How students can manage finals week stress

Graduation season is often characterized as a joyous time for students and their families. There’s truth to such characterizations, as students, their parents, siblings, and other loved ones see graduation as the culmination of years of hard work. That hard work continues right up to the end, as finals week can be a trying time for students looking to finish a school year, and perhaps their academic careers, with a flourish.

Finals week may precede the celebratory graduation season, but this period can be uniquely stressful for students. A 2022 survey examining stress in college conducted by the American Addiction Center found that more than 89 percent of respondents felt stress from exams, while nearly three in four indicated studying was stress-inducing. Stress can sometimes be a good thing, as Firdaus Dhabhar, Ph.D., a one-time director of the Stanford Center on Stress & Health and now a professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Miller School of Medicine at the University of Miami, noted in a 2012 interview that acute stress might actually translate to improved mental performance. That means the acute stress students feel during finals week might actually compel them to perform better on their exams.