How do you look after yourself during exam season?

When I was doing exams at uni, I would minimise non-essential tasks as much as possible so I could have more time to wind down. I would switch to having ready meals rather than cook, kept cleaning to a minimum (i.e. just doing dishes), made sure I had healthy snacks stocked up in advance. I would also make sure to go somewhere else to study for at least part of the day so I could get some fresh air on my walk. If I got stressed, I would go out for a run and that helped loads to calm me down.

When on study leave, I let my circadian rhythm do its thing, which often meant I would be staying up to study until 2-3am (don't recommend this but I've always had more energy in the evening so I would maximise this by studying at night), but I would always let myself sleep as much as I needed - this meant getting up at 11, but so be it.

And, this was never planned, but if I ever started procrastinating, I would let myself do it for a while to give my brain a break and didn't allow myself to feel guilty for it. I always got through the revision I needed and passed my exams, so clearly this is what my brain needed.

During the run-up to my undergrad exams, I tried to make sure I spent some time in nature everyday. I'd do a loop of my college, which was about a mile walk or slightly less. Very scenic, got to see the ducks, and was good for the soul generally

Though I'm not good at following my own advice these days, I think getting outside everyday is good. Even if it's just to the shops down the road, or round the block!

Thanks for your post- really good idea regarding having ready meals prepared/being stocked up with good snacks. Running is so good to relax the body and mind- sometimes I find it harder to want to do a longer run but I feel like even running for 10 minutes can have a similar impact
I 100% agree on the importance of sleep, I'm interested in the research about the type of light you have exposure to just before bedtime having an impact on quality of sleep- have you read about that? Anyway- thanks so much for sharing what you did at Uni during exam time

Yep, a 10 minute run can be surprisingly helpful!

Do you mean the impact of blue light on sleep? I actually bought a red light bulb for my bedroom recently but I'm not really sure it has made a massive difference to my sleep. Natural light in the mornings over the past few weeks has made it infinitely easier to wake up in the mornings though!