Quick! Finals in 2.5 hours, still studying. RESULTS!

[soccerballtux]

I'm wondering at what point time wise I should go to "take a nap" and at what point I should just stay up.

After nap/stay up, I'm gonna take a shower, eat, and have lots of caffeine for my Chem and Calc finals.
(bah, 6 hours of finals back to back)

 

[soccerballtux]

Bumped this because whoever moved it from HT stuck it on the second page.

I think its more Technical than OT. I don't think many people know the brain chemistry difference behind memorization being awake (but not thinking about topic) vs. archiving memorized stuff in sleep.

Also, would 15 minutes extra sleep + no shower be more valuable than a shower that wakes me up?

 

[etalns]

If you are going to get any less than 4 hours of sleep I would just pull an all nighter.

I unfortunately had to pull all nighters for two mid terms, ended up with a 90 and an 88.

 

[Shawn]

I dunno. Probably sleep.

 

[Feldenak]

Sleeping before an exam helps your brain process the info you've been studying and make the proper "connections".

 

[Accipiter22]

SLEEP!!! For the love of pete. The first thing that goes when you're overtired is memory. Staying up is the worst possible thing you could do.

 

[iwantanewcomputer]

never a good idea either way, but i always try to get >4 hours, otherwise you will be dead for the second one

 

[KrillBee]

i find myself more tired when i sleep for just 1-2 hours, but i dunno, maybe my brain is processing the old info better, hard to say.

as a general rule of thumb, if im going to get less than 3 hours of sleep, i just stay up all night. stupid? perhaps, i dunno,

 

[Ryan]

Oh yeah - finals! I have a final at 8am, I prolly should get some studying done for it.

 

[The Stigenator]

Take a nap.. set like 3 alarms and go to bed.. and have someone call you to wake you up, it will help so much!

im off to study for the night!

 

[EKKC]

sleep. at this point you wont hold any more info in your head that isn't already in there. get some rest

 

[darkxshade]

I've been thru this many times, and personally for me, 2.5 hours of sleep is not a good thing. You'll wake up feeling all sh!tty and half asleep, your body temp will have gone down(and you'll feel colder than you should), and as you take a look at your review sheet/practice test you realize you have already begun to forget some of the things you studied for, you'll start to panic in a mad rush to cram as much as you can in 5-10 mins and at the same time trying to think about what else you could have forgotten then realize there actually is other stuff you forgotten and you'll have a mental breakdown because you don't know which topic you shoudl attempt to cram in 5-10 mins. yea... just make some coffee and cram another 2.5, take the test and come home and crash.

 

[S Freud]

it's true, sleeping is how your brain retains the information you have just put into it, and when you go without sleep you can become delusional (sp?) and your memory fades. It also cuases thinking to slow down and makes the process a lot harder, take it from me...sleep all that you can and leave enough time to eat good and feel awake before your first exam.

oh yea, good luck

 

[darkxshade]

People, you have to understand the concept of rest... sleeping is not going to do anything, he needs REM sleep(true rest - that's when you dream) which doesn't happen in blocks of time, you fall in and out of REM state.

I've been in this situation over a dozen times during the course of my college life and what worked really well for me in those situations where I finished studying early with 2-3 hours to spare, I'd spend the remainging time to unwind/relax/stayawake, drink some coffee have some breakfast(which imo is more important than sleep), then a HOT SHOWER and with 1 hour remaining, I'd review my course material to make sure I had it all memorized. The time you spent doing something else will allow your short term memory to sort out your studies and you'll most likely forget something. 1 hour is enough to pick them back up and you won't be in as much of a panic as you would had you went to sleep. Besides, trying to fall asleep knowing you have a huge test in 2.5 hours is not easy plus the fact that you might feel worried you might sleep past the alarm and missing the final entirely.

Ionno, I'm pretty hardcore on finals week(It's 4:30 am as I type this and I've already graduated and prolly gonna stay up 24 hours for kicks). I've stayed up for 48+ hours for 4 consecutive finals in a day.

 

[Deleted member 4644]

I stayed up until 4am last nite.. got about 3 hours of sleep... slept two hours today.. now its 130 am and im shutting down...

Gonna finish this paper tomorrow morn...

 

[Baked]

You will fail the test. You can't study 2 hours before the finals and expect to memorize everything. I'm taking tomorrow and the day after to study my marketing finals.

 

[Agaruvala]

Sleep, your brain remebers what it has focused on last, thus if you have nothing to focus on after studying beside sleep then you will remeber more, trust me I study the human mind. BUT DO WAKE UP FOR THE FINAL

 

[sundev]

So, which did you end up doing? Judging by the fact that you didn't respond after your second message, I'm guessing sleep?

 

[neutralizer]

Bwhaha I have a final in 10 hours.

 

[KrillBee]

Originally posted by: Baked
You will fail the test. You can't study 2 hours before the finals and expect to memorize everything. I'm taking tomorrow and the day after to study my marketing finals.

wrong, ive exceeded on MANY tests and finals with only 2 hours of studying. 2 hours is the perfect amount of time, because its not demanding too much from you, but you can get a lot done in 2 hours, and remain attentive the whole time.

 

[simms]

This is the first time I have seen a thread moved INTO OT...

 

[mitmot]

I think this is really dependent on the person. Some people can pull all nighters and do fine on exams. Other people will just fail miserably... My advice to you is to sleep though.

 

[bhanson]

A little late now, but I would probably take a 90 minute nap.

 

[soccerballtux]

Well I ended up staying up all nite. I thought was going to finish studying, but I didn't until 7:10. Took a nice hot shower, got dressed, ate breakfast, then went to take 6 hours of finals. Did great in the first final (Chemistry, the one I was studying so much for), not so good in the second (Calculus). The next day I had Matlab, and during that one I decided it would be better to study a bit beforehand for my finals....Monday I wasn't motivated enough to study a whole lot for my Matlab final.
All in all, came out with A, B, B, C, C. Coulda done better in Matlab (B) and Calc (C), but I'm happy with Chem (C) and English (B). A was a 1 hour psych class.

Thanks for everyone's help. It definately seems that the best thing to do when you're only going to get a couple hours of sleep is to stay up the rest of the night. I've had that experience of not remembering after going to sleep (when I crammed all night) and it didn't feel right (or fair) at all. But staying up all night studying and then running to take the final definately left me feeling confident: Only a few questions I didn't know absolutely for sure.