Quarter system students know the feeling all too well. You’ve been in your class for only four weeks and midterm season is already around the corner. Even though you’ve been through the ropes a few times, it still comes as a surprise when the first test is announced. If there’s one TV character who can relate to the mid-quarter panic, it’s Olivia Pope. Told by Scandal’s favorite character, here are the many stages of stress associated with midterm week.
First, the teacher announces your midterm is in a week. Fear sets in. You’re still not caught up on reading nor have you been attending lectures. But you need this class for your major and you can’t afford to fail a test worth 30 percent of your grade. You think about all the times you could have spent studying for this class instead of sleeping in or going to the beach.
Given some time, you pull yourself together. You have a week? You can do this. You’ll spend Monday catching up on the reading. Tuesday, you’ll study the notes you did take. Wednesday, you’ll make flashcards. Thursday, you’ll pull an all-nighter and do some practice quizzes…Who needs sleep anyway?
Your friends start to worry about you. You won’t talk to anyone. You’ve been binging on food from SBMenus. And the last time you slept for more than three hours? Not for the last five days. You try to explain to your friends that it’s all for a good cause, your GPA.
It’s midterm day. You’ve studied all that you can. You walk in feeling at the very least that you’ll get a C-, maybe even better. You think about all the times you’ve gotten away with procrastinating and cramming. It’s what got you into this university, It’s what will get you out with a degree.
But when you finally get the test, it looks nothing like what you studied for. How could your teacher do this to you? She never even talked about any of this stuff!
You walk out of the class feeling defeated and betrayed. Is it too late to drop the class?
But when you get the grade back, you’re surprised at how well you managed. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t an A. But you’ll take a B-. At least you didn’t totally fail.