that works. Okay, whatever, I like mess it up, that's fine. But as you can see here, sometimes it's also helpful to work through problems together with someone else. And also studying with someone else rather than just at home alone just keeps yourself a bit more accountable instead of getting distracted and procrastinating. Should we hi guys, I just came back home from school Wednesdays I come home really

early. This is my one day to like get everything together and get on top of everything. There's so many things that I really want to get through. I finally got eye drops. My eyes have been getting really dry especially like as we're nearing like winter. Also, I just use my eyes a lot for like when I'm looking at my devices. It's like the smallest little bottle. It's so cute. I'm going to go over my game plan for today. I have it all up on my notion. Okay, number one thing I really need to start coding my lab. I have such severe coding anxiety. It's not even funny. And I'm also really behind in my complex advanced math notes. I'm like a week behind still a quiz next Monday. I have a midterm on the same Monday and I have a midterm next Thursday. I have a lab on Tuesday and I have a quiz on Friday. So, oh and an assignment due on Thursday. So next week is literally terrible. I'm just trying to get ahead on a lot of that stuff.

week just so I don't panic next week. Like I mentioned many times throughout the video, during midterm season, it's honestly really hard because you have to be studying for midterms while also studying for the current courses you're still taking. This means that I have to budget my time extremely, extremely well. Why is this literally LL? Why are we learning things from this guy? To do this, I usually use my notion just to keep very organized and to stay on top of everything. It can be very overwhelming trying to study for a 20-25% midterm while also doing assignments and assigned work on top of it all. So, by having a realistic to-do list, it just makes sure that you can organize all of the things that you have to get done every day while also keeping it realistic so you don't overwhelm yourself too much. Bright and early day to study for my double midterm, double quiz, assignment, and lab week. Next week is literally hell week for ECE. I'm worried that I will combust and die. Well, first of all, I have

to study for three different things. I have an electrical circuits midterm on Monday, I have an advanced math quiz on Monday, and I have a coding midterm on Thursday. I have my stupid pre-ap, which I haven't even looked at yet. I'm going to start off by writing a checklist, and then I'm going to try out some of these questions for advanced math, and then I'm going to start studying for electrical circuits and doing questions for that one. I know having the motivation to study can be extremely difficult at times, which is why I think it's really important to make sure that you're not studying for super long periods at a time. So obviously, while it may seem like I'm studying for like 10 hours a day, that is totally not the case. I'm definitely taking breaks in between. I'm making sure that I'm eating food, and I am also sleeping every single night. Taking care of your health and body is definitely the most important thing, so never put your grades above all of that. I am going

to go outside for a small walk because I think it's kind of unhealthy for me to just stay at home and just study all day. I'm kind of like really slow with the studying right now cuz I haven't been feeling very motivated to study. It's kind of really boring and it's very overwhelming when there's so many things at once so I feel like that makes it hard to concentrate on one thing at a time. So I'm going to go outside, hopefully clear my mind a little bit, and look at all of the gorgeous fall leaves. I don't think it's too too cold lately. It's been around like 10° every day so it's pretty nice full weather but I'll come back and I'll continue [Music] studying a little bit [Music] windy a lot of the times. I also like changing up my steud spots so stay in my room all day gets kind of boring and annoying so a lot of the times I'll study in different places in my house

even just at school in different libraries, and I will say there are not many clips of me studying at school because during the midterm weeks, I literally try to be at home as much as possible. It's honestly much more comfortable for me to study at home. I know it's not always the case for everybody, so just choose a study place that you're usually comfortable with. I will say as the weeks progressed, my double midterm week, I definitely skipped a lot of lectures, but that is sometimes the sacrifice because you kind of have to weigh, you know, is the midterm worth more than skipping a couple lectures. I'm not even going to lie, it's like 9:45 p.m. now. I look really crazy, by the way, and I'm feeling really, really, really overwhelmed with work and studying and just like not enough time to get everything done. That's just how it is. I kind of like didn't get to studying like literally anything else except for my midterm on Monday because I'm like so worried because it covers like so so

much, and there's still like, I still have so many practice problems to do. I still need to get on to my quiz studying on Monday. I still, like, I wanted to get coding exercises done 'cause I have that midterm on Thursday, and I'm just like, I literally don't think I can do all of that, right? And like, it feels so overwhelming, and like, I always feel like this sense of dread because it's like I expected all of this from myself, and I literally couldn't accomplish it all. And it sucks because my weekends are literally only 2 days. I'm going to try my best to at least get all the parts that I don't feel the most confident on mostly done, so I can at least practice that. I'm also thinking of skipping a lot of lectures on Monday. I think most people are because a quiz and a midterm on the same day just means I cannot even focus if I'm in class. Anyway, I'm going to eat some food, and I'm going to just go back up to my room, I think, and then

continue studying for the rest of the night until maybe 12. Lots of things to do. I'm going to start now and get productive. And if you guys have recommendations for what I should listen to while studying, please let me know, 'cause I just circle through all of my playlists. A lot of the times I listen to, like, K-pop or like K R&B, stuff like that, but sometimes it's like it doesn't hit right. I've been on repeat Agora Hills on repeat. So good. That and Endless Fashion by Lil Uzi Vert and Nicki Minaj, but the sped up version. So good. I don't normally like sped up songs, but that one specifically, it just like hits the right part of my brain. I can listen to it on repeat. Anyway, let's get to studying. Enough talking about music. I also wanted to put a little segment on just academic validation, because I know many people in university or just throughout school, you really crave that academic validation, and it can often times become really, really toxic because you're holding yourself to such high

expectations that sometimes you can't always achieve. I know I for one really do crave that validation to an extent, but I think especially having gone through first year, I know that sometimes even my hardest work won't get me to the mark that I really, really want. And I think it's super important to be able to acknowledge that because sometimes your hard work doesn't pay off, and sometimes you can't really control that. And I know it can be a hard pill to swallow for everyone, trust me, I've definitely been there. But I think it's really important to be able to acknowledge, you know, what did you do this time and what can you improve to do for the next time. Obviously, this is easier said than done, but coming from an exam taker veteran, I guess a lot of those terrible marks that I may have cried over, like even just a year ago, they're so far in the past for me now that I barely even think about them. So again, coming back to academic validation, don't let one bad mark really

change how you think about yourself or view yourself. Just take it as encouragement to try and do better for next time. Maybe change a bit of your study habits. Don't think about it for too long. Trust me, you'll definitely improve for the next time. Okay, so finish my quiz early. So now I'm going to scout out my exam room so I know where it is. There's like so many stairs here. I normally do my labs down there. Connects to here, which goes to another building. The quiz was not the worst, I think, but there were a couple questions where I was kind of like, is this right? I hope I got some marks for like the process, but I don't know. I had like barely any time to practice for this quiz, so I kind of just try to get the concept down like the PL, and then just kind of apply it to everything. But I don't know. This part feels very secluded. It's kind of scary looking. So this is where my room is probably going to be. Okay, I'm done my midterm. Why was that?

literally like one of the most stressful things ever. I messed up the first question so many times, like literally so many times. Also, it's like literally empty, so dark. It's so dark outside. Anyway, this is where my labs are. I messed up the first question so many times, and then I corrected it, and I got the same answer the first time. And then they literally asked me to check my answer using a different method, and I got a different number, but I literally was running out of time. Like, there was a chance I couldn't finish the whole thing. It was so long. It was only three questions, like 17 pages. Literally, what the hell? I can finally say that I'm done my midterm and my quiz. I've just got this midterm. I've got another quiz on Friday. I haven't put it yet in these assignments. I woke up at, I think, like 8:40. Is today. Today is my last midterm of the full semester, but I've had two midterms in one week, and this week has just been absolutely crazy. It's still crazy.

I've been nonstop studying. It's actually insane. I really need to get this stuff done, so that's why I still woke up early today. Otherwise, I would have just slept in 'cause I'm skipping a couple of my morning classes. My mid today is at 7:00 p.m., and this is the first year that they're doing it fully online. I swear, because it's the first year, like it's going to be so bad. We still have to submit it on Canvas, which is like our University's general website, as a quiz. And the only advantage I get by having a computer is I have open notes, which is just the lecture notes, not my notes, just their notes. They made it so that the entire midterm is only 1 hour. That's insane. Everybody's complaining about it. I'm not very excited for this midterm. I do have a quiz tomorrow. I'm like so behind in all my other courses because I've been spending all my time studying for my midterms. But yeah, I'm going to get started, study for about an hour, get

ready to go to school, come back, study for 5 hours, go to school before 7, write my midterm, come home, and study for my quiz tomorrow. Yes, that's insane, but yes, it's midterm season, and that's literally what I've done the whole week. So that is just the reality of my life at the moment. Keeping the motivation up for the last midterm is always the hardest part, at least for me. I just always want to get over with and just start focusing on the regular coursework again. So here I am, grinding through my last coding midterm for the fall semester. It was definitely very tiring and very hard, but I think it paid off at the end. I finished my last midterm for this semester. Yay me! I'm so, so dead. This week has been absolutely terrible. Still have to study for my quiz tomorrow, and I still have more things next week. Just no midterms on top of it. One more week after this, and we'll be free to relax for my reading week. But I just wanted to close the video off. I'm not

going to really film me studying anymore for the rest of the week, 'cause I only wanted this to be like a midterm sort of video. So, I hope you guys enjoyed. I hope everyone else's midterms are going okay. My midterm today was so, so stressful. It was actually really, really bad. I did not like the online test-taking version at all. Everyone else beside me agreed. They did not like it as well. That's all to say that, uh, that's it for the video. I hope you guys enjoyed. Remember to like, comment, and subscribe if you enjoyed. And check out some of my other videos 'cause I have lots of other study videos as well. And yeah, I'll see you guys next time. Bye. Never let you hurt yourself yourself.

ENGINEERING MIDTERM SEASON 🎧🖇️ most productive days in my life, cramming, 10+ hrs of studying

hi i'm serena! ౨ৎ an electrical engineering student documenting my studies, daily life, and memories here on my channel ✧⁺﹒


Serena

Midterm season can be overwhelming, but starting early and staying organized is key to success.

Rewriting and condensing digital notes onto a physical sheet can help with understanding and retention of the material.

Actively practicing with past midterms and problems is crucial, especially for STEM courses, to effectively apply knowledge.

Bringing noise-cancelling devices to exams can help with focus and stress management.

It's important to choose a study location wisely to avoid distractions and sit near a clock to manage time during the exam.

Studying with a partner can be helpful for accountability, as long as they don't cause distractions.

It's also important to take breaks and prioritize tasks to manage a busy schedule effectively.

Midterm season brings the challenge of balancing study time for multiple courses.

Creating a realistic to-do list and taking breaks is crucial for staying organized and avoiding overwhelm.

Prioritizing health and well-being, including taking walks and changing study environments, is important for maintaining motivation and focus.

Struggling with Midterm Stress and Study Overwhelm

A student discusses feeling overwhelmed with midterm studying and the pressure to perform.

She is considering skipping lectures to focus on exam preparation and is seeking music recommendations for studying.

The student also touches on the toxic nature of craving academic validation and the pressure it brings.

Coping with Academic Pressure and Setbacks

Struggling to achieve desired academic validation is a common experience, but it's important to acknowledge that hard work doesn't always immediately pay off.

It's crucial to use setbacks as an opportunity for self-reflection and improvement in study habits.

Overcoming bad marks and stressful exams is possible, and it's important not to let them define self-worth or discourage future efforts.

Midterm season is in full swing, with students feeling overwhelmed and exhausted from the workload.

The transition to fully online midterms is causing additional stress and dissatisfaction among students.

Despite the challenges, the hope of a upcoming reading week is keeping students motivated to push through.