It’s getting to be that time of year again. The smell of teen anxiety and sleeplessness is beginning to fill the air, and fast. The finals are coming; and you can’t escape them. The senior finals begin the 18th, and the underclassmen finals begin the following week. The only thing to keep you from the never-ending panic is to find tips and help guides to get you through this horrid time at the end of every school year.

The popular teen/young adult dictionary site, Urban Dictionary, defines the phrase “finals week” simply as, “The worst week of a college or high school student’s life.”

At the end of every school year for every high school across America, the final exams come and scare millions of students right to their wit’s end. Teens lose sleep and lose their minds over exams that could determine if they need to take summer school, remedial classes, or even repeat a grade. So it’s right to be terrified. But there are some things you can do to lower the anxiety and, hopefully, help you to sleep easier at night, even if it’s the end of the year, and help you survive the attack of the finals.

The first thing you can do is study as much as possible without killing your brain. You can do this by studying a certain subject for about 45 minutes, then take a small break so you don’t get a migraine from the endless words and things nobody really needs in the adult world. The site FastWeb! has an article listing other helpful tips when it comes to studying hard without losing your mind.

To figure what you would need to make on your exam in order to pass a certain class, go to DropBox and download the file shown, then open the document once downloaded through Microsoft Excel and input your current grades for the 1st term and the 2nd term, along with what you figure you will earn on the final exam for that class.

I spoke with AP and Pre-AP Lang teacher, Micky Worley, to find out what advice she has for students who will be taking the finals within the next week. “Study. At this point in the game, if you haven’t been doing what you’re supposed to be doing, ya know, it’s going to be hard to just study for everything and get all of it. Finals are things you are actually working on the whole semester. If you’re blowing things off, I don’t know what to tell you.”

Sophomore Nathan Erickson said that the freshman shouldn’t freak out considering exams are their first high school level finals and to “just think of it as a normal test and nothing more.

So, try not to have too many panic attacks within the next few days; just study and review and you should survive the exams just fine. Good luck to all during these scary next few days and may the grades be ever in your favor.