As finals week rears its ugly head I can’t help but compare the situation to one of pop culture’s hottest movies: The Hunger Games. For the few who do not know the plot of the Hunger Games, a girl and boy from an underdeveloped faction of a dystopian society are sent into an arena to fight to the death against 22 other youths from different factions of the society. Sound familiar? That is because finals week is most certainly a fight to the end, everything we worked for over the semester leads up to this one week.
First, there is sacrificing yourself for study sessions, or as Katniss would say, “I volunteer as tribute!” We start to give up our leisure activities to dedicate ourselves to our work and the final shreds of our social lives are martyred away.
Once we have finished our last week of classes we get the highly anticipated study guides from our teachers. In these last final days we listen to what they say without question because they are throwing us into the arena that is finals week and they are the ones controlling our fate. Our teachers are like the gamemakers who create the obstacles that we go through for finals.
The intense training that Katniss and Peeta go through in the Hunger Games is nothing like what is happening at McKeldin, Van Munch and Hornbake throughout the week. Students concentrate only on themselves and the subject at hand without any interruption. We are preparing for the fight of our lives and we study all night until we are prepared in every skill set.
When we are finally let into the ring and finals week begins, there is no more of Mr. Nice Guy business. The is talk amongst students and it gets very competitive. Finding a seat at Mckeldin is like the initial battle in the Cornucopia, it’s every man for himself. There is no shooting fives or saving a seat for a friend, considering there are thousands of students at the University of Maryland and only a couple dozen seats on the good floors, it’s a fight to the death.
There is also no sleep in the arena that is finals week. Students are up all over campus cramming in as much studying as possible. In the Hunger Games arena you need to stay awake to survive. Maybe the life or death metaphor is to extreme but the amount of caffeine and Adderall going through the veins of thousands of students is pretty scary.
The romance is definitely hotter during finals week, much like it is between Katniss and Peeta in the games. When you get a break from studying there is no better way to spend that time than with your significant other, watch the anxiety of finals slip away in the hands of someone who doesn’t want to give you an F.