Some students go to great – and often curious – lengths to maximize their studying time before finals.

As I approach the end of my third year in college and thus my sixth round of finals, I'm confident I've seen it all when it comes to crazy, odd or just plain absurd study methods.

Well, almost all.

I'm sure some of you fellow Cramster members out there have some interesting stories.

There was the kid across the hall freshman year who Aderol'ed himself into a 36-hour sleepless stupor. Don't take Aderol… just don't.

Then there's the classic (and much more popular) I'm-going-to-go-to-sleep-at-4-and-wake-up-at-5 method that is meant to secure some semblance of sanity.

There are the library residents, the library frequenters, the casual library users and the kids who enjoy studying outside right next to the library.

And of course you can't forget the kids who never venture near the library in favor of blasting rock music and pacing around the room as some hypnotic memorization strategy.

I told you I'd seen a lot of weird things.

But this post is about what you've seen – I'm sure there are some crazy stories out there, so please share them with us so we can get a good laugh in while taking a break from our studies.

What off-the-wall study methods have you seen or taken part in? Have you ever tried any crazy methods with surprising results?

Gotta love stop days.

Including the preceding or ensuing weekend, stop days give every college student a chance to catch his or her breath and relax for at least a few days before final exams begin.

But just like normal school days, in which you are often scrambling to complete 10 different activities while still finding time to study, there is an art to maximizing your stop days.

So without further ado, here are five suggestions to keep in mind as you near those glorious few open dates on the calendar.

1. Don't study for at least two days. This one is self explanatory. You miss out on the whole idea of stop days if you plow through them buried in a textbook. Don't worry – you'll still have time to get your required amount of studying in before your first test. Cramming four days before the test is the first indication of Laymen's Acute Memory Evaporation, or LAME for short.

2. Sleep in. I know what you're thinking. If you get up at 9 a.m. and study for five hours, you then have the entire afternoon and evening free. Don't do it. Trust me, if you set your alarm for 9 a.m., one of two things will happen: You wake up in a terrible mood or you reset your alarm for noon. Sleep in now so you can pull late nighters in the future without suffering during the following day's test.

3. Go on a mini adventure. Face it: In the not-so-distant future, you will be spending ten hours a day studying, four hours a day wasting time while trying to get your mind off studying, and at least another two hours doing what you think is studying but is really nothing more than skillful daydreaming. Take advantage of stop days and go do something adventurous to escape the campus bubble. You'll be more productive as a result once you hit the books.

4. Exercise. I don't know exactly how you'll feel after your finals are over, but I do know how you won't feel – fit. Work out during stop days so that once you become the academic version of a couch potato you don't start to resemble an actual one.

5. Utilize Cramster. Eventually you will have to hit the books. Just make sure it's near the end of stop days. Running through practice problems here allows you to see the logic behind the complicated language and equations. But you knew that already.

Any tips I left out? How do you best utilize your stop days?

Why one university thinks Facebook study groups are grounds for expulsion.

College students' transition into the Web 2.0 world has been seamless. Professors' and school administrators' transition has been anything but.

Chris Avenir, a freshman at Ryerson University in Toronto has been a hot topic of conversation recently after school officials determined that his Facebook study group was in violation of the school's academic policies.

Avenir is now facing 147 cases of academic misconduct - the number of students in the online study group.

The worst-case scenario is expulsion. The best case is an F in his chemistry class.

Doesn't seem fair to a kid who simply found a way to recreate live study sessions – an activity as frequent as attending class – over the Internet.

It raises questions over how well professors and school administrations actually understand the new face of the Web. Facebook is now home to over 100 legitimate educational applications that function as anything from schedule builders to study group facilitators.

What was so wrong about Avenir's actions?

It's not like his classmates and he had access to test answers. Just as students do every day on Cramster, Avenir was fostering a collaborative environment designed to better grasp the concepts at hand.

Perhaps professors fear change. Perhaps the Web 2.0 world is just too new to accept as a valid classroom resource.

Whatever the case, Avenir's unfortunate situation should serve as a wake-up call to universities around the world that the Web is here to stay, and it's better to embrace it lest an entire student body view the policies of those above them as antiquated and non-progressive.

At Cramster, it is our goal to weave professors into our web, to prove that the Internet is a resource, not a danger.

Here's to hoping you and your classmates can find a way to ease your professors' fears.

What's your take on Avenir's predicament? Was the punishment warranted? What would you do if you were in his shoes?

Why relying too heavily on practice tests can have an adverse effect on your actual test performance.

As I wrote in my last entry, taking practice tests is the best way to study. However, there is one major pitfall that all avid practice test takers must avoid; we'll call it the "one trick pony syndrome." The point of practice tests is to ensure that you can apply what you learned in class to paper, to ensure that you aren't the guy with a 50-inch vertical who can't make a shot to save his life.

The point is not to bond yourself to the practice test to the point where switching numbers will result in temporary brain paralysis.

Many students will run through the teacher-provided practice test five, ten or even twenty times as their only form of studying. Doing this can easily result in an inability to solve questions with slight modifications. Sure, knowing the steps to solve problems may be more important when taking a test than knowing the theory behind the steps, but don't put all your eggs in one basket.

"Man, you sure can ace that practice test… but can you do anything else?"

Don't be that guy. Know the methods to solve test questions but also understand why step A leads to step B. Two-story houses need a staircase. Trust me.

Ever fallen into the practice test trap? Any thoughts on strategies to avoid the trap?