This post will show you how to prevent college acne, especially during stressful times like finals week.

While I’ve been excited for summer to come since winter started, life’s cruel joke is that you can’t get to summer without first going through finals week. It’s that time of the year where you don’t know what the sun looks like anymore, where you forget to shower, and you understand why the phrase “college acne” is a real thing.

And finals week is so much worse when classes are online. You’re doing everything in the confinement of your room, and then have to perform in often time, more stressful situations. Serious talk: Online proctoring is the scariest thing: I’m scared of having them think I’m cheating when I’m just looking at my picture of Harry Styles on the wall to calm down.

And with the stress, for me, comes stress induced acne.

This, in my case, just leads to me stressing out about my skin, and descending into a downward spiral of stressing about every decision I’ve ever made in my life. It’s safe to say I don’t deal well with stress. But knowing this since I was in high school, I’ve been able to master a plan to curb the effects of stress on my skin. 

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I’ll tell you right now, my college acne prevention regimen does not involve drowning your skin in millions of products or getting expensive facials every week. But it does involve the little amount of science I do know.

If you too get stress-induced acne, this is the time to get prepared, to prevent your skin from feeling its effects pretty soon. And just keep in mind, after finals comes summer. So here are the best tips to curbing stress induced acne.

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Having said that, no matter how much you try to reduce your stress, not touch your face and keep your usual routine, stress leads to at least some acne.