What's your go-to fuel for Finals Week? Coffee, Rockstar, Red Bull, Five Hour Energy, maybe even straight-out-the-bottle caffeine supplements? I'm a kind soul here to remind you to think about what you're doing to your body before you mindlessly consume a pot of coffee whilst reading through a textbook you haven't used all semester.

Having done this whole "finals week" ordeal a few times now, I think something needs to be said about the amount of caffeine we dump into our bodies in the short week. Let me just start by saying I am no innocent bystander in this matter — I've been there, I've done it, and I've suffered the consequences. It's hard to grasp the fact that caffeine could be harmful when coffee franchises dress it up in caramel swirls and elaborate titles (I am a particular sucker for a generous dollop of whipped cream). Let's start off with some quick statistics about caffeine and the body, courtesy of caffeineinformer.com.

Caffeine has a half life of about three to five hours, which means that only half of it leaves your body in that time span. The rest of it sits and fuels your long study sessions for a hearty eight hours up to the ridiculous 14 hours. Point blank: it's sticking with you, no matter how much you consume.

Coffee and energy drinks typically take around a half hour to 45 minutes to "kick in" or to be absorbed into the blood stream. The mistake a lot of students make (myself included) is simply being impatient. Since the caffeine does take a little while to get us going, we assume it is due to the quantity we have consumed ... so we drink another Monster or get that 10 cent refill on our Starbucks brew before the caffeine has even had a chance to do its thing.

I don't expect that many of you are knocking back 11 1/2 Cokes on any given day, but I've absolutely seen people at the library equipped with what seems like pitchers full of coffee, multiple 5 Hour Energy shots, and a few Monsters to get through the night.

Believe it or not, any of those choices above are the maximum amount of caffeine you should be allowing into your body. Going beyond 400 milligrams is when caffeine starts to wreak havoc on the body. Some of the effects of too much caffeine are insomnia, nervousness, restlessness, irritability, nausea, fast heartbeat, and muscle tremors. Pretty scary, right? And that's just with a little too much, a lot too much can do much worse.

Obviously, these numbers are averages, based on mass statistics. Do not let that assumption invalidate them, however. Personally, I am incredibly sensitive to caffeine and sugar when it comes to their surges of energy, and I have to monitor how much I consume (especially after a certain time of day) if I have any hopes of being able to fall asleep that night. But that's just me; I start bouncing off the walls after a little too much pop, but you may not feel fully awake until you've had at least one cup of coffee. What I want to emphasize here is ...

know your own body, and know your limits.

Whether you deny it or not, you typically know when you've had enough caffeine. It's usually at that point in the library when you've been sipping on a Rockstar for an hour or so and you swear you can feel it pulsing through your veins. For goodness sake, respect your body.

My second piece of advice is to do your researchbefore you try a new source of caffeine — especially highly concentrated energy drinks. High caffeine intake hangovers are real and they are not something you want to experience whilst trying to identify the muscles in the body for your anatomy final. Don't set yourself up for failure (in more ways than one).

And my third, and final, word of wisdom to all of you lovely students is to get some fricking sleep during this final exam season. Staying up to study is all well and good, but at the end of the day (or the end of the night, depending on when you're finally going to bed) you will thank yourself immensely for rewarding your body with some well-deserved rest. Fun fact: one of the worst forms of torture a human body can endure is the omission of sleep. I know that it seems like chugging a 5 Hour Energy to pull an all-nighter is a valiant thing to do, but denying your brain and body the sleep it needs actually causes you to lose focus rather than learn.

So, my friends, keeping my wise words in mind, go forth and kick those final exams where the sun doesn't shine. With some solid study guides, a fab to-do list, and a sensible amount of caffeine, we will make it through this. May the odds be ever in your favor.