Reed during finals week becomes a raw, ugly version of itself- a version we all dreaded would appear after it waited simmering silently for a semester, subdued by the distracting stress brought upon by quotidian college life: tests, periodical essays, and social life that usually comes with the semester.
If the semester can be likened to traversing a dark forest, cutting away at thorn-ridden foliage gashing at one’s skin, then finals week of the semester is the ugly dragon rearing its head atop a looming tower cutting into a cold, indifferent sky.
Yes, I am still recovering from the wreck that people refer to as “finals week.” Please excuse my dramatic language.
It’s not easy to chart a school’s transition from regular scheduling to the finals grind, because to me it’s more about the atmosphere than when final exams take place. I may not have exams due until later in the week, but I still feel the dread and stress compressed in the environment, cycling through the hallways and sinking within rooms.
There’s a grace period before finals week that consists of either a few days or a whole week, depending on the semester. These filler days between instructional days and actual finals week are meant for studying. However, in execution these days are often repurposed for recovering from the barrage of work that accumulated throughout the semester.
During this time, a student group called “RKSK”- don’t ask me what that means, I will probably never bother to find out even after I graduate- sets my school’s “Stim Table” up in the library. The Stim Table offers food such as bread, trail mix, and nutella, and also includes substances like caffeine and aspirin. Set ups like these are good for low-ses students like me, because this table becomes my food source at the end of the semester, when I’ve run out of currency used to buy food at the cafeteria. When I was a freshman, someone explained it to me like this: “Kids are so busy studying that eve leaving the library to eat takes up too much time. With the Stim Table, you don’t ever have to leave the library and you’ve got everything you need.”
It’s a relaxing spot bolstered by compensating camaraderie; students often spend hours at a time isolated, either studying or complaining about studying on social media, and emerging from their headache chambers makes Reedies more sociable than usual. Socializing at the Stim Table could also be to procrastinate on returning to studying.
During my first semester of finals I was focused and spent several days on essays, which I was able to emulate my third semester. To be honest, I spend a lot of time at the library browsing social media and messaging friends complaining about finals rather than actually completing my work, which is something I need to change if I want to perform better. Focusing during the day is hard because that’s not when my productivity peaks- rather, it is stagnant and finds any excuse to decline, such as me not finding any open spaces to sit at in the library because almost the whole school is there. My sleep schedule tends to flip; I study into the small hours of the night and sleep during the day, missing the sun days on end. I need to remember to actually get work done instead of wallowing in stress, not getting anything done.