Late nights, early mornings, soaring stress levels and students on edge can only mean one thing -- finals week is approaching at Southeast Missouri State University.

For those students who suffer from stress and anxiety or feel overloaded by approaching tests, Southeast offers on-campus support through the Office of Residence Life and on- and off-campus student support through its Counseling and Disability Services.

Inside the residence halls, staff has worked diligently to help students with their studies.

"A lot of floors are having study groups and bringing food," Dearmont hall director Heather Brake said.

Floor study groups are not the only solution Residence Life has to offer. Themed bulletin boards that have hung outside the restrooms and common areas of residence halls all year were changed to stress management topics in November. Designated residence assistants filled the boards with study tips, time management advice and ways to relieve stress to help prepare students for finals.

Brake said some of the study tips included finding a good environment, listening to music if a student studies better with music, studying at the library if a student needs quiet to concentrate and setting aside the right amount of time to study with frequent breaks.

Scheduling certain times to study can help ease stress associated with meeting deadlines. Conversely, it may put students' social lives on hold.

"Sometimes you need to alleviate something off of your schedule," Brake said. "Take a look at what you're doing with your time; going out with friends, too many extra-curricular activities, and cut back to focus on studying."

Along with improved study habits and time management tips, students may need physical activity as an outlet for stress. Residence Life recommends utilizing campus resources, such as the free lunch express pilates classes, as well as a free mini-massage session at the Student Recreation Center-North.

"We have had students from the Rec. Center in the past and we have had student RAs certified to do yoga come in," Brake said.

Students don't have to live on campus to take advantage of campus resources and study tips. Southeast junior Meagan Matthias, who lives off campus, said her school workload includes a six-page group paper in a marketing class as well as a group final in a speech communications class.

"To deal with the stress I do a lot of exercising at the SEMO Rec. Center," Matthias said.

In addition to the Recreation Center, students may take advantage of student organization events such as the Arrow promotion on Wednesday between noon and 2 p.m. in the University Center. The promotion includes anti-stress activities such as raffles, massages and free merchandise.

"We will be handing out stress balls that have the Arrow logo on it," said Southeast student and Arrow staff member Richard Sovanski.

Other stress-relief events at the Recreation Center include a stress buster mini-message on Wednesday and a Yoga Break on Sunday at 8 p.m. in Kent Library's quiet room on the third floor. Students can access the campus events schedule at semo.edu to find out about more events happening on campus.

In addition to the Recreation Center, the campus offers the University Counseling Services for students who require encouragement or more help managing their time, and the Learning Assistance Programs help students with test anxiety.

"They try to do stress-related mini programs and stress management to identify different techniques to be more successful on tests," Kendra Whitcher-Skinner, associate director of student and staff development of Residence Life, said.

Despite all the good stress management tips, Brake said students still might get overwhelmed.

"If someone is super stressed out, we take them behind closed doors and help them out," Brake said. "We tend to anyone and everyone we can on campus."