I got a concussion the night before my first ever college final

While most students utilized Tuesday, Feb. 9 as a day to recover from the blunt force trauma of Welcome Week, freshman social work major Morgan Goldman was busy taking her Statistics 100 final. A victim of terrible luck, Morgan was forced to take her last first semester final at the beginning of the second semester.

Confused? Let’s back up a bit.

On the December evening before her first semester Psychology final, Morgan was in a friend’s room with three of her peers. The group was watching Breaking Bad off a projector mounted on a lofted bed. Morgan sat on a couch below the projector. Annoyed by the hardware’s dangling wire in her face, Morgan brushed the pesky cord aside. The projector then proceed to crash onto Morgan’s head.

Freshman Morgan Goldman (left) dealt with a debilitating concussion during her first semester finals

“I was kind of in shock by the whole thing,” Morgan said. “I had gotten hit in the head before, and I’m kind of a hypochondriac, so I’m always like, ‘Oh, a concussion!’ but this time I was like, ‘I’m probably fine, I just got hit in the head.’ But then within minutes I started to feel really nauseous, dizzy, just like really out of it. I couldn’t remember things people were saying to me.”

Embarrassed by her incoherency and the tennis ball-sized bump on the back of her head, Morgan rushed back to her room to speak with her friends about how to proceed. Going against the advice from her friends and the McKinley Dial-A-Nurse phone operator, Morgan decided to wait till the following morning to go to the Emergency Room.

Although no internal bleeding was found, Morgan sustained a debilitating concussion the night before her first ever college final. The Emergency Dean allowed Morgan to postpone the Psych final to the following Tuesday. She slept for 48 hours but wasn’t fully recovered when she had to take the test.

Morgan enjoys a meal with her father

“Everything became worse,” she said. “I actually tried to study Psych a little bit even though I already studied, and I ended up throwing up from the strain and stress of it, I guess. During the final, I literally felt like I was in a dream, like a haze. I don’t really remember specific questions or anything about it.”

As a first semester freshman, Morgan had to deal with an issue very few students will ever experience: how to function during finals with a severely concussed brain. Although she powered through her first final, Morgan doubted she could handle the pressure of her Statistics 100 final. As a result, she was forced to push the final back until after winter break.

“Basically I talked to the Emergency Dean and they told me, ‘When you get back to school, after winter break, you have six weeks to take the final.’ I felt like I could compartmentalize and not stress about the final over break. I kind of just put it at the back of my mind and thought I’d worry about it when I got back from school,” she said.

Disregarding the pleas of her mother and father, Morgan ignored her studies throughout winter break

Morgan mentally combated the threat of the looming final for the entire break. She thought little about the test and instead chose to focus on her recovery. Although still showing minor symptoms, Morgan finished her Statistics Final last Tuesday after minimal post break studying. Although she would like to avoid this in the future, this experience left Morgan with a distinct perspective on how to handle her future finals.

“I’m probably not going to leave my house the night before a final, I’m probably going to stay put, stay away from projectors.”