Finals Destination: Depression

So it’s that time of year again: finals week. It’s time to buckle up, bunker down, pop some Adderall and get some serious studying done. Or at least that’s what everyone else is doing. I’m a journalism major, and one of the advantages of being a journalism major is that I don’t really have finals. I just have to do a bunch of papers, which is nothing really for me. I just sit down in front of my computer and sporadically type in between dancing in my chair and singing “Like a Virgin” for three hours until the paper has so much bulls**t on it that it attracts flies.

But even when I did have a lot of tests, I’ve never been one of those guys that panics a lot over exams. It’s one of the advantages of being a genius. Or at least thinking you are a genius. Or having severe brain damage. I’m not sure which one applies to me. But there are a lot of people who do stress out over these exams. You can always tell when people are hunkering down and really studying, because they are on Facebook constantly b****ing about it. The week of finals my feed always says something like “Nancy is so stressed out! So much studying to do!” Now I want to tell these people that maybe if they would take all the time that they spent whining on Facebook and applied it to work they probably would have cured cancer by now, but I think it’s much funnier to let them stress out on Facebook and then fail.

To me tests are a stupid thing to worry about. I’ve always been good at taking tests. Of course passing tests is a different story, but man can I take them. For one thing, I finish quickly (on exams, that is). This is mainly because I don’t spend too long on a question. My philosophy is that if I don’t know the answer after six seconds, I’m not going to remember it after thirty seconds. I remember one year I had a 7:30 final with 60 questions on the same night as a Game 7 of the NBA playoffs. I was out of the test and back in the dorm in time for the 8 o’clock tip-off. I would be even faster if I could learn to fill in those stupid bubbles faster. I think instead of giving those darn SAT classes where they try to teach you about the questions, they should have bubble drills, where you learn to fill in bubbles quickly. Plus, I can never stay in the lines.

Anyway, even though I don’t mind tests, I hate finals week. Mainly because I can’t find anyone to party with. You would think that I was trying to get people to murder kittens with me or something. And sure, my GPA may be lower than my BAC on most weekends, but at least I don’t get finalsitis, a disease that wussy little college students made up as a built in excuse for how crappy they feel as they wreck their brains studying for finals. Now I don’t think I’ve ever gotten sick during finals week, because contrary to most students, I get more sleep and less stress during finals week than during the normal school year, because I don’t have to worry about classes anymore.

But there are students that do get sick during finals week, and they are always sitting next to me during the test. You know the people I’m talking about; they are constantly sniffling and rubbing their noses and making wimpy little coughs during their test and sneezing and then everyone says “bless you” and then they say “thank you” and I maybe start to get a little annoyed so I carefully lift up my regulation No. 2 pencil and…

Whoops. Sorry about that, I went off on a bit of a tangent. Now, while I can appreciate all of these kids who think that they can’t miss these finals unless they are openly bleeding from openings they are not supposed to be bleeding from, I should have a say in this. I mean, I’m just days away from my summer vacation, and I certainly don’t want to spend it sick because some over-achieving, all-go, no quit, don’t stop, career woman decided to sneeze on me. If you must come to the final, just don’t sit next to me. I will be easy to spot because I will probably be the only guy not studying and almost certainly the only guy humming Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out.”

Then again, I’m not nearly as excited to be ending class as I normally am. Normally finals mean I am close to leaving this darn state and heading for Hawaii. But this summer I’m stuck up here, where it snowed just a few days ago. That’s right; it snowed less than a week away from summer break. Plus I have to work this summer because my apartment complex has a shotgun pointed directly at my crotch. So frankly I’m going to be bummed when finals end, because at least during finals my misery has company.