2008 Woodie Awards
Finals: A Senior's guide to surviving the end of the semester
Lauren Ruffing
Issue date: 12/7/04 Section: Viewpoint
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It's here again. And I don't mean Christmas. The flashcards and the highlighters. The review sessions and the all-nighters. The coffee. The blue books. The first-time trips to the lounge. We may be mature late teens and twenty-somethings, and we may have traded in our number two pencils for Bic pens, but when finals roll around every semester, the scene never changes: an entire campus ready to, in lack of a better phrase, "freak out."
Classes ended today, most with a paper due for one of three reasons: to supply another grade, to make up for getting behind, or to sum up and find meaning in everything that occurred throughout the semester. I'm not sure which is worst. Regardless, those beloved 8:30's, those dreaded labs, and the electives we're still wondering why we signed up for will never have to be attended again. But wait. The worst is yet to come.
Finals. Just the word gives me chills. Haven't we worked hard enough? Haven't we given all we have to give?
I guess not. I guess we have to dig deep. And probably not because all-encompassing single exams are the best way to assess 15 weeks of learning. More likely, because the insomniac, always-reading, ever-typing, memorization-bound week must be endured by all. It's a college tradition. I like to think of it as a returning nightmare.
My fondest nightmare: the 10-page Approaches to reading and Interpretation exam I finished with a blue hand after a solid four hours (and I was only the third student to leave). A close second: that week I had to write 10 papers in five days (and I'm not that big of a procrastinator). My next runner-up: the semester I was awarded both a big paper and a cumulative exam in each of my five classes. I have to admit, I'm still searching for the reasoning of that dynamic duo. Did my professors conspire?
The week's not pleasant, especially when the contagiously happiest time of year beckons our attention, but for all you freshmen, it can and will be survived, especially with the heeding of the following advice: