Bust out those Blues

Assignments are upon my once again, as it draws ever nearer to exam block and those magical times that are HOLIDAYS! But before I get to hang up my uniform for those two weeks of bliss, there's just the small matter of assessment to keep me up at night. It's only a tiny blip of stress in the scheme of things, granted, and while I know that getting a "B" in a subject won't actually kill me, all teachers are acting like it will. And with this pressure comes some major stress.

Anyway, so i'm overly stressed right now due to varying assignments (darn me and my need to pick nerdy subjects!) and i'm about to share with you the small amount of techniques i have for surviving the study time blues.

1) chocolate - as you may have guessed, this is pretty much my answer to everything. As the saying goes, "chocolate is the answer - who cares about the question?"... thus the motto of my life. But in all seriousness, chocolate actually does release endorphins, and as Legally Blonde taught us, endorphins make you happy (and happy people just don't kill other people).

2) music - right now i'm listening to a mix of dance music, 21 Guns, Taylor Swift and a piece by Dvorak (and no, i don't expect you to know who he is). Point is, music has the amazing ability to change your mood... so put on some upbeat numbers and bop around a bit while typing up assignments, or fully dance while rereading notes. It has actually been proved that moving while learning forms stronger bonds in your brain, so you may as well make the most of the time to burn off the calories from our first solution ;)

3) scream at something - preferably not a living thing, screaming at inanimate objects is one of the quickest ways to release tension surrounding your school work. Computer not working? No problem, just tell it how much you hate it and how much it will regret crossing you when you replace it. Printer jamming? Sarcastically inform it of how much you *love* having your assignments chewed up. Best of all, they can't respond so you don't have to think of witty comebacks.

4) write notes up in pretty colours - I don't know about you, but staring at boring black and white pieces of paper just about puts me to sleep. Thus, i have two marvelous little pencil cases, one filled with coloured pens, sharpies, highlighters and my black pen (singular, because you can't write exams in pink unfortunately) and a second filled with crayons, coloured pencils, glitter gel pens and textas. On top of making your work look more interesting, the use of colours actually helps most people learn.

5) shred a second copy of your assignment - as a reward for finally handing in your draft/essay, print off a second copy and shred. The satisfaction is amazing, trust me. If you're artistic, make a picture of a dinosaur or zombie face to stick on your shredder and make realistic noises so you can feed your assessment to a monster

So that's about it... my coping techniques when life gets too hard for me to deal with. Any other ideas? Post them in the comments :)