The calm week before exams: a study plan
A simple, humane schedule for the seven days before finals. It's built around sleep and practice problems, not all-nighters, because the all-nighter has never once worked.
The week before exams is when good students sometimes make their worst calls. Skipping sleep, rereading notes for hours, quietly panicking. None of it moves the needle. Here's what I'd do instead, and it still lets you sleep.
Seven days out
Make a one-page list of every topic, per course. Not detailed, just headings. This is your map, and most of the time it shows you the pile is smaller than it felt at 11pm.
Six to three days out
Two or three focused blocks a day, about 45 minutes each, one topic at a time. Do problems first, read notes second. Reading feels productive, but practice is what gets tested. After each block, jot down the one thing that tripped you up. That's tomorrow's warm-up.
The last two days
Switch to full past papers, timed. This trains pacing, which is honestly half of exam performance. Mark them, patch the holes, and resist learning anything brand new the night before. It rarely sticks and it costs you sleep.
A rested brain pulls up more than a crammed one. Every single year, the students who sleep beat the students who don't. It isn't close.
The morning of
Eat something, skim your one-page map (not the textbook), get there early. You walk in knowing you've already done the hard part. If you want a second set of eyes on a shaky unit during exam week, that's what a quick session is for, but you can run most of this yourself.