Can't manage to study for the final

I keep going over and over some flash cards another student posted. They are great and helped me with the midterm but this time I just can't concentrate for more than 10-15 minutes.

I have been having seasonal depression and the meds aren't working yet, or at least not all the way. I have a good grade going in but I feel like I'll just go blank during the final. And it's tomorrow.

It's a super boring and tedious topic so I can't figure out any way to get into it.

Sorry to hear! For SAD, Aplenzin is my first choice and light box therapy. I have SAD, as well, and it sucks! For me, obviously psychoactive drugs help with concentration, even a little pseudoephedrine does the trick, since it stimulates neural activity! Best of luck!

Thanks so much vans! I thought I was all alone here for a while. I'm on Lexapro and a few other things to enhance it. Haven't hear of Aplenzin, but I might run that by my shrink. He just gave me some Ritalin. He thought it would help me with retention so I could study this afternoon since the exam is tomorrow morning.

I just bought a light box with a negative ionizer. It won't come for a week. I should have ordered it sooner. I am also taking vitamin D since I have a deficiency and there is a little bit of evidence that they could be connected.

So far my mood has improved in the sense that I'm not gloomy. I have slightly more energy, at least in the morning. But my concentration is so low that I'm actually becoming anxious because I tend to use my mind a lot so it's terrible to have your brain not function.

Have you tried finding a practice test on the net and then doing it under a time limit? That kind of pressure can be motivating, when it flushes out your weak points.

What's the topic?

It's a grad class for a program in counseling called "Community Mental Health." I really thought I would be interested because I care about the issue, but it has been presented as so much about bureaucracy, politics, and funding. And tons of different models, each with a name and acronym that I'm finding almost impossible to figure out how to study except to just rote memorize, which to me, at age 51, feels infantilizing and not like real learning.

Thanks by the way for responding and showing an interest in helping. I love you nick. I love hermits.

Yeah, sometimes it's necessary to memorize stuff so it can be called up precisely and used in analysis or whatever. I'm a BSC student age 50+ myself, so I've been through exams like that recently. In fact, quite a few because I had to do several basic sciences. Bureaucracy, politics and funding is what I don't like about environmental science topics. I'd rather stick to the science, so I relate on that aspect as well.

I guess the exam was today. Hope it went well for you.I like your nick, too, because it's part of physical geography.

Thanks H3rmit. Good to know that someone sees the same problem in their own work though bad for each of us. At least we do know what we think is important so that is a positive.

I love the ocean and have studied oceanography, including the geology. My father is also an oceanographer now after being in the Navy. The real root of my nick is that it is symbolic. We thinks of ourselves as islands (ego, isolated) when in fact most islands (not all) are interconnected below the surface in an archipelago of other islands.