What do you do in times of intense academic stress, when you have too much to do but not enough time?

22 comments

1. drink a lot of coffee and pull some all-nighters til I get it done. Was it healthy? oh absolutely not. Did I get it all done by the deadline. Yep. And then I slept for like 15 hours.

2. I don’t force it. I take a break: shower/wash my face, eat, sleep/nap or watch a show. Then I try again when I’m starting to feel more refreshed and pressed at the same time~ I can’t help itbthat my brain only strtas working around 10 pm to 3 am….

3. Adderall.

4. Make lists, prioritize, take timed breaks

5. Honestly I cry to help relieve stress and then after I have calmed down I create a plan or schedule to handle my work

6. Make a list of what’s due and when you’re gonna do it.
   I try to make the list when I know I have a lot of things coming up the next week or by the end of the week.
   Making a list of all the things due tomorrow isn’t gonna help lol

   Edit: punctuation

7. Have a good cry and then make a list. Plan a reward for the end like a fancy coffee or permission to do nothing when everything is done.

8. I usually follow the “good enough” method. Nothing you submit will ever be perfect. When things get stressful, I lower the bar so I can protect my own mental health. My first year if grad school, a Freund told me “the best paper is a finished paper”, and I feel that goes for just about any kind of academic assignment.

9. Back then I didn’t drink coffee, so I ate too much sugar and drank too much sugar. Now, it would be coffee and tea and as much sleep as I could get. I’d also do Yoga Nidra. If you haven’t looked into Yoga Nidra, do. It’s great. You can get rest in 20 minutes to an hour. It’s spectacular.

10. All nighters, really, and vitamin c works too! I suggest playing fast paced songs to settle the environment.

11. One thing that worked for me was sleep-study-sleep method…sleep for 20 mins and study for another 4 hours and take a nap for 20 mins…it’ll make sure you’re studying as well as helps you not to be burnt out.

    Also figure out when you’re more productive and try to get done more things at that specific time. I was always productive later in the evenings…so i would rest until 4pm …get some coffee and do intense hours till 9pm…then take a break for dinner again sit back at 11pm to 2am and take a coffee break and again 3am to 5am ….then go to bed….

12. I don’t let it get that far. I learned early on that, especially with having bipolar disorder, I can’t do long nights and high stress. So every semester, I get all of my syllabi and look at Blackboard and use the app Tiny Calendar to schedule out all my due dates and assignments. But more importantly, I give myself scheduled time to work on assignments. Like if I’ve got a paper due one day, I’ll block out 2 weeks or so prior to that so I can work on it.

    I like Tiny Calendar because it gives you a daily breakdown or to do on the widget so you can easily see what you have due for that day. You can also see it in month, day, week, or year views.

13. just do the important stuff or take it as a lesson to get work done beforehand. You can also do whatever you are doing properly.

14. Honestly, taking a gap year before grad school really helped me take on less stress re: academics.

    I am no longer pulling all-nighters and my 100% into each and every single assignment and the output of work has been way better this way.

    Prioritize what’s important/worth the most and put in the bare minimum on everything else. And if it’s an exam, don’t cram the night before. My rule of thumb now is if I don’t understand it by 11pm the night before the exam, I’m not going to at that point and just go to sleep.

15. Take a short 10 minute walk outside to clear your head. Then go in with the knowledge that turning in anything is better than turning in nothing. Good luck!

16. Survival mode. I delegated all non essential tasks to my husband. Lived my life one day at a time. Got through my day one task at a time.

17. It depends, when learning for an exam I would make sure to schedule me-time, because quality of learning is so much better than just quantity.
    If I am well rested and my mind is taken care of, it performs way better. That extra hour of learning late at night is never as effective as an hour of sleep or an hour of exercise. I’d rather know 75% really well then to know 100% only halfway.

    The most important task to do when I have an important deadline, is to get as much as possible on paper. It doesn’t matter if it’s unstructured or doesn’t make sense yet. I can edit and work on a bad paper until it’s good, but I can’t do anything with an empty page.

18. Such a familiar problem.

    Everything that goes wrong for me goes wrong because I didn’t start on time. Once I’m going I know I won’t stop. And once I’m done I know it wasn’t very hard… in fact often it was quite enjoyable. The trick is to get started then and over time I’ve come to rely on the pomodoro method quite a bit for this. I tell myself it’s 20 mins only. Then a break, then another 20 and so on… But the thing is that by the 2nd or 3rd 20 min interval I’m already in what I call “the zone” and thereafter it’s very easy and I usually lose track of time and pomodoros until I’m done lol.

19. I got though it and then when the semester was over, I immediately took the next semester off. I was so stressed out, my mental and physical health were at an all time low. I needed the break.

20. cry tbh than work my ass off … it helps me to let emotions out than work hard … go out less study ahead of time so i’m not overwhelmed

21. I take a hot bath, helps me reduce stress and clear my mind.

22. Breathe. Take a step back. Prioritize. Do what you can, one thing at a time. Fighting against a lack of time is useless.