Finals season is upon us. Soon we will be trading in our skirts and sunglasses for messy buns and gym shorts and making the sad trek to our preferred study spaces. And while we’d all like to believe that once you sit down and decide to commit the rest of your week to reading articles you swore you’d get to after the midterm and making flash cards for a list of terms that, incidentally, has a flipside you didn’t notice when your professor handed it out a week ago.
Even the best of us start to crash and burn at some point during the culmination of a semester-long push toward summer vacation. The bravest collegiettes download SelfControl and block every website they’ve ever been to in 48 hour increments; the dedicated pace themselves in the weeks leading up to the end of classes by typing up notes and making study guides. I like to think of myself as a reasonably brave and dedicated student, but I also know all the tricks in the book when it comes to what finals is really about. Sure, you downloaded SelfControl, but you still have Facebook and Twitter on your phone, right? That’s awesome that you prepared all your study materials ahead of time, but I bet you haven’t touched them since you finished them, two weeks ago.
There’s no shame in finals burn out, so let’s just be honest. This is what you’re really doing when you’re studying for finals.
You Fill Out Professor Evaluations
Suddenly, it becomes an absolutely mandatory obligation to review each of your teachers this semester, and the moment you realize you haven’t filled them out (or remembered you saved them until the first study day), you spend an unreasonable amount of time making sure that you’ve laid it all out on the table. The added incentive being early access to final grades, but at this moment, it’s just something to do.
You Watch TV, Just in a Library Cubicle
Behind those big wooden walls of the library cubicles, no one would ever know that the 5-minute study break to check your email was actually an hour-long binge on your newest TV show. Don’t we always have the worst timing when we finally find that incredible series that you just can’t stop watching? Not if you don’t forget to bring headphones to Bapst!
You Spend an Unnaturally Long Time Eating Every Meal
A break away from laptop screens and neon yellow highlighter is always appreciated (and needed!), but when was the last time you ate your lunch like it was the last sandwich you’d ever see, just so that you don’t have to go back to studying? I’m not sure if its conscious or not, but the duration of meals extends significantly during finals, especially when you’re meeting with a group of friends. The more stories to hear about who slept through their first final and how your roommate thinks she might have to pull an all-nighter, the less time re-teaching yourself past tense conjugations of verbs in French and analyzing whatever Plato was trying to say, at whatever point in history he was trying to say it.
You Decide to Get Really Organized
After you give yourself the “this time I’m really going to get stuff done” pep talk for the fourth time, it’s clearly time to get organized. You tag all your Word Documents to color-coordinate with the corresponding desktop folder, you make a “key” to your study guide so you remember that green means an important date and red means you have to memorize this formula. But why would you stop with class notes and cheat sheets, when you could use this time to get some real work done. You never have a chance during the semester to label and upload pictures to Facebook, so why not now? And what better time is now for some investigative research to figure out the who’s singing all those song titles that don’t have an artist in your iTunes? Even something as small as cleaning out your backpack or looking up organization techniques on Pinterest is getting you one step closer to being completely ready to study!
You Panic
Eventually, you’ll freak out about the fact that despite how optimally organized you’ve become and even though you’re very well nourished, you still have four tests coming up. You might cry on the phone to your parents about how stressed out you are, or sit on HerCampus and realize how you really have had all 17 thoughts while studying. However, you still don’t really get down to studying for those finals until the panic has settled and come to grips with the fact that there’s really nothing else for you to do except study.
Have no fear, fellow collegiettes. We’re all in the same boat and there’s no shame in putting off academics when freedom is so close. In the meantime, happy studying! I’ll see you all on Pinterest.
Photo Sources:
http://snacktherapy.com/2012/12/10/finals-week/
http://giphy.com/gifs/mkLVuSOtyXExW
http://rofls.com/collection/C7777c/i-love-friends
http://ellenercolini.com/the-leslie-knope-guide-to-life-and-love/
http://fyeahromyandmichele.tumblr.com/page/11
http://anatomiadeumamenteconfusa.wordpress.com/2013/08/16/somebody-sedate-me/