There are very few situations that a graduating senior could find themselves in that would prevent them from graduating. And none of them are very likely. At this point in the semester and your academic career, you would have to make such a horrific mistake that you couldn’t possibly make on accident; it would have to be either self-sabotage, or the work of incredibly powerful circumstances outside of your control. So here are some of those things that could go wrong, but probably won’t, because even though papers and projects and exams are challenging and stressful, you are amazing and you’ve got this, and you will graduate.
You might (yet won’t) sleep from now until graduation.
Though an extended nap sounds really tempting right now, you’ll have plenty of time to catch up on sleep after graduation. As long as you don’t literally sleep for the next two weeks and stop attending class and completing assignments entirely, you’ll be fine.
Your computer might (yet won’t) explode
Computer trouble is a fairly regular occurrence for college students, but as long as your laptop doesn’t literally burst into flames, your assignments will be safe and sound. It’s still a good idea to save your assignments regularly, as well as have a backup saved on a flash drive, external hard drive, or email.
Your printer might (yet won’t) completely stop working minutes before your paper is due
If it’s not the computer, it’s the printer. There is a really easy way to relieve all printer related stress, though: print in advance. That way, you have to time to print your assignment at a friend’s house, or at the library if your printer stops working, rather than panicking because you don’t have time to try anything else.
You might (yet won’t) miss every question on the final
Laws of probability say this is impossible, based purely on statistics. The chances are very, very slim that you would miss every question, even if you were just randomly guessing. Since you will have studied, read the textbook, and attended class, you won’t be randomly guessing, so odds are you’ll get more answers right than you think you will.
You might (yet won’t) totally mess up the final paper
See the previous scenario. Unless you literally turn in a copy of a Dr. Seuss book or the lyrics to a Top 40 song, your final paper will still be salvageable, even if you aren’t confident in what you wrote. With final papers, professors are mostly looking for proof that you read the books and attended the lectures, and that you not only know the information but can restate it in your own words and apply it to your own ideas. There aren’t really wrong answers to papers, which is why many people (including me) prefer them to exams.
You might (yet won’t) have such awful test anxiety you can’t even take the final
Test anxiety is a serious condition that affects a lot of students. Remember in middle school, when teachers would call a test a cookie to try to prevent test anxiety, not realizing that it wouldn’t help because we all knew we were taking a test, not getting snickerdoodles? If you do suffer from test anxiety, take deep breaths, take your time, and remember that no test score defines you as a person or makes you a failure, just do your best.
You might (yet won’t) get stuck with a project group who ghosts and does none of the work
Everyone is just trying to graduate at this point, even those people who sit in the back of the room and never seem to have done the reading. No one is willing to risk a bad grade on a final group project. On the off chance someone does neglect to do their share of the work, the rest of the group can cover it and grade them harshly on the group evaluations.
You might (yet won’t) get so overwhelmed that you completely forget an assignment
We all have a lot to do between now and graduation, so it’s natural to worry that something might slip through the cracks. However, the stress of the end of the semester also has everyone clinging to their planners for dear life, so as long as you write them down, you should remember all of your assignments.
Though this article was meant to provide a little levity to a very stressful time, I hope it did help to alleviate some worries for the last days of this school year. After four years of paying tuition, studying for tests, writing papers, spending inordinate amounts of money on textbooks, surviving 8 a.m.s and night classes…nothing short of the zombie apocalypse is going to keep us from earning that diploma.