Well, this is crunch time. We've reached the ever-dreaded finals week. When you are a humanities major like me, you just pray that one of your professors will go easy on you and administer a multiple-choice exam. But alas, that would be so completely unprecedented for an English or history professor. I'm going on my fifth round of college finals, and let me tell you, final exams for us humanities folks are incredibly beastly due to the ever-so-common term paper, that horrendous 12-page monster with a minimum requirement of eight sources. Every English or history or sociology geek out there is cringing because he knows this painful assignment all too well, but you biomedical science nerds probably cannot grasp the full extent of the struggle. So, though I should really be working on my paper instead of this article, I've decided to document the 30 stages of writing that damn term paper to paint a vivid picture for you...

1. (Four weeks in advance.) Professor reminds you that you have a paper due during finals week.

2. (Three weeks in advance.) Professor reminds you that you have a paper due during finals week.

3. (Two weeks in advance.) Professor reminds you that you have a paper due during finals week.

4. (One week in advance.) It dawns on you that you have a paper due next week. 

5. You decide it would be wise to look at the prompt.

6. Crap. It's a research paper, so you realize you'll have to allow yourself more than one night to do this. 

7. Ten pages minimum. Great.  

8. You begin to look for some sources.

9. You ask yourself if it is still taboo to use Wikipedia as a source.

10. OK...you sort of have a thesis. Heck, you've been working hard. Time to reward yourself with Netflix.

11. You remember after three seasons and half of the fourth that you have a paper to write.

12. You have your mom/dad/roommate/the kid next door change the password on the Netflix account to eliminate all temptations.

13. You stare off into space. 

14. You catch yourself Facebook-stalking the boy you "dated" in the sixth grade.

15. Left swipe, left swipe, left swipe, Oh! Right swipe. Hell yeah, it's a match. 

16. You look in the mirror. You remind yourself that you'll be a stone-cold fox no matter how these papers turn out.

17. You drink pots on pots on pots of coffee -- a decent way to make sure you have the energy to stay on task, a bad decision if you care about your health. 

18. Somehow, in a caffeinated stupor, you finished annotating your sources last night. There must be a God in this great universe.

19. You meet up with your main men Ben and Jerry to do a little drafting.

20. (Three days before the due date.) You cry yourself to sleep because you only have half of one page written.

21. (You slap your own face.) "Snap out of it, loser. You work better under pressure." 

22. It's game time. You're going to write this thing if it's the last thing you ever do.

23. You realize it might just be the last thing you ever do. 

24. You've been working hard for 10 minutes. You decide to go for a walk to clear your mind...to the refrigerator...for another beer.

25. Maybe a glass of wine, too.

26. Oh man, now you're on a roll. Writer's block ain't got nothin' on you.

 27. You wake up. It's 4 a.m. You must have fallen asleep.

28. You write frantically for the next eight hours. 

29. You repeat, "Si, se puede," to yourself quietly as you scramble to write that last page an hour before it is due on D2L.

30. You press "submit" at 11:59 p.m. and breathe an exasperated sigh of relief.

Multiply this by three and throw in three in-class essay tests, a six-page research project, and four additional writing assignments, and you've got my finals week. Holy crap. Time to go watch Netflix.