1. Exercise

Scientists universally agree that exercise is a great way to calm down, as it lowers the body’s stress hormones. While your time during finals season may seem crunched enough anyway, taking a half hour to go to a yoga class or to take a quick jog around campus will actually make you more productive. Most universities have exercise classes that are free of charge to students, so take advantage of it and try to pencil one in. You will help out your mind, body, and studying!

2. Don’t Forget to Eat

Even when it’s the middle of finals week and all you can think about is studying, you still have to eat. Meals are one of the prime times to be social during college, and scheduling meals with your friends can be a great way to build in a fun study break. Laughing over pancakes with three of your best friends or grabbing dinner with your roommate is the perfect way to ensure that you take breaks, get social support, and receive nourishment all in one go!

3. Make a Study Plan

Studying for finals without a plan is like going on a road trip without using a map. At the start of finals, make a note of the date and time of each exam using your planner or an online calendar. Then, fill in some of your remaining time with study sessions. Think about which classes will take the most preparation, then set goals for each class each day of finals.  Here is an example of what your day’s study goals might look like:

Monday Study Goals 

• Chemistry: Read textbook chapters 1-3
• English: Finish the MLA bibliography for my research paper
• Math: Do practice problems from lessons 2-6
• Physics: Study lecture notes from lectures 1-4

Leaving a day or two before the exam to do practice problems or to brush up on hard concepts is always a good idea, and it will prevent you from scrambling. This will keep you super organized, and having a plan will make you feel much less stressed.

4. Declutter

When you’re knee-deep in work and are trying your best to get everything finished, taking a break to clean doesn’t always sound like the most fun or worthwhile alternative to studying. However, taking the time to clean up your room will make you feel so much more on top of things. Going to bed with books and clothes strewn all over the floor can just add to the weight of all that you have to do. So, take a few minutes and hang up your clothes, straighten up your desk, and take out the trash. You will thank yourself later when you can focus on your work and not the crumpled-up laundry pile right next to you.

5. Get Enough Rest

Everyone seems to think that cramming for tests has to be a big part of the college experience. Staying up until 3 a.m., waking up at 6 a.m., and chugging coffee all day is not super sustainable when you have final exams almost everyday.

Studies show that sleeping well will help you maximize your test scores, so staying up late might not be helpful after all. If you really cannot get the seven recommended hours of sleep a night, treat yourself to a nap during the day. Getting rest will help your performance and make you feel less stressed. You will be more focused and better able to knock out your studying tasks.

There is no doubt that finals period is the most stressful part of the semester. It may sound weird, but part of effective studying during finals involves self-care, socializing, and setting your priorities. As a whole, it all prepares you for the exams more than just studying alone. Taking the time to destress can help boost your scores and make this time just a little more enjoyable.

Starting on a paper? Try EasyBib Plus for access to citing tools for MLA, APA, Chicago, and additional citation styles. You can also sharpen your writing skills by reading our free grammar guides on what is a verb, adjectives, pronoun basics, and more! Turning in your paper soon? Give yourself more peace of mind with a quick spell check from EasyBib Plus.

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Photo Source: “Christopher Columbus” by May Wong. Licensed under CC BY 2.0. Original image was cropped.

Overview

You will learn:

• How to analyze a series of events to determine cause and effect
• How to analyze common themes across multiple historical documents

Defining Cause and Effect

History does not happen in a vacuum, meaning that historical events are influenced by previous events, and in turn, impact future events.

The cause is an event or action that triggers a future action, or reaction, referred to as an effect. An effect may happen immediately following the cause, or it may occur days, weeks, months, or even years later.

Importance of Cause-Effect Relationships

Learning how to identify cause and effect relationships helps to explain how or why certain historical events occurred over time. It also helps to explain in what ways the events affected, or were affected by, the greater historical context.

Historical context is the combination of factors that create the “big picture” of a point in time, including the setting, major events, and social, cultural, political and economic factors that influenced the way contemporary people thought and acted.

Examples of Cause-Effect Relationships in Economics

Listen to the clip below:

Cause: High demand for silk in Europe

Effect: Europeans traveled to Asia to find sources of the fabric

Cause: Europeans traveled to Asia to find sources of the fabric

Effect: Trade routes and trade partnerships were formed between Europe and Asia

Is It a Cause or Just an Event?

Cause-effect relationships happen just as they’re described; the cause event always precedes, or happens before, the effect event. That does not mean, however, that all preceding events are causes.

Sometimes an event is just an event; it may not have any significant effect.

View the example below. Read each sentence and determine which events caused another event, and which ones are simply preceding. Hover your mouse over the green and blue icons below to view the correct responses.

Perspective

Perspective is synonymous with point of view. It takes into account the specific attitudes you may have when approaching or looking at something, or the unique vantage point that you may hold.

There are many things that shape perspective including age, personal experiences, political orientation, religious beliefs, and cultural and social factors.

Historical Perspective

Perspective not only plays a role in your daily life, but in social studies as well. Historical perspective refers to the specific lens through which we view past events. Your own personal beliefs and experiences will influence the specific perspective you have of an event.

The same goes for historians and economists. No two perspectives will be identical, and in many cases, there are multiple and diverse perspectives of the same event.

Analyzing Perspective

Questions to ask:​

• Who created the primary source? What important information do I know about this individual or group of individuals?
• When was the source created?
• Why was the source created?

Analyzing Perspective – Who?

The first question you should ask is who created the primary source? What important information do I know about the individual or group of individuals? Identifying the author or creator of a source highlights important information about their perspective.

For example, after his arrival in the New World, Christopher Columbus labeled the Native Americans he met as “Indians.” Columbus believed he was sailing to the Indies, not to the Americas.

Analyzing Perspective – When?

Listen to the clip below:

Questions to ask:​

• When was the source created?
• Specific point in time influences perspective
• Perspectives vary at time of the event
• Perspectives vary between time of the event and later in history

Analyzing Perspective – Why?

Questions to ask:​

• Why did the author create the source?
• What is the author’s intent or what are they trying to convey to the reader?
• Applies to both primary and secondary sources.

Example of Primary Source Perspective

Read the accounts of the interactions with Native American from the perspectives of
Christopher Columbus and Bartolome de las Casas.

While reading, ask yourself the three questions for analyzing perspective. How do the unique perspectives of Columbus and de las Casas impact their accounts of similar events?

Example of Secondary Source Perspective

Read the example about varied perspectives with regards to Christopher Columbus. The example is located in the first gray box at the top of the page.

Note how each historian’s perspective is influenced by their beliefs about and interpretation of Christopher Columbus.

The first historian paints Columbus’s voyage in a negative light, while the second recounts a much more optimistic version of the same story.

Conclusion

In this lesson you learned:

• the role that cause-effect relationships play in social studies and especially economics
• the difference between causal events and preceding events
• the factors that influence perspective
• how to analyze the varied perspectives about the same event, person, or period in time

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Never heard of the EasyBib Add-on? It has over 2.7 million users and makes citing more intuitive. When opened, this add-on appears on the right side of a Google Doc, allowing a user to simultaneously write as they cite, or vice versa. Users can quickly cite a book, journal article, or website in just a few clicks by conducting a simple search in the add-on and selecting their source. It will default to MLA, but APA, Chicago, and over 7,000+ citation styles are available.

Find and use the template in 3 easy steps:

1. Go to docs.google.com and click Template Gallery.

2. Scroll down to the Education section and select the MLA template.

3. The template and the EasyBib Add-on will both automatically open. Start writing your paper or begin citing—it’s your choice!

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In order to use this citation tool for yourself, conduct a search within Cambridge Core and bring up a Search Results page. To cite a single resource, click “Export Citation” under the resource listing and the tool will appear.

The citation will display in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, or any one of several citation styles you can choose from. You may download the citation or export it directly to EasyBib.com by clicking on the “EasyBib” button at the bottom of the tool. You will then be sent to a citation form in EasyBib.com that automatically fills in any data available from Cambridge Core. This form also allows you to confirm information before submitting everything to create a citation.

To cite several sources at once, check your resource selections, then go to the bottom of the lefthand column. Under “Actions for selected content:” choose “Export citations” and the tool will appear.

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