Every semester, finals week approaches and catches every college student off guard. Literally, every college student. It doesn't matter how prepared you are, no one is ready for the onslaught of finals week. Finals week is like an unexpected, really bad snow storm. All you want to do is lay in your nice comfy bed and do nothing. And cry. Crying and finals go hand in hand. Finals week. The phrase alone elicits tears of sadness and dread. It's that time of the semester where your professors just want to see you suffer. All of the professors get together and devise some elaborate scheme to have everything due at the same time. As if it's not enough to just take a final exam! Add a six to seven-page paper and final projects! The world is ending! Here are the five stages every college student goes through during finals week.
Phase one is the phase I like to think of as the motivation phase.
You start off motivated and planning to get everything done beforehand. You are super pumped and are prepared to dominate all of your finals. Finals week actually seems "okay" for once. You have everything planned out. You know when you are going to finish your last few assignments and when you are going to make time for studying. Everything is going to go peachy keen. Hahaha no it isn't.
Phase two of finals week is "I've got time."
So your schedule doesn't go as planned. You take a bit longer to finish this paper and to do this project. What do you do next? You become delusional. You convince yourself that you still have to do this, that, and the other thing. Let's be real, you do not have time. You never have time. You don't even have time to sleep or live for that matter. However, you keep up with the delusion for a few days before the next phase occurs and sends you spiraling.
Phase three, PROCRASTINATION!
Procrastinating is fun! Especially when you know there is stuff you need to do. You go on Facebook and Twitter, post a few selfies to Instagram, watch a full season of Grey's Anatomy on Netflix, eat a bag of chips, and repeat. All of that wasted time really adds up. You think you have time to take a short break, but 20 episodes later and you have one sentence written ... you know you are in trouble.
Phase four, "C's get degrees."
Everyone has felt this at one point. You realize that you are completely screwed so you calculate what you can get on your exam in order to pass the class. You're at the point where you don't care anymore and you would give anything for the week to be over. You figure you're gonna fail anyway so you stop putting in a lot of effort and pray to the heavens that you make it out alive. Only to realize that you really don't want to fail and your parents would murder you if you did.
Phase five, life is wonderful.
After you decided that you didn't want to fail and got your butt in gear. You finished all of your finals and assignments. You feel as if a weight has been lifted off your shoulders. You tell yourself that you don't ever want to put yourself through all of that stress again. You promise yourself that next semester you won't procrastinate and you will stay on schedule. Naturally, that does not happen, but for the moment you allow yourself to believe that you will do better the next time around!
