Daily Bulletin

Tuesday, August 5, 1997

Prepare -- the end is nigh

First the bad news: Spring term exams start today and continue through August 16. The good news? It's not too late to boost your performance, according to Judy Carscadden, psych grad student and exam preparation guru for UW counselling services.

A combination of mental and physical training, with emphasis on balance and moderation, is the key to surviving the pressure of exams. The following tips, taken from her exam stress management workshop, can help minimize anxiety and maximize success:

• Develop a realistic schedule that includes time for exercise, eating, relaxation, socializing and sleep -- as well as studying.
• In the final days before the exam, focus on reviewing course content rather than on learning new material.
• Make the time and effort to plan meals and eat well. Try cooking ahead and freezing some for later.
• Achieve balance by scheduling time for exercise and a social life. Lack of exercise leads to a build-up of carbon dioxide in the body. Exercise releases tension, clears out the CO2 and stimulates the production of norepinephrine, a feel-good chemical.
• Giving up social activities to study can make you feel apathetic or burned out. Joining a club, doing a sport and spending time with friends -- in moderation -- can actually help improve marks.
• Get a good night's sleep before the exam. Pulling an all-nighter will result in cloudy thinking and fatigue anxiety.
• Do breakfast.
• Stop reviewing at least a half hour -- preferably an hour or more -- before the exam.
• Avoid arriving at the exam room too early. To kill time and unwind, take a walk or do a relaxation exercise. Steer clear of people who are busy scaring themselves and others by speculating about what is on the exam, what they didn't study, etc.
• If you have trouble focusing on the exam, jot down distracting thoughts and deal with them later.
• Intimidated by multiple-choice exams? Try covering the answers, figuring out what the right answer might be, then go looking for it.
• Have a healthy snack if energy flags.
• Don't forget to breathe.
• Sign up for the exam stress management workshop next term.

Income managers learn how to sustain the arts

The summer institute of the Income Managers Program to train arts marketers and fund-raisers begins today at UW and runs until August 22.

Now in its fifth year, the program is a collaboration among three partners: the Centre for Cultural Management at UW, the Association of Canadian Orchestras, and Genovese, Vanderhoof and Associates, a management consulting firm specializing in the cultural sector. Funding is provided by the Cultural Human Resources Council, a federal agency.

The only certificate training program in North America focusing on arts income development, the course has drawn faculty from Massey Hall and Roy Thomson Hall, the National Ballet of Canada, Mirvish Productions, Toronto International Film Festival, and the Canadian Stage Company. Besides marketing and fund-raising, topics will include board governance, public relations, and volunteer management. Field trips will take students to attend performances and observe the operations of "major performing and visual arts institutions".

In addition to the summer institute, the 54-week program offers participants placements with cultural organizations across the country, as well as mentor relationships with senior cultural managers.

Office equipment sale Wednesday

A quantity of 386 computers (with hard drive) and 486s (without) will be on sale at Central Stores tomorrow, August 6, from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. As well, there will be an assortment of furniture including desks and chairs. This sale, and those held the first Wednesday of every month, are open to individuals. Purchases for university use by departments can be made from Central Stores at any time.

Waterloo Web site of the day

Ann Roberts is one of UW's best-known artists and fine arts professors; this site shows off samples of her work done from 1980 to 1996. It's part of the fine arts department site as a whole, which also displays work by other members of the department, and was created by Don MacKay of that department. He writes:

Although I set it up several years ago I have not had time to up-date or clean up the faculty section and do not plan to do so -- the main pages are not too bad, but the larger images of faculty members work will require quite a bit of time to make them look presentable (cropping, sharpening, better formatted titles, descriptions, etc.). I will continue to keep my own work up to date and I have offered to show my faculty how to improve their pictures and formatting, and have requested a short biographical statement from each one of them, that I wanted to add, but thus far they have been too busy to respond.

As for the design of the site: I wanted to make it simple to use, useful to anyone who desired information about Fine Arts at Waterloo, offer fast access to images, and provide a "quiet", attractive alternative to the many "loud", gaudy hard to follow sites that seem to proliferate the Web.

Barbara Elve
bmelve@nh4.adm.uwaterloo.ca

Editor of the Daily Bulletin: Chris Redmond
Information and Public Affairs, University of Waterloo
credmond@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca -- (519) 888-4567 ext. 3004
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