Brace yourselves. Finals are approaching. Time to break out the coffee, energy drinks or even your prescribed Adderall, otherwise known as “the big guns.”

This is the time of the year when you become nocturnal and spend most of your nights coming up with a game plan for the never-ending battle of good vs. evil grades.

It can be a time when stress becomes inevitable, pulling your hair out seems like a better idea than reading a chapter once more in your textbook and an A+ sounds like the eighth wonder of the world.

Finals definitely bring out both the best and worst of students, depending on how you approach it.

Instead of shutting our eyes and hoping for the best, it is time to face this with several tools, tips and tricks to help make that final exam easier, that term paper smoother and that long-awaited winter break more enjoyable.

Step 1: Location, Location, Location.

We all love to use our bedrooms to study. The only problem with studying at home is that you are surrounded by distractions. It is pretty tough to concentrate on Biology notes with your favorite television show on and that fresh copy of the new Call of Duty just begging to be played.

Whenever it is time to hit the books, the best place to be is as far away from distractions as possible. A great example would be the Ellender Memorial Library. It is basically a fortress filled with hundreds of comfortable nooks and crannies designed to set you apart from the rest of the world.

Some other indoor places are the Student Engagement Center in Peltier Hall, the lounge on the first floor of Powell Hall and for those who live on campus, the study rooms in the residence halls.

If nature is your thing, the quad is filled with great study spots. The areas near Polk Hall and Ayo Pool have several picnic tables and a wooden deck area where students and the squirrels can study Psychology together.

Some more great outdoor places include the courtyard near Beauregard Hall and the wooded area in the middle of Peltier Hall. Even though these places are in one of the more crowded areas of campus, no one tends to go there.

Step 2: Kick the addiction

Procrastination. Just the sound of the word sends chills down the spines of students on finals week. Telling a college student to stop procrastinating is like telling water not to be wet, so instead of being all talk, here are some tips to help you stay focused.

In order to kick the habit of procrastination, try to make a schedule to remind you when to study. Setting a reminder on your phone is one of the best ways to keep you on track.

Step 3: Do not cram

Cramming, a product of procrastination, occurs when you wait until the night before a test to try to study everything at once. Not only does this cause more stress, but it is also less effective.

The best way to avoid cramming is to study the material in parts. Doing this will make your study time shorter, giving more time to relax as well as a better understanding of your topic.

Step 4: Equip yourself

While it is always important to have good notes and read from the textbook, sometimes you have to mix things up.

Just like working out, where you have to keep your body guessing in order to perform your best, changing the way you study can help improve your performance on a test. The best way to do this is by suiting up with some study tools for your finals utility belt.

StudyBlue is a neat online application that lets you upload your notes and turn them into review sheets, quizzes and flashcards. It will even keep track of which questions you get wrong and show them to you again.

The service is completely free as long as you are registered at a university.

Android and iPhone users can even download a free application to access their notes on the move, but that is not even the best part about it.

The best thing about using StudyBlue is the fact that you can share them with the rest of the site’s users. After searching for the subject you want to study, StudyBlue brings up two lists. One list comes from everything that is uploaded to the site, and the other is everything uploaded from people at your school. This means that, if you’re lucky, someone at your school may have already taken the class you are studying for and uploaded his or her own notes.

While everyone will have a different experience with their finals, hopefully this list will help to at least suppress some of the stress of the last exams.

Good luck on your epic battle against finals, and I will see you again when the dust clears!