10 Ways To Relax During Finals at St. John’s University

With finals week coming up at St. John’s, people are getting more and more stressed out. Fortunately, there are ways you can relax that are cheap, or even free! Keep reading for 10 ways to relax during finals at St. John’s University!

1. Coloring

More and more lately, people have been realizing that coloring is a great stress reliever. I mean come on, we loved it so much as kids for a reason right? You get lost in all the fun of making a colorful picture and forget about your stress for a little while. You can use printable color pages online, get coloring books of your old favorite kids movie or get one of the multitudes of more complex adult coloring books! After that you can use crayons, markers or whatever else you want to make your beautiful masterpiece. Or, you could get a coloring book app and color on your phone!

2. Yoga

At this point you guys might be annoyed with me telling you to do yoga, but it can really help you during finals week to stretch out your back, lower stress levels, even out your breathing and elevate your mood! Look back at my article “7 Easy Yoga Poses You Need in Your Life” for some easy poses that just about anyone can do! Note: Feline friend to do yoga with not required, but highly recommended!

3. Dance!

Turning on your favorite song and dancing it out for even ten minutes, is a great cardio workout that’ll leave you feeling happier and less stressed out than you were before. You’ll also be getting in some sneaky exercise after all that sitting around and studying!

4. Watch Too Cute!

If you’ve never heard of Too Cute!, then you’re definitely missing out! This Animal Planet series is filled with episodes following various kittens, puppies and a few other guest pets, through their first few months of life! You can find clips or maybe even full episodes with an easy online search. I promise you won’t regret it! Alternatively, you could just watch cat videos on YouTube, but I think we all know that when you do that, one video turns into twenty videos without you even realizing it.

5. Natural Sounds

Rainymood.com is my personal favorite for when I just need some white noise to drown out my thoughts, but honestly any rain or nature sounds will work fine with this purpose. I mean it’s kind of hard to stress out when your eyes are closed and you’re listening to the soothing sounds of nature.

6. Take a Nap

You might roll your eyes, but hear me out: most of you reading this are most likely sleep deprived without even realizing it, or you realize it and haven’t felt like you can do anything about it. But in reality, most of the time you feel drowsy after a night of sleep or a nap, is because you woke up in the middle of a sleep cycle, which can make you feel worse than before. The solution? This awesome free website or app sleepyti.me, that can tell you when to go to bed depending on when you get up, or gives you a list of times you can wake up if you went to sleep at that time. And it totally works for naps too! I use it all the time and it has really cut back on my stress.

7. Take a Step Back

Sometimes when you’re studying you can find yourself getting overwhelmed with all that you need to do. When that happens, the best thing you can do for yourself, as well as your quality of studying, is take a step back. Take some deep breaths, clear your mind for a few minutes and go back to studying with a different approach.

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8. Call Someone

I don’t know how much I can stress this one. Sometimes as college students we can isolate ourselves from other people and only talk through texting; this can be really bad for your mood and perspective on what you need to do! So do yourself a favor and call up a friend, relative or significant other, and just talk to them for a little bit. Vent about finals, tell them a story about what happened the other day, listen to anything they might want to share. I can guarantee you that you’ll walk away from it feeling at least a little better than before.

9. Turn it Up!

Okay, maybe not THAT loud, but you get the idea. If nature sounds or dancing just aren’t your thing, try just laying out with your headphones on or your speakers turned up, and just let yourself enjoy your music for a little while. It’s a surefire way to boost your mood because you’re listening to stuff that you know you like and you can lose yourself in.

10. Take a Walk

Last, but certainly not least, maybe you should try taking a walk. Get out of the dorm or library and just walk around campus, breathe in some fresh air and be around trees and greenery. The trees on campus are blooming beautifully right now and everything is green, and they’re planting flowers all over campus; take the opportunity to go and see it before you’re stuck in classrooms again taking finals!