Originally published in the December 10th, 2021 edition.
Liang Jiang
Contributing Writer
Finals season. No sleeping. No eating. Just reading textbooks, taking long hot showers, recording your doomsday thoughts on voice memo and waiting for a colossal mental breakdown. It’s a lot. Especially if you are actually doing stuff. For me, finals week kind of feels like that one time sophomore year, when I ate the cheddar broccoli soup from Old Main, and then couldn’t feel my face for two hours. My face was stiff like I had gotten botox, a mild paralysis, but I didn’t know why. I wanted to fix it, but I didn’t know what caused it so I was kind of stuck waiting it out. We ‘stan’ sodium poisoning at this school!! Finals week can be a mixed bag, depending on what kind of classes you are taking. It’s kind of like watching a bad horror movie. Everything is predictable, but you don’t have a say in what is going on, so you just keep watching, hoping it will end, and by the time that rolls around, you are in a state of heavy dissociation. Since the start of COVID-19, I would rate my level of stress at about a three on a scale of 1-10. Everyone else seems stressed and trying to get things done, but I don’t really feel anything. It’s mostly just this voice in my head that’s like: “You need to be doing stuff right now.” And then I am like: “Right! But, why again?” Finals week hasn’t changed this feeling at all. I don’t have any tests. Just final projects and papers. There is one week until my IS chapters are due, and so far, I haven’t read a single book. Months ago, I read a brief chapter related to my IS, but now that book is sitting stale on my desk, waiting to be automatically renewed by the Andrews Library circulation system. At this point when someone asks me how I am doing, I just say I am doing fine. And by doing fine I usually mean that I am giving myself pep talks constantly to do the bare minimum. Like please. Just do some work. Turn in something. Please. Final projects have the potential for a meaningful learning experience, especially if you are doing a project that you are actually passionate about. However, if it is just writing a paper for the sake of writing a paper, or taking a test just to regurgitate the information that you are supposed to remember from the beginning of the semester, that doesn’t leave much of an impact on your education. Unfortunately, finals season is also crutch season. I know at least eight people on crutches this semester. The other day, I almost joined the crutch list, because I couldn’t see the edge of the sidewalk under a giant pile of leaves. Then today I nearly slipped on a paper towel roll and ate shit in Stevenson. Be careful y’all.
