This is it, everybody: the final push before we can take a nice two week long nap that Pitt calls “winter break.” Classes are wrapping up and finals are on their way. How do I know it’s almost the end? These are the 12 signs Pitt students look for to know the semester is coming to a close.
1. You get a swipe! You get a swipe! Everybody gets a swipe! Everyone with a meal plan is furiously trying to get rid of their leftover dining passes in a futile attempt to make themselves feel like they got their money’s worth.
2. You can’t remember the topic of the last lecture of most of your classes, but you know the exact score you need to get on the final in order to pass.
3. You’ve actually counted the pairs of clean underwear you have left to see if you have enough to get you through until you can take it all home. Why pay for laundry when mom can do it for free?
4. You haven’t brushed your hair in days because who tries to look good for class anymore?
5. In fact, I dare you to think of the last time you wore jeans.
6. Finding a table in Hillman just went from impossibly frustrating to frustratingly impossible.
7. You’re desperately trying to hang on to the one pen you have left out of the pack of fifty you swear you came to school with.
8. You’ve dug up the syllabus for all of your classes to figure out just how many quiz grades you can drop and classes you can skip without it being detrimental to your attendance grade. Yeah, it’s probably time to cash in on that.
9. You’ve completely given up on making friends. You’ve had class with the same kids for three months. Face it, if it hasn’t happened yet, it never will. Try again next semester.
10. You cannot stomach another bowl of ramen and the smell of Easy Mac makes you want to hurl. You’d rather starve for the next few weeks waiting to be saved by mom’s home cooking.
11. Forget making a Christmas list. You’ve been working on a master list of all the TV shows you plan to catch up on during break.
12. You fully recognize that you should be making one last push before finals, but then you suppress that thought and take a three-hour stress nap instead.