Final exams are just around the corner, and cramming is the most common response among most college students. We tend to choose ten extra minutes of studying and put off the much-needed sleep our bodies ache for. However, getting enough sleep is just as important as studying.

Jason Siewert, a licensed clinical psychologist at the counseling center on campus, remembers maintaining boundaries as an undergraduate.

“I personally refused to do anything school-related after about nine o’ clock on a weekday, and I refused to do anything school-related in the afternoon on a Sunday,” Siewert said.

This helped Siewert make sure he was taking good care of himself and getting a good night’s sleep. This also put a nice block of time around the Packer game for him. He accomplished this by making sure he stuck to his boundaries and making time for the things he was passionate about.

“There were a few things I didn’t want to negotiate, and making sure I was not doing school-related things over that time was very important to me,” Siewert said.

Siewert mentions that not getting enough sleep not only affects your body negatively but your studying as well. He questions how effective can studying truly can be when you’re forcing yourself to stay up.

Siewart says that sleep is something everybody should set aside time for, but it is also essential to be mindful of the things that are important to you and to set aside time for those things, too.

“It’s important to study, but you can always study for one more minute, ten more minutes, twenty minutes. But I also think it’s necessary to make sure the things that are personally important to you don’t fall to the wayside just because we get to a hectic part of the semester,” Siewert said.

Although healthy study habits are extremely important to a college student’s lifestyle, everyone is different and will develop their own system to determine what success truly means to them.

Along with getting enough rest, here are a few additional studying tips for finals:

• Try to study two hours for every credit-hour

• Read and take book notes in addition to class notes

• Find extra resources that encourage you to read and learn more about the subject

• Engage in dialogue about the subject with others to make sure you grasp concepts and can explain them to others

With some good study habits, exams might not be as nerve-wracking as you may think. Whatever you do, remember getting enough sleep is just as important as studying.