LOGAN PREDY
Opinions Writer

A new year and a new school term are upon us, and while 2011 did not deliver on its promise of jet-packs and flying cars, it did (predictably) bring us something else: more schoolwork.

This early in the term students are still getting accustomed to their new classes and routines, but if you’re as seasoned a veteran at this education thing as I am, you’ll know that a tsunami of assignments, presentations and labs is soon to drown us in an ocean of dismay.

Over the years one finds numerous ways to cope with this inevitable onslaught of assigned tasks. Many students turn to alcohol, hard drugs, theft of shopping carts, or the defacement of public bathroom stalls with dirty limericks.

I, however, thought I might offer a few of my favourite safe and legal methods of school-time stress relief in hopes of making your life just a tad easier while you count things that don’t exist, write papers about dead people, code toasters in Prolog, measure matter in millimoles, paint pretty unicorns, tune bassoons or whatever it is that you fill your time with while you’re supposed to be learning.

Remember that the real solution for studying lies inside you, not at the bottom of a bottle. But it probably wouldn’t hurt to check there first just in case.

Play music while working

Many people find that playing music while they work helps to drown out the noise of everyday life. While musical tastes undoubtedly vary from person to person, there are a few genres that are more suited to productivity and a few that are much more likely to lead to distraction.

Classical music — or really any instrumental music — is great music to work to. Capable of expressing a large range of moods and emotions, instrumental music makes for wonderful background noise — after all, most people find it difficult to hum along with a harpsichord or timpani.

A musical genre that almost always ends up distracting the listener is death metal. I know that it will be a big sacrifice to many people to not listen to Children of Bodom while completing organic chemistry PhD theses, but it is a necessary sacrifice if you want to do a good job and not end up depressed or growling loudly at your computer.

While some people find that listening to their favourite music helps them study, I’ve found that I just end up singing along or accidentally writing down the lyrics to the song instead of bluffin’ with my muffin, I’m not lying, I’m just stunnin’ with my love-glue-gunnin’.

Lower your expectations

Much of the stress from studying comes from actually wanting to do well on your assignments. This is of course a completely unnecessary and harmful frame of mind for your general stress levels. Scientists somewhere probably claim that caring about things is the number one cause of undue stress levels in people over the age of eight and a half, and I think that they’re right.

The more you care about something, the more stress it causes you when it doesn’t turn out the way you hoped or leaves you for the captain of the football team. This is why the easiest way to be less stressed out by school is to simply quit caring what marks you get from it. Sure, there are people who are applying for medical school or maintaining grade levels for scholarships and the like, but they knew what they were getting into and they’ll probably be paid a whole lot more than you very soon anyway. If they want to be depressed while driving around in luxury vehicles then that’s their own problem.

For the rest of us, as long as you can hit that magical 50 mark, most professors will dish out the credit hours that you so desire regardless of your performance. The only credit-hour difference between a 55 and an 85 is a few ulcers and a lot less sleep.

Get a lot of sleep

It’s much harder to be stressed about homework when you are physically unconscious. Since all of those medical students and scholars are staying up all night squinting wearily at tiny text in journals that need to be moved around with industrial lifting equipment, there is a lot of sleep just left floating about out there ready to be taken at a moment’s notice.

Luckily for us, the university has a great deal of wonderful places to sleep at any time of the day. During the morning, the best place to sleep on campus is whichever class you are currently in. Some professors will call upon sleeping students for answers so as to make an example of them, but most professors are so jaded by years of dealing with all manner of distractions that they will either ignore you altogether or use you as decorative office furniture if you happen to sleep longer than the duration of the class.

In the afternoon, there are many services on campus that offer quiet study areas which double as superb sleeping locations. Spare rooms in the library and arts and science buildings — or just the library in general — are oft used sleeping spaces, so be sure to make your bookings early to avoid the lines. It is occasionally necessary to camp out for several days in certain parts of the library to secure a napping spot later in the afternoon.

At night, whether at home or at the university, textbooks make excellent pillows and laptops can provide a nice, soothing light as well as a warm place to rest your head.

Actively ignore assignments whenever possible

Assignments are kind of like pyramid schemes. While the professor promises that you will glean mystical amounts of knowledge from on-high by doing the same calculation repeatedly or writing at length about the advantages of one kind of punctuation mark over the other, this is rarely the case.

Supposedly, the more assignments you complete, the more you will “know” about a given topic and therefore the better you will do on the inevitable examinations.

This is, of course, an insidious lie. In reality, assignments usually account for between 10 and 25 per cent of your total mark in any class. This leaves you able to put marginal effort into 75 per cent or more of the overall mark and still walk away with a handful of credit hours.

Some assignments are required to pass the class, so these will need to be completed eventually — but all other assignments can be considered optional.

The only problem with ignoring assignments is that this can actually take a lot of energy and might be even more of a pain than actually doing the assignments. All I can say on this is stay strong — the added stress of actively ignoring assignments will, in the long run, be more than made up for by the stress saved by not doing any other assignments.

Imagine how much less stressful university would be if there were no take-home assignments. That is exactly how stress-free your university experience could be if you’re willing to put in the work.

Read this article

Whenever I begin to feel the stresses of university weighing me down, I take out this article and read it over to remind myself of ways to quell my anxieties. If you are worried about how this was possible before this article was written, I suggest you read it again, as you have obviously missed something along the way.

For those of you who stopped reading earlier on to relieve yourself of the stress of reading this article, I salute you and your commitment to having a truly stress-free university experience.

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