A Recap of the Semester

Yes ladies and gentlemen, it is that time of year again.

Christmas? NO WAY.

It’s finals season!!!!

The magical time when everyone is trying to cram three months of hardcore reading, lecture and thoughtful reflection into a mere 72 hours of studying. Instead of simply commenting on how finals is the best time for stress related drug overdoses and endless nights of punishing your internal clock just to pull off a B, I have decided to comment on what led up to this point. Let us hop on the magical time machine of imagination and travel to the long, long ago. More specifically, September 1st, 2006.

WELCOME BACK TO COLLEGE!!!

Summer is now over – time for the party to start. No more job. No more bosses. No more parents. Just a few hours of class per week and a paper every now and then. Your first days of school were most likely filled with long nights, late mornings and little constructive work. Hell you have three fucking months of college awesomeness ahead of you. So crack -open another cold one slick, this is your time to unravel from a summer of labor and parents.

The Early Weeks (1 – 3 weeks in length)

The first few weeks of school you came-up with a full proof schedule. Maybe 50 pages of reading per day and you would have everything for the semester nailed down. No more of that bullshit from last year. You are going to get A’s across the board and do it in style. You still go out, but trips to the library to print up readings and get a jump-start on your work are frequent. Even if your plan was a little less organized, you still had one. Work will be balanced with play. So go out there and get going champ!!!

Week 4 – The First Signs of Change

Uh-oh, its either going out on Thursday or getting those 50 pages done. Well, technically if you add one page to everyday after tonight, you can still meet your plan. No worries. You did that paper that is due on Friday already. You still keep a pretty solid schedule and have not missed many, if any, classes. You are steaming full throttle into the land of academic success. Missing one night of work will never trip you up; however, the leaks of being a bum and an active social life are slowing you down ever so slightly. You do more “skimming” than total reading. But still, you are on schedule and chugging along.

Week 5 – The Logjam

That Thursday night last week turned into a few days of backed-up reading. Suddenly you are forgetting about past due reading and just focusing on the ones for the next class. Maybe you’ve even gotten to the point where you don’t even do those. Your schedule is totally fucked-up and you can see the dangerous waters of midterms creeping toward you. But still, you have plenty of time to catch-up. Time that was once dominated by your solid study schedule has now become your exclusive “Step-by-Step” time. Who can resist Patrick Duffy’s masculine yet sweet style of humor? That paper due next Monday seems like a distant problem, but you’ll deal with that on Sunday. Yep, the same day you will watch every single televised football game. Ehhh, whatever, you have tons of time.

Week 6 – Panic Number 1

HOLY FUCK!!!! Suddenly everything is collapsing around you. Midterms are breathing down your neck. You managed to get an extension on that paper, but now you have two other papers and a project due on the same day. You blame your professors for being unfair and scheduling everything at the same time. It is not like they gave you the paper topics weeks in advance or even printed on the syllabus that was distributed during the first day of class. Remember, that sheet of paper that has all the shit you were supposed to do on it. I think it might be under that beer bottle or maybe next to the Domino’s pizza box. Yep, there it is, covered with beer and grease. Your former ticket to A’s is now looking like a vaguely familiar list of topics you may or may have not covered in a class. Ok, you can handle this, just get the paper done tonight, the others tomorrow and the project you can wing. Alright, things seem better now. Wait, your friends are going to the bar” well, maybe you can shuffle things around. Maybe if you build a time machine tomorrow morning and travel back two weeks you could get your work done. That sounds possible. If that does not work out, just be prepared to say up for up to 96 hours to get all of your shit done. Don’t forget about Midterms next week. Those are only worth about 25-40% of your final grade. Also, you have started to skip some classes, but nothing serious yet.

Week 7 – Mid Term Stretch of Doom

Suddenly nights at bars have been replaced by evenings at the library. Yet again, your professors have conspired to have every mid term fall on the same day or within the same three-day span. Cramming 6 ½ weeks of learning into just a few hours never seemed so fun. You remind your friends about how stressed you are and how fucked you are and how you are going to fail out of school” WE GET THE FUCKING POINT. I am not sitting next to you in the library for my health. I too have four deadly mid terms coming-up.

But MY ABSOLUTE FAVORITE PART OF THIS TIME IS WHAT I LIKE TO CALL “ THE BATTLE OF WHO HAS MORE FUCKING SHIT TO DO!!!!”

It starts when one person outlines their week. The other then usually responds, starting with, “You think that’s bad, well I have” .” And continues to spin off a schedule of work that makes yours sound like preschool work. You won’t take this sitting down though, you will counter, outlining other things you have to do and then making their work sound like nothing. It will continue to escalate until you are both making up assignments to one-up the other. This argument also wastes about 30 minutes of valuable study time. Nice job assholes.

Week 8 – Liberation

Mid Terms are over. You might rededicate your time to studying and keeping up with work. The only hard part about this week is recovering from the massive amounts of coffee and total lack of sleep you have subjected your body to over the past 7 days. Regardless of what you do, everyone soon realizes that they have weeks and weeks until finals. Basically go back to week 5 cause that is all that happens before Thanksgiving Break. You will start to skip class on a regular basis. Try to avoid seeing your professors on the day you skip their particular class because it is awkward for both parties. Missing a class now and then shouldn’t hurt, but when your friends say “Hey, did you know we had a paper due in Classical Mythology today?” you might want to consider stopping in every now and then. Just to keep up on some of the more valuable assignments.

Week 12 – Pre-Thanksgiving Break

This is the last refuge of a normal semester. From here on out your schedule will be completely thrown to shit since most classes wind down and most parties reach insane heights. Most likely you will have some work to do, but at this point, you have a solid grasp of what your professors want, so it is not as bad as Pre-Mid Term week. Enjoy the Turkey and get ready to go into Christmas mode.

Week 14-15 – End of Semester

Welcome back. You have 1 ½ weeks of classes and then the semester is basically over” except for finals” but don’t worry about those now, that is what study week is for. Right now your main job is to prepare for the insane number of parties that will be going on over the next three weekends and during study break. You will most likely spend your nights in a stupor and your days recovering with minimal time for class or work. You will find yourself saying, “I cannot believe the semester is over” approximately every three minutes. All of your goals of the semester are quietly slipping away, but hell, you still have an entire second semester. Eat, drink and be merry my friend for tomorrow you shall have a final.

Week 16 – Finals

Not as stressful as mid terms as finals tend to be broken up by at least a day. Still, try cramming 15 weeks of information back into your brain. The brain cells that housed your mid term knowledge have long since been slaughtered by alcohol. You will study, but the urgency of mid terms will have been somewhat soothed by your reduced brain capacity and the joys of the upcoming Christmas break. Now is a good time to formulate the plan that you will abandon next semester. Try to make it more realistic. Maybe do one of every 3 or 4 readings. Whatever, finals are finals. You either know it or you don’t. Stress will only make you fuck-up so sit back, review the lecture notes (or those of a friend) and listen to some holiday tunes.

I hope everyone has a joyous Christmas Season and does as well as they need to on their finals”