Finals are the worst; I know it, you know it, we all know it. It’s no secret. Finals are a drag for a variety of reasons, and everyone has their own. Maybe it’s having three exams three days in a row, or maybe it’s being so close to going home but still so far.
As hard as it might be to remember, this is also your last few days on campus for awhile. Even if you come back for Winter Term, your friends might not all be there with you. Maybe they’re spending Winter Term abroad, or even all of next semester. It’s a cruel and undeserved punishment that our last few days with our DePauw family are spent full of tests and papers when college is about so much more than that.
We should be giving each other Christmas gifts and having gift exchanges. We probably won’t be with our college friends over the break, so this is our only chance for a Christmas together. We should be spending time with our friends that are going abroad or doing an internship next semester. A semester and a summer is a long, long time to go without seeing a friend. If you’re going abroad yourself, then you’re saying goodbye to everyone rather than just one friend. We need time to spend together to make up for the months without each other.
But that’s only if we finish this paper on time and if we study enough for this test. The end of a semester is the end of your classes, the culmination of this semester’s learning, but it should be so much more. It’s the end of another chapter in your DePauw story, the culmination of another few months of good times with your friends and getting involved in things that interest you. Finals week makes us want to speed ahead through everything we have to do when, in reality, we should be slowing down and looking at everything and everyone that has made this semester about so much more than homework.
It’s a cruel set-up, but it just means we have to take it upon ourselves to put down the books at some point and spend time focusing on who we are and who we’re with. That’s what you’re going to remember, in the end. So give yourself more to remember and spend these last days well.