Most of us know what is coming within the next month or so, but if this is your first semester of college, you may be in the dark for the treacherous terrain ahead going into finals. On one side, you are working more than you ever have and feel like you might implode at any moment, but on the other you feel so relieved to have even gotten that far in the first place, and realize that it is almost all over with.
Finals is a time when people are working every last hair on their heads in full go-mode at all times. People’s true colors can often show during these times due to the fact that they are so stressful and carry such a heavy weight as well as a widely normalized negative connotation. However, finals season can also act as a source of reassurance, self-appreciation and growth.
By this time in the semester, you have found your niche in all of your classes, you have made friends in each class or maybe even a study group and you have either won over the ‘good side’ of your professor or not won them over at all. You have put in the work thus far to keep your grades up or you are studying yourself into oblivion going for the hail Mary of final exam performances.
This process is very comparable to that of the presidential election: by this time in the election, each candidate has built a party platform and gained the approval of citizens starting from a small to a larger scale, and they have even formed a group of people specifically catered to their campaign who have helped them along their journey. They begin to get endorsed by other politicians, the most important of those being politicians with even more experience (such as former presidents).
The candidates had to put in a a lot of money and effort into their campaigns to make themselves known, heard and wanted by the public. They made commercials and sent out flyers to tens of thousands of doors. If you slacked on any part of your campaign in this last leg of the race then you could expect it to greatly affect the outcome of the election. At this point, people’s minds are already made up—and you have either put in the work to swim and stay afloat or you will sink because you tied weights around your own ankles.
There is nothing worse than sitting in the library for 24 straight hours (or more) studying in the days leading up to your exam with little to no knowledge about what grade you are going to receive on that dreadful, fast-approaching date. You will just become more exhausted as time prevails and do worse with less sleep and more stress. The moral of this story is to put in the work beforehand, so that you do not see yourself slowing falling apart as finals creep closer and closer.