The ground is burning, the air smoky, and chaos around. You are in the middle of this battlefield, the weight of a heavy backpack of assignments weighing on your mind and the chain of job expectations tied to your leg, preventing you from moving forward. The battle between studying for your classes versus pleasing your supervisor in your part-time job is never ending, and so I wanted to share my own experiences with you, my fellow comrades in pain.

Midterms are a daunting and seemingly never-ending cycle. When I fill out my planner, I can feel very overwhelmed looking at the various midterms and projects I have in the span of just a few weeks. However, over the years, I have picked up on a few strategies that help me avoid cramming and survive the infamous Carolina midterms.

When I first came to Carolina, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to major in, but I knew I was pre-pharmacy and so I signed up for CHEM 101 my first semester, along with other courses that piqued my interest. After a few bumps in the road and many nights of doubt, I finally settled on a Chemistry B.S. as my degree and started my planning. As I begin my final semester of undergrad, here are some of the most valuable strategies I’ve learned for how to manage science and math courses at UNC, and perhaps beyond.

Every summer, I struggle to find a routine that works for me. I feel like every day is unproductive because I don’t have a set schedule like I do in the fall or spring. However, I had a lot to do this summer and I knew that, to be successful, I needed a new approach. I looked up some apps and decided to download Routinery, a free app that helped me follow my schedule and accomplish my goals.

Pandemic conditions and fully remote class loads have left many of us students with a mix of synchronous and asynchronous classes, including me. Navigating asynchronous work can be difficult, because it often lacks the enforced structure of a live lecture format and requires me to be self-reliant not only in learning the material, but also in managing my own class schedule. After one and a half semesters of virtual instruction, I’ve developed some strategies that help keep me focused and on track with my asynchronous work.

The MCAT tests every pre-med prerequisite in ways that may be unfamiliar and, frankly, quite daunting. This summer, I’ve decided to buckle down and start studying. In the process, I have learned more about my own learning styles and how I study best. I want to share some tips that have been helpful for me so that they can be beneficial for others!

With the shift to remote learning, it has been extremely hard to prioritize my plans. Instead of following through on my academic goals, I often end up spending time with my family, watching shows on Netflix, or even browsing through my emails. Knowing that I had a midterm approaching, I decided it was time to break this cycle and search for tools to increase my productivity. I went to the Learning Center website and found the Goal Tracker, which let me set goals and reflect on my progress over three days. At the end of these three days, I was able to complete most of my goals, reflect on what strategies worked well, and adjust strategies that weren’t working for me.

At the end of my sophomore year, I realized that I wanted to use tech to help me write more efficiently. When I took notes for my research, I didn’t have a system that helped me organize which quotations or information went with which source. My overall disorganization made transitioning from research to writing a bit of a pain. I could never cite quickly. That all changed when I found my dynamic duo: TheBrain and Zotero.

How do I keep track of a dizzying amount of research? And how can I organize my citations and research notes at the same time, all in one place? For me the answer is Zotero.

It was late one night in December, and, with what seemed like hundreds of other people, I was in the library. I had been working on a paper about the U.S. intelligence community for weeks—reading articles, finding book chapters, and typing page after page of notes—and my head was spinning.