By jdippel529
It’s no secret that while studying abroad, your course load is generally easier. The more relaxed academic setting during study abroad is great because it gives students more time to focus on experiencing the culture of their host country, or to travel to other places. The down side to this no-stress atmosphere is that when midterms or finals week rolls around, we don’t remember how to cope. Even though most of us are juniors in college, being abroad leads you to suddenly forgot how to handle a couple of exams and papers that are all due during the same week. So, here are 3 extremely useful tips that I am sure will help those trying to cope with studying for midterms or finals abroad:
Find a place to study. This may seem like an obvious tip, but remember that most students who are studying abroad don’t live on campus, where finding a quiet place to student is much easier. Before midterms week, I thought that studying at home would the answer. But, the weekend before midterms my host mom had all of her childhood friends over, and I’m sure you can imagine how loud that got. Moral of the story is, find a quiet place to study beforehand. Studying abroad isn’t like at GW where you can always study in your own place, or set up camp in Gelman. Look up any public libraries that may be around, or cool cafes that offer free Wi-Fi. Just make sure you have a place to focus before the last minute; I learned this the hard way.
Keep in contact with your professors. This is especially easy for students studying abroad through a GW program. Since the class sizes are so small, it is easy to develop a close relationship with any one of your professors. At GW, however, lectures tend to scare students away from asking too many questions or going to their professor for help. But, during midterms week, my classmates and I asked any and every question we could about what topics to focus on while studying. What we found was that all of our professors genuinely wanted us to do well, and gave us a tremendous amount of helpful tips. Study abroad allows students to develop a unique and close relationship with their professors that we should all take advantage of when midterms and finals roll around.
Plan accordingly. As I’ve said in my other blogs, it feels like there aren’t nearly enough weekends to travel while studying abroad. As a result, students may make the mistake of booking a trip the weekend before midterms, or even during them. This is why I strongly suggest having all of your syllabi spread out before you whenever you go to plan a trip. I almost planned a trip to London the weekend before midterms, but thankfully thought to check my school calendar beforehand!