Whiteboards scrawled with cryptic equations. Faces illuminated by the fluorescent glow of laptop screens. Starbucks cold brews and Dulce matcha lattes sit half-drinken on tabletops scattered with notebooks and iPads. There are no windows. There is no light getting in. Here time is only marked by completed assignments.
The bookstacks in USC’s Leavey Library are buzzing with academic conversations, and all signs point to a quickly approaching finals season, and with it, the threat of burnout.
“If I got to be honest, I feel overwhelmed right now,” said Minh Pham, a junior studying computer science and business administration. “Next week is the last week of instruction and we have projects and then some finals happen early, so it’s a bit overwhelming. At the moment I feel underprepared..”
Pham’s studying companion, Abraham Solovy, is one year ahead, a senior studying political economy. The source of his stress has to do with divided attention; balancing academic life, social life and preparing for life after graduation.
“I think jobs become the main focus. So just half your day is spent applying to jobs instead of doing schoolwork, which is an added layer of stress,” he said. “I’m trying to balance between hanging onto the last memories with my friends … but I have to stay motivated with finals. I’m somewhere between senioritis and normal.”
While Solovy is in the final stretch of his college years, freshmen Julia Kwon and Brady Hines are just getting started.
“It’s very exhausting,” said Kwon, a performance and pharmacology major. “We’re just working on our bio projects right now. We have a presentation on Friday and we haven’t even started. I have an essay due tomorrow and a lot of work due this week. So yeah, we’re kind of cramming.”
Hines, a biology major, expressed similar feelings about the workload.
“I feel like this semester is much more difficult than the first semester. Usually when it gets to second semester, I’m much more burned out, I’d say,” he said.
At an adjacent table, study partners Sarah Tumiya and Bianca Hong, both juniors studying business administration, found themselves in the cavernous bookstacks this afternoon as a last resort.
“We’ve been avoiding Leavey,” Tumiya jokes. “It’s a little more distracting because everyone’s talking, but it’s nice to keep yourself from feeling like you’re in a room alone by yourself, studying and not interacting with humans.”
“I kind of just want to stay in bed and watch whatever TV show I’m watching right now,” Hong said. “But there’s only two weeks, so I’m just like, ‘get it over with, you know?’”
So, how do students cope?
For some, it’s about getting ahead of the game.
“We’re trying to study on our own so we can get ahead before we start having big group study sessions because it’s harder to get focused if you’re not already familiar,” Tumiya said. “But yeah, motivation is pretty low.”
Other students in a time crunch find themselves in the library for hours on end. For Hines, a venti cold-brew is his life source for pulling off all-nighters from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. in Leavey.
“I just designate doing [work] at night because I can’t really work during the day. I usually come here, pull all nighters,” he said. “I stay motivated by just telling myself, if I do this, I’ll maybe get a good grade.”
Late night ventures into the bookstacks is the same tactic for Pham.
“I stay up pretty late to catch up with lectures and then I’ve got to do what I have to do, like get the grades and get the work done eventually,” he said.
But late nights at Leavey aren’t the only way to make it to the end of the semester.
Dr. Kelly Greco, a USC Student Health counselor at USC Annenberg, has some advice for students as they make the final push to the end of the semester.
“One of the first things I say to students is that we have to focus on what we can control, and let go of what we can’t,” she said. “You can’t get rid of stress, anxiety or loneliness. We have to accept that that’s where we’re at, and then we would have to look at how we would problem-solve it.”
Time is of the essence, according to Greco. Using time wisely, she said, can alleviate a lot of stress.
“Creating a lot of structure in terms of mapping out what I’m doing every hour, scheduling, study time when I’m studying, those are things that you and I can control as students,” she said. “Decisions I make not taking on more than I can, as well as taking good care of myself, you know, prioritizing sleep, eating, exercise as well.”
Counseling services is another option for students looking for help with stress management.
USC offers several student health resources where students can speak directly with clinicians about problem solving, resiliency and stress management. Online resources such as workshops, drop in appointments and therapy services can be found at this link.