Finals week for most college students is the epitome of stress. Looking around campus, you can find a multitude of students stumbling around in an exhausted state of distress, quite possibly still wearing yesterday’s sweats.
Being a second semester junior, I would consider myself a finals week veteran. I have suffered through many sleepless nights re-outlining textbooks just like the majority of my peers. I have gone on library dates with my friends, pretending to study while we were actually just goofing off, complaining about how miserable our lives are/ were and messing around on social media. I have worn sweats and downed caffeinated beverages like it’s my job while trying to retain some sense of sanity.
As this semester started winding down, I prepared myself for the worst, expecting a stress-related melt-down. Surprisingly, it was all for naught. This semester, finals week did not make me want to cry. Many of my classes had semester-long projects that were due a week or two before finals. Some classes even scheduled the final exams the week before finals were typically held. This spread out the work so that I actually had time to adequately prepare for my finals, rather than rushing to get everything done in the course of a single week.
By this point in my college career, I am used to suffering through finals week; barely making it through the week. When I realized that I would have a relatively stress-free finals week, I almost didn’t know what to do with myself. All of my friends were dealing with the typical stress-induced hell, while I was getting normal amounts of sleep and maintaining my mental health.
When family called to check in on how I was doing, I almost felt guilty saying that I was doing fine. As a north-easterner, I’m used to over-working myself. We north-easterners pride ourselves on our rushed lifestyle. We crave a rushed pace and practically brag about how busy and exhausted we are. Why are we like this? Pushing our minds and bodies to the limits just to prove what hard workers we are. Sure, we still enjoy our free time, but we need to work very hard before feeling that we’ve “earned” the ability to relax. That being said, I don’t feel that I’ve earned the right to relax. I should have suffered more before finishing out the semester.
While the rest of my friends are stressing over their last final, I’ll be kicking back in my sweats, waiting for my grades to be uploaded. Buh-bye classes, hello summer!
