Everything UC Berkeley students know to be true about RRR week

‘You won’t actually start studying until Thursday’

RRR week, or “Reading, review, and recitation” is the week before finals week. There are no classes, the library is open 24 hours, and professors are required to hold office hours for your questions. Sounds great right?

While this week may sound good in theory, it never goes as planned.

You are bound to get sick

Every dorm and apartment building becomes the perfect breeding ground for all the lovely flu viruses and other diseases going around. The lack of sleep and high stress levels aren’t helping anything.

It’s inevitable, so you might as well make your appointment at Tang ahead of time.

You call home to feel better but it just makes you feel worse

It always starts out with a simple conversation venting to mom and dad about how stressed you are about your finals and how you haven’t studied enough. Next thing you know, they’re lecturing you about how you always put your social life first (which, to be fair, is mostly true) and you feel like a complete piece of shit.

You won’t actually start studying until Thursday

Don’t let the slang term “dead week” fool you; the first half of RRR week is quite lively. Everyone has this false sense of security in having an entire week (oh my gosh) just for studying, so it basically turns into a mini vacation.

Plus, in spring semester, the weather is usually glorious around this time so you can’t help but kick back on the glade or at a local frat’s barbecue.

Your friends have way less work than you

It’s Friday night and you’ve got 99 problems and finals are all of them. But your good pal is getting ready to go out for a night on the town.

You can already feel how jealous you’ll be when you look at their drunken Snapchats while the only fun you’re having is… well, none. Thanks, FOMO.

 There are going to be weird animals on campus

Normal schools have puppies and kittens and maybe bunnies to help students de-stress before finals.

UC Berkeley? We’ve got llamas that roam around the glade, micro-pigs, and goats. No wonder everyone thinks we’re weird.

You get a break from classes, but not extracurriculars

Ah. Dead week. You can finally catch up on sleep.

Just kidding! You still have that 8 to 9 pm club meeting in Dwinelle. And you end up staying there til 10 pm comparing final schedules and dreaming about summer with your buddies. Before you know it, it’s midnight and you’ve just gotten home. Pure sorcery, I tell you.

Healthy eating, fashion, and exercising? Good bye.

In this time of high stress, all you want is comfort- comfort food, comfortable clothes, and being comfy on your couch. If you take extra time to make a nice meal, or exercise, or look a little nice for the day, you feel guilty that you spent extra time doing something other than studying.

Really, dead week is not all that it’s chalked up to be. I mean, sure, it might actually be useful if we used it in the way it’s intended.. but when is that ever going to happen?

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