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A Candid Interview With Craig Dawdy: Tips and Tricks for Finals Season

Author: Rachael Gomes, DCS Photographer & Blog Writer


It’s that time of the year again. Everyone is getting ready for the exam season and for most that means anxiety, stress, and an overall strain on your mental health. By now the routine coursework is beginning to die down which means that you should prepare yourself for long nights of final assignments and studying. This week I had the pleasure of speaking with the DeGroote Commerce Society President, Craig Dawdy. Craig opened up about some of his experiences with mental health this year and also offered some tips and tricks to navigate the exam season successfully. 

The Balancing Act. 

Not only does Craig balance his duties as DCS president with third year commerce coursework, but on top of that he’s searching for internships. Balancing so many responsibilities and commitments with personal life and hobbies is an integral part of being a successful student. Craig has developed a technique in order to balance his personal life with his responsibilities. This technique involves taking time out of the beginning of the week to make a list of everything that needs to get done. 

 

Prioritizing different responsibilities will prove itself to be useful as you can get the most stressful activities out of the way first. This enables you to be more thoughtful about longer projects that might require some additional concentration. Investing a few minutes at the beginning of each week for planning allows you to free up mental space for when you are trying to complete different activities, so you aren’t worrying about the bigger things going on. In addition to balancing different responsibilities and personal hobbies, it is vital to your mental health that you compartmentalize different areas of their life. Keeping your personal life physically separate from your work life is a great start. Craig’s strategy is to assign a single function to a space, so he converted one of his sibling’s rooms into an office and uses that space solely for work responsibilities. Setting these boundaries between work/school and your personal life is proven to increase efficiency at work and reduce stress in your personal life. 

Benefit from Your Distractions.

Staying organized and calm throughout this semester has been a tough thing to do with the switch to online school, as it’s tempting to resort to panic when you realize you missed a due date or are behind on lectures. This is why it is absolutely crucial to find people or tricks to help you stay on track. For Craig, it’s really about finding those little distractions and escapes like finding people you can talk to about things that are unrelated to school and the pandemic. Finding something else to talk about during this time can be beneficial because it is very grounding and refreshing to find commonalities with other people. While some distractions offer a good break, others are unwelcomed. Distractions have become even more prevalent while doing school from home and it has been increasingly harder to combat them. Craig’s tip: give a certain amount of attention to those distractions throughout your day, such as, giving yourself those designated breaks between completing assignments. You can try to power through lecture after lecture or assignment after assignment, but this will eventually just lead to a mental burnout and poor-quality work. Taking a short break to relax in between periods of concentration is essential. Breaks give your brain the chance to rest, recover, and process information in more efficient ways leading to increased productivity and decreased stress. However, this technique can backfire if you take too many breaks. Ensure to time your breaks and get back to work so that you don’t accidentally waste a whole afternoon on one break. 

Long-term Thinking. 

Everyone has had some sort of difficulty adapting to the sudden changes in our learning environment. In many cases, environmental change also means a change in the state of one’s mental health. Craig described the feeling of this sudden and extreme change perfectly- a constant sinking feeling. He identifies one of the major problems and that is the disconnect between students and their professors, peers, etc. He believes that with everything online there’s less guidance; things feel like they are just floating out there and there aren’t as many people/professors telling you when things are due creating this constant state of anxiety. It is that kind of wear and tear that is dragging a lot of people down and this plays into the routineness that we have all been feeling, living the same day over and over again like we’re stuck in that movie Groundhog Day. Even though Craig was able to describe the sinking feeling we all feel perfectly, he also reminded me that it’s about long-term goal setting and the importance of knowing that there’s something good on the other side of that feeling. Be sure to remember what you’re working towards, as it is something that supersedes current day to day life.

Don’t Overthink it. 

When asked if he had any tips for students writing their first set of finals this year, Craig said to remember that the marks you achieve during your first year do not matter a whole great deal when applying to Master’s programs. By this, I think that Craig means that your marks on your first exams should not be viewed as the sole determining factor for the rest of your academic career, so do not beat yourself up if they are not as high as you had anticipated. During exam season, it would be more beneficial to think long-term and get into the mental space of accepting the fact that you aren’t going to know everything on your finals. Moving past the idea that not doing well on your finals will be the end of your academic career will lead to reduced stress, a clear mind, and better academic performance. After all, stress does not actually improve academic performance. If you find that you aren’t able to clear your mind on your own, the campus offers many resources that are still available online! Craig revealed to me that he bothers the academic advisors once or twice a year. He uses these appointments to ensure that he’s on the right track and nothing is missing from course credits. He describes them as very grounding people to talk to, always giving levelled responses that give a sense of reassurance in the face of uncertainty. 

Hold Yourself Accountable.

When I asked Craig for his biggest learning experience this semester, he described something that I related to a great deal and believe many others have had the same experience. Going into online school there was this notion that because everything is online and at our fingertips all at once, there was this expectation that things would automatically be more organized and connected. Craig said that he thought that he’d have more of an understanding and a better grasp of everything that is going on. His biggest learning experience this semester was that this is not inherently true, there still has to be a specific and deliberate effort to keep in touch with others, to stay organized, and to stay on top of responsibilities. There is not as much accountability in the electronic environment than we tell ourselves there is, so you need to make certain that you keep yourself accountable. 

At the end of the day, Craig wanted to really emphasize that whenever we are in a working environment, it is always temporary. We are only in school for four years or so, whether we’re in person or online, it is purely a temporary environment and it can all change relatively soon. Without a definitive ending in sight, it can feel as though there is a never-ending horizon but at the end of the day, our environment will eventually change for the better. I really enjoyed speaking with Craig and I hope that you can appreciate his insight and advice as much as I do. 

 

Good luck on your finals!