Finals are tough, but you aren’t alone in your despair. Ahead are quotes from both great literary works AND Dolly Parton that will remind you that everyone feels like shit, which is better, somehow?
When you realize your philosophy/gender studies double major costs more than you’ll make in the sum of your career:
“The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.” William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
When you’re reminded that you’ve been right about school all along:
“I hated school. Even to this day, when I see a school bus it’s just depressing to me. The poor little kids.” –Dolly Parton
When you remember that none of your research will get funding under Dictator Trump:
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.” ― George Orwell, 1984
When Hopkins claims to have readily accessible mental health services, but counseling center is actually really hard to navigate, and you have to deal with your existential crisis alone:
“There were days when she was unhappy, she did not know why—when it did not seem worth while to be glad or sorry, to be alive or dead; when life appeared to her like a grotesque pandemonium and humanity like worms struggling blindly toward inevitable annihilation.” ― Kate Chopin, The Awakening
When you are faced with the reality of your graduation date and forced acknowledge the abyss of windowless offices you’ll call home for the next 30 years:
“Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it” ― Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood
When you finally admit you were never actually passionate about mechanical engineering:
“I said I wasn’t interested, and she was bright enough to say that she wasn’t really interested either. As things turned out, we both overestimated our apathies, but not that much.” ― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle
When you actually do “well” on a test, but only because all of the freshmen with covered grades failed:
“Your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.” ― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness