Five Ways to Keep Your Sanity Through Finals Week

1. Bake cookies


And it only took an hour away from grading to bake these! Totally worth it.


If you're looking at how much you have to do this week, you'll only be able to really start after you've made a plan. And who doesn't plan better while they're creaming butter and shaping little one-inch balls of cookie dough?

2. Eat someone else's homemade cookies


Just wander around campus and you'll be sure to run into some sort of baked good, just hanging around some one's desk. Grab it and run.

 If you don't have enough time to bake your own cookies, then just eat someone else's! You need a bit of brain food to get through all of your grading this week, and there's no better brain food than sugar; so load up, friends, and then buzz through those final students projects like you're being chased by a dragon. (what does that mean? I don't know. too much sugar.)

3. Take a stroll
Get the blood flowing to your limbs and to your brain with a jaunty stroll around campus. Walk down to the library for a view over the MCC pond, or walk down to the cafeteria to see what's cooking. Visit some colleagues and then feel better about yourself when they revel at how far ahead in your grading you are! (Little do they know what's waiting for you back in your office.)

4. Straighten your desk
Who can even consider grading anything when your desk looks like this:


This is waiting for you back in your office.

You'd better straighten it up, and quick. And your books could use some re-shelving. And your pens probably need to be organized by size and color. And that poster on your wall is a little crooked. Why don't you rehang it?

5. Take a nap

Because it's only Wednesday, after all, and grades aren't due until next Monday at noon. So there's plenty of time, really. Why are you stressing out?