Students study in the Center Building library on March 16, in preparation for finals week (Photo by Eugene Johnson)
Catrina Taylor sits in a hall in the Center Building with a half smile, her fingers flying across her iPad.
“I play video games to forget. I will study for an hour, play for 30 minutes, then study for an hour,” she said.
Taylor said she confronted acute test anxiety last term when she was new to college. When she sat down to take an exam, all the facts would vanish into thin air. She would panic, feeling waves of nausea and cold sweats, and then start to cry as she struggled to remember her 40 pages of notes.
It’s the end of the term, peak stress week at LCC. It’s too late to drop classes without penalty and too soon to know if you’ve earned a good grade. LCC’s Counseling and Advising Center sees students this time of year inquiring about contingency plans for worse case scenarios, and helps students who are highly emotional from the stress, said Gayle Townsend, a counselor.
Townsend said students often don’t realize the approaching finals are actually the last straw that pushes them into the counselor’s office. Life’s stresses get magnified and all the problems will fuse together into anger, fear, anxiety and depression.
“Students will have displaced anger. They are angry about something, but can’t quite figure out why. Anger is often a cover emotion for other things that are going on, and often what comes out is that they are stressed about finals,” she said.
Taylor said as soon as she left the exam room the information came flooding back to her. She attributes that experience to “over studying,” because she isolated herself in her room for two weeks prior to exam day to learn her notes.
More successful this term, Taylor has divided her study time into more manageable segments, plays video games periodically, and has decided not to let studying rule her life.
“If I study too much, I make the problem bigger than it is,” she explained.
Ricky McNulty, a respiratory care major, said he had to repeat all three subjects, biology, chemistry and algebra this winter term. He took a pass/fail grade in fall term because he was overwhelmed with the information.
McNulty said the teachers kept adding “more and more information” to the subject until it was almost impossible to learn it all. It wasn’t the fact he was failing that bothered McNulty, but the fear of not absorbing the necessary information to succeed in his major.
“After all, the final goal should be to teach,” he said.
A disabled veteran, McNulty expressed frustration in the system.
“I’m 60 years old and instead of retiring me, they wanted me to go into a job retraining program,” McNulty said.
Sherrill Wight, an instructor at LCC in academic learning skills, said maintaining an organized, up-to-date notebook and keeping up with homework are two keys to success. Students often try to catch up on neglected studies at the end of the term, which causes an increase in stress levels. They come to her worried.
“It’s a fortune-telling situation. They wonder, ‘If I do these papers, will I pass?’” she said.
Townsend said she always recommends talking with the instructor as a first step, providing self-care by eating and sleeping well, and finding a trusted person “to vent.”
“I always encourage communication with instructors. Talk with them. They are really not as scary as they can seem to be. They will get clarity about what they can do to pass the class,” she said.
Cathy Lindsley, the dean at LCC’s Center for Learning Advancement, said students don’t come into the tutoring center because they may not realize it’s free, and they can just drop in without an appointment. Additionally, many students think they should be able to do everything by themselves.
“I don’t want to need the help. I shouldn’t need it because the information is in my brain. Why is it not flowing?” student Angel Parent said.
Bill Daniels, a major in legal administration, sat at an LCC cafeteria table with a purple origami dinosaur standing next to his stack of books and paper.
He makes origami as a form of stress relief.
“It’s an intense week. I’m really feeling the pressure, so I’m leaving soon to go find a karaoke bar and let off some steam … laugh and have some fun,” he explained.
At an improvisation class at LCC Daniels learned to harness and re-direct his nervous energy. He uses this technique to tame fears and make him more animated when singing Karaoke.
“Karaoke really helps to beat the stress,” he said. “For three minutes, I can be a rock star.”
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