The 12 Days of Finals
On the first day of finals, UMass gave to me…
Well UMass, we’ve reached the home stretch. We’ve completed another semester, and winter break is in sight. There’s just one last hurdle to overcome, one last battle to be fought, one last looming mountain of pain and suffering to climb…
Finals.
Never fear, readers. The Tab isn’t going to let the torrential downpour of stress squelch your holiday spirit. Enjoy our rendition of the 12 days of finals, and don’t forget to sing along.
On the first day of finals, UMass gave to me:
A 12-page essay
Your grad-student professor is the five people you’re going to meet in hell.
11 dining dollars
Not enough to eat anything, but too many to waste. I’ll take 3.5 cups of Peoples Organic barely caffeinated bean-juice, please.
10mg of Adderall
Something to give you that little edge you need… to drink six gallons of water and clean your room for four hours.
9pm exam time
Walking across campus in the dark through freezing rain to take an exam worth 40 percent of your grade feels like an episode of Criminal Minds waiting to happen.
Eight degrees below freezing
Plus the windchill that forces you to walk into your exam smeared with mucus and looking like death incarnate.
Seven mental breakdowns
When you’ve accepted that the stacks of books in Dubois are all you’re ever going to see again and you start gazing longingly at the ground below. Fuck it. Fuck this. Fuck that. Fuck you. Fuck me.
Six fucking thousand geese-a-laying
Look at all those FOR THE LOVE OF GOD MAKE THE HONKING STOP.
Fiiiiiiiive shots of Ruuuuuuuube
Cheers.
Four hours of sleep
Cumulative. Like your Latin exam.
Three scantrons
Three blue books, three short answers, three decades to memorize and three equations you’ve never goddamn seen before.
Two pounds of wings
In fact, two pounds of anything. Eat yourself to death. Expand exponentially. Fuck it, it’s the holidays.
And a week of crippling anxietyyyy
Please give me space.