This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Hamilton chapter.
1) Denial – This is the first stage where you simply don’t acknowledge the fact
that finals are approaching. It generally includes excessive amounts of
laziness along with unproductive late nights. 10-page essay due next week?
Doesn’t exist. 3-hour exam? Will probably get cancelled. It’s going to be fine,
right? Your college GPA isn’t that important. So you proceed to sit in your bed
watching Netflix until unreasonable hours of the early morning.
2) Procrastination – Now you’ve reached the point where you know that
there’s work to be done. Your research paper isn’t going to write itself.
However, distracted by the magical appeal of BuzzFeed articles and social
media, you knowingly choose not to do homework. As you sit in the library
discreetly listening to Taylor Swift’s new album and silently living vicariously
through all the other diligent students around you, who are actually studying
for their finals, you wonder if “Blank Space” is really about the blank
document blatantly staring back at you.
3) Panic – Alright, alright. Time to get down to the nitty gritty. There’s no more
room for silly games. As you cram for your exam in t-minus 24 hours, you
start to feel a bit crazed. How does one memorize 400 Chinese characters?
What are the parts of the brain and why haven’t you been using any of them?
Should you have done the reading throughout the semester? Does anyone
even actually do the reading? You sit in one of the lone corners of the library at 4am
psyching yourself about the exam, but maybe that’s just all the caffeine
talking (which probably makes up at least 90% of your body by this point).
4) Acceptance – This is it. You’ve done all that you can do (or maybe not). But it
doesn’t matter anymore. Finals are imminent, and time is running out. It
appears that trying to learn an entire semester in one week is much more
difficult than you had anticipated. At this point, the only thing you really can
do is proceed to sit in your bed watching Netflix until unreasonable hours of
the early morning, thus bringing our dreaded finals week full circle.