Right before exams, I usually try to have a Academic Success Workshop devoted to stress reduction. The most useful and popular thing that we have done is to lead the students in a stress reduction meditation from The Relaxation and Stress Reduction Workbook by Martha Davis. We fed them pizza, gave them goodie bags of tissues and toys, and then took about 40 minutes to go through it.
When putting together Workshops, my usual tendency is to worry about providing enough content and good advice, but I think 40 minutes of forced calming down was probably the best thing we could do.
(Alex Ruskell)
