FINALS CHRONICLES FROM A BUSINESS STUDENT

Finals seem to look a bit different this year. Instead of sitting down and taking traditional exams, I have what feels like a million presentations, projects, and final papers to complete. You might think exams are way more stressful, but honestly, I disagree. My work schedule hasn’t slowed down just because the semester is coming to an end. I work five days a week, and at least with exams, I only have to rely on myself. Group projects, however, I almost need to micromanage my peers because I’m so type A, I will go crazy if our PowerPoint isn’t polished enough to my standards. 

            When I’m part of a group, I somehow always manage to become the organizer. I’m asking for everyone’s phone numbers, I’m sharing the Word document, and I’m making a list of who’s responsible for what aspects of the assignment. Honestly, it’s pretty exhausting. I work so much sometimes I just want to shut my brain off, but for some reason when I’m in these group project settings I can’t just sit on the back burner, I need to make sure everything is dealt with. I don’t mean to come off as pushy, I just care about my academics. It’s frustrating when other people fail to put in the same effort as I do. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve stayed up late the day before something is due to tweak the formatting or make a more cohesive layout or design. But I can’t submit something with my name on it that isn’t up to my standards of work. 

            As for presentations, I am a nervous wreck in front of a classroom. This is ironic since I pick up shifts teaching at a middle school whenever I can swing it into my schedule, but it’s much different. When I’m with middle schoolers, it feels very low stakes, and I have authority. But when it’s my college peers, it’s like my mind goes blank. It doesn’t matter how well I know the content I’m presenting, people probably think I’m unprepared since I stumble over my words when I’m nervous. There’s just something about standing up in front of my classmates and talking about a topic they don’t care about, probably won’t even listen to me, and throw on Netflix on their MacBooks, it just gets to me! I can see their attention is not on me, and it makes me feel like I’m doing a poor job at presenting the content, even though I know the material like the back of my hand.

            The hardest part, however, has been the deadlines. For the last two weeks of classes, I’ve had two to three projects or presentations per week, and these assignments aren’t small feats. Some assignments take hours or days. I pride myself on my time management skills, but this has been a challenge. I have to keep detailed checklists with due dates going at all times, and it’s that much more difficult with a busy schedule, trying to coordinate a time to meet with group members to work on the assignment together. Everyone has different schedules, and at times, it feels like more time is spent trying to coordinate a time to meet rather than get any work done. Finals usually bring a sense of relief, but right now it feels like I’m drowning.