Emily Day isn’t stressed out yet – but she knows she will be soon.

Day, a sophomore from Epworth, has finals in organic chemistry, Spanish and physics this semester. She started studying for her first test – chemistry – on Sunday.

“I’ll start getting stressed out toward the end [of finals],” Day said. “On a scale of 1-10 [for levels of stress], I’m not that stressed out now, but toward the end I’ll be like a six or a seven.”

Day said she plans to study for each test a little bit every day and take plenty of breaks throughout her review sessions.

“I usually just say I’m going to study for so many hours or do a certain amount of work,” she said. “Then I’ll take like a 30 minute break and then go back to studying.”

Liz Rachun, the University’s health communications coordinator, said this kind of time management is the key to having a successful finals week. Getting seven or eight hours of sleep each night, maintaining a regular schedule and limiting caffeine intake were also at the top of Rachun’s list for fighting finals fatigue.

“[Students] are going to perform a lot better if they get the right amount of sleep,” she said. “A lot of time students will pull an all-nighter once and then do pretty well, so that becomes their pattern.”

But she said success following overnight, caffeine-driven study sessions is a myth. It may work once, but research shows that a consistent sleeping pattern is much more effective than late night cramming.

Rachun, who has been a part of a group at the University focusing on the importance of sleep, also emphasized sticking to a normal routine during finals.

“If you usually stay up until midnight and get up at seven in the morning, do that during finals,” Rachun said. “The closer you stay to the same pattern every night, the better your health will be.”

Caffeine plays a large role in disrupting these sleep cycles, Rachun said.

With Jittery Joe’s conveniently located in the Miller Learning Center and Starbucks advertising fun seasonal flavors, Rachun said students may find it hard to resist drinking an extra cup of coffee while studying for that killer biology test.

“I’m certainly not going to say not to drink coffee ever,” Rachun said.

She still cautions students to limit their consumption of coffee or energy drinks and refrain from drinking caffeine in the later hours of the afternoon.

Students should start finishing their work and begin focusing on their evening routine as the day winds down, Rachun said.