A guide to survive midterms at MSU

With all of this snow that is covering campus, everyone is caught in the excitement of spring break being just around the corner, and sometimes it’s hard to focus and actually study for your midterms. But don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. Below is a foolproof, step by step guide to help you study:

1. Sit down at your desk, close your eyes, and take a few deep breaths, preparing yourself mentally for the challenge ahead.
2. Allow your mind to wander. Think about how stressful your day was and how you really just want to sleep.
3. Continue to keep your eyes closed and crawl into your bed to take a quick power nap. You can’t be a successful studier if you’re tired.
4. Wake up anywhere from one to four hours later and resume your position at your desk.
5. Unpack your study materials.
6. Open up d2l on your laptop.
7. Realize that you have a notification on Facebook.
8. Watch a puppy video that your mom shared.
9. Watch one of those cooking videos that go way too fast for you to actually learn to cook the dish, but you still watch because they always look really yummy.
10. Watch like the next six videos that come up afterwards.
11. Realize that you have now spent 30 minutes perusing Facebook.
12. Decide that your room is way too distracting to be a good place to study.
13. Repack your study materials.
14. Head to the library.
15. Stop to pick up some coffee on the way because, it’ll help you be soooo much more productive.
16. While standing in the ridiculously long line, waiting for your caramel frappuccino to be ready, begin thinking about all of the studying that you need to do that day.
17. Have a small panic attack in the coffee line.
18. Power walk the rest of the way to the library to give yourself a false sense of productivity.
19. Spend approximately 20 minutes looking for an open desk.
20. Finally find one in the middle of a bunch of other people.
21. Let yourself relax a little and do some high quality people watching.
22. Realize that most of these people actually appear somewhat productive and remember why you came to the library.
23. Unpack your study materials.
24. Take advantage of the large library desks and really spread out all of your notes
25. Realize that you look super studious with all of these materials plus your coffee plus your laptop.
26. Whip out your phone and take a quick Snapchat to post to your story with a caption like “Hour 1 at the library. Gonna be a long night” to make sure that all of your friends realize just how studious you are.
27. While on Snapchat, watch your roommates’ stories.
28. Realize that you haven’t talked to them in a few days, since you’ve been sooooo busy with studying.
29. Strike up the group chat to see how their midterm week is going.
30. Casually slip into the conversation how you have a date this weekend with a sly line like: “Ugh I have to survive this week or else I won’t be able to go to dinner with you know who ;)”
31. Field the expected questions from the roommates about this latest development.
32. Notice that your frap has started to melt and realize that about an hour has gone by.
33. Set down your phone and open up the syllabus on d2l.
34. See that this is one of those stupid classes where you need a 92 to four point.
35. Do some calculations to see how well you need to do on this exam to have a chance to four point.
36. Realize that you can’t four point.
37. Do some calculations to see how well you need to do on this exam to pass.
38. Realize that that number is a lot higher than you expected.
39. Begin to have another mental breakdown.
40. Be sure to question why you’re in school, why this is your major, and what you are doing with your life.
41. If a few tears spring to your eyes, consider this normal.
42. After a solid ten minutes of panicking, take a deep breath and head to Netflix to watch a quick episode of The Office to cheer yourself up.
43. One episode turns into three.
44. Quickly turn off Netflix before the fourth episode can start.
45. Tell yourself its time to get down to business.
46. Pull up the infamous “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” scene from Mulan on YouTube because now you can’t get that song out of your head.
47. Decide that if Mulan can save China, you sure as hell can study for this exam!
48. Make yourself a schedule of 30 minutes of studying with 10 minute breaks to de-stress in between, because you read somewhere that this was the best way to make information stick, and have been using it as an excuse to study for short periods of time for years.
49. Begin to study for your first 30 minute session.
50. Realize that all of  your notes are out of order.
51. Spend 30 minutes organizing them chronologically.
52. Take a break.
53. During your break, realize that you are one of the last people in the library.
54. Check your phone and see that it is wayyyyy past your bedtime.
55. Pull out the list of things that your professor hinted might be on the exam.
56. Give it a once over.
57. Take a quick snap for your story with the caption “Six hours later. Me: 1. Library: 0.”
58. Pack up your study materials.
59. Remind yourself that a good night’s sleep is just as important as studying.
60. Pledge to wake up extra early to cram before that 10am exam time.
61. Admit to yourself that there’s only a 20% chance of that happening.
62. Decide that your natural intelligence will help you more than any studying would anyway.
63. Head back to your place feeling oddly accomplished.
64. Do the damn thing.

You’ve got this, Spartans!