Stress. It’s a simple, little six-letter word, but the pain it brings to my life is immeasurable.

OK, do I sound a bit dramatic? Well, it is finals time, after all, and those tests come close to killing me every 90 days.

I find myself trying to zoom in on paper, misspelling my own name, and forgetting what day of the week it is. The reason? Those glorious 90-minute tests.

Kids have been cramming, staying up all night trying to stuff as much information into their brains as humanly possible so they can pass all of their finals, but at the cost of what? Losing the ability to form a coherent sentence due to sleep deprivation? Forgetting to eat dinner because they’re too busy studying?

Yes, it’s the time of the year when kids are so stressed out they forget to do things they NEED to do, like sleep and eat.

So, if you’re revising essays and poring over pages and pages of notes and feeling exhausted, take a break. Halfway through studying stop, just for a half an hour. Walk away from the books, people. Go get food. Sit. Relax. Then set an alarm to make sure you stop at a decent time so you can get enough sleep to actually function like a human being the next day.

Depriving yourself of sleep isn’t going to help you on your finals. If anything, your yawns and glassed-over eyes will just make passing harder.

At this time of the year the most important thing to remember is to not stress yourself out too much; worrying isn’t going to help anything.