Sunspots (https://sunspots.cornellsun.com/tag/finals/)
Okay, I’m going to assume you’re behind on your work. Way behind. Whether it’s your desire to succeed or your fear of failure driving you forward, you’re going to need some tunes to listen to while you study. Here are some recommendations from Sunspots and friends.
“One day, I just went through Spotify’s chill/study genre and copied like 20 playlists worth of music from there.
Finals week can bring a lot of things to the surface: the sudden motivation to learn everything, a seasonal caffeine addiction, an awe-inspiring general state of self-loathing. After barely making out alive from seven finals seasons, I have come to realize that finals week also brings out the economically irrational agent hidden in all of us. Here I have listed a few principles of behavioral economics, applied to the disaster that is Cornell finals week (special thanks to Karna Malaviya):
Hyperbolic discounting
Finals season is always a time of personal reflection and contemplation. A question I frequently find myself asking in the days and hours leading up to exams as I panickedly squish months upon months of complex content into my brain is: why am I like this? The answer?
It’s the end of the semester. Let’s play a game. Picture your stress. Make it a ship. Realize your mind is an open ocean.
Like every other college, Cornell has tests. But, unlike every other college, we don’t call these tests “tests” — we call them “prelims.” Why, you may ask? Well, why is equestrian an Olympic sport? Some things we’ll just never know the answers to. Anyway, you will likely want to listen to music while you study for these prelims, and since I find music with lyrics distracting while I’m trying to read and memorize notes, movie scores are the way to go.