Finals week—the best time of the year to learn literally everything but the material you’re responsible for. Need something weird to distract you from the inevitability of your GPA’s death? Try one of the following!
-
Circus Arts:
(Source)
Difficulty level: ⋆⋆⋆
Cost: Varies
The circus arts are as broad and encompassing as the tent that they are traditionally performed under. They can be anything from juggling, to hula hooping, to swallowing and regurgitating a live goldfish (which the Her Campus lawyers have asked me to specifically recommend against). They have a learning curve—there’s only so many times you can drop juggling balls before you start to get frustrated. But there exists a world of Youtube videos dedicated to the circus arts and will specifically walk you through each step of whatever performance art you find yourself drawn to. And can spinning a plate on a stick really be much harder than getting through another paragraph of your Biopsychology textbook?
2. Reading Tarot Cards:
(Source)
Difficulty level: ⋆⋆
Cost: Varies, but around $20 for a basic set.
Tarot cards and other forms of mythicism have often been associated with the circus arts, with the people performing them often known as “carnies”. Carnie arts are just as broad as circus arts, but unless you’re interested in grabbing a jar of beard balm and becoming your campus’s bearded woman, then we’re going to focus on tarot.
Tarot is a form of divination in which you ask a set of cards a question, shuffle them, and draw. The card(s) you draw have specific meanings that answer your question. Even if you don’t believe in mysticism, it can be a fun way to pass time with friends, or examine questions from new perspectives. Most sets come with instructions for use and tell you how to interpret answers, making this easier than the circus arts. If avoiding your finals is a major factor, many bookstores carry sets of tarot cards. Sounds like a fun (and totally NOT procrastinating) off-campus trip to make, right?
3. Sample Sizing:
(Source)
Difficulty level: ⋆
Cost: None.
The longer you stay on your laptop, the more likely it is that you’ll eventually get your work done. Right? But you can’t just jump right into that important essay. You already opened your computer, after all, and that’s enough work to deserve a break…
Maybe if your hobby is slightly academic, it’ll make you feel better about leaving your other scholarly work to rot. In enters r/SampleSize. This is a Reddit where people in need of responses to their academic studies and surveys go for respondents. If you’ve ever taken a psychology class and have taken part in your campus’s research studies for some extra credit, this is essentially that, but online 24/7. There are other websites dedicated to this, but they either tend to be difficult to understand or a little sketchy—r/SampleSize links you directly to people’s research without any fuss. Plus, some of them offer the potential to win prizes for your participation! It’s almost as good as actually studying for your psych exam!
4. Letter Writing:
(Source)
Difficulty level: ⋆
Cost: Ranges depending on how much you want to put into it, but stamps are not cheap.
Collegiate culture is collecting thousands of pieces of nice stationary and then never using a page of it because you don’t know how to address an envelope (which you can learn how to do here). But there’s a lot of people in your life who could do with a nice letter around this time year, whether it be your parents, your siblings, or other stressed students. And if you truly don’t know who you’d write a letter to, consider reaching out to anyone on r/RandomActsofCards: it’s a Reddit dedicated to people looking for letters and cards, mostly for their friends or family who might be going through rough patches. And if you don’t know what you would say, nobody is asking you for an essay—just a simple “thinking-of-you” can be enough to make someone’s day. Speaking of which, don’t you have one of those due?
Stamps aren’t cheap, and there’s no getting around that. Sending a few letters won’t put a dent in your wallet, but if you send a lot, the costs will begin to pile up. If you would like to save the most money possible, here’s a tutorial for how to make envelopes out of paper (I’ve used it to make envelopes out of free newspapers in my college union), and I doubt anybody would be opposed to having a handmade card from paper you ripped out of your notebook (it’s not like you wrote any notes on it, anyway).
5. Celebrity signature collecting:
(Source)
Difficulty level: ⋆⋆
Cost: Slightly more expensive than letter writing since you need two envelopes and stamps per request.
Do you have a weird obsession with Chris Pratt? Are you dying to let Gal Godot know how you felt about the Wonder Woman movie (aren’t we all)? Fanmail.biz has you covered! It’s a massive database of all of the addresses where you can contact celebrities, massive and minor alike. The idea is that if you send a celebrity a letter at the Fanmail-provided address that requests their signature, they will eventually respond to you (or, rather, their agent will) with a signed photo/card/etc. Here’s a fun guide to teach you how to send one!
This is a hobby meant for someone who can wait long periods of time. The typical wait time for a response can range anywhere from two months to two years! But think about it—by then, your finals will be a distant memory.
Follow Her Campus @ Geneseo on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.