It’s that time of year again… You know that part of the school year where your workload skyrockets along with your stress level, and your GPA, no matter how low, is now higher than the average hours you sleep each night. It’s almost the end of the semester, and finals are coming up faster than you thought. It’s time to get your crap together and finish out the year strong… or at least that’s what you’ve been telling yourself as motivation.

Yep. Once again, it’s the worst time of the year across campuses nationwide, and everyone is feeling the pressure. You’ve started calculating your grades for comfort only to find that you need to make a 127 on the rest of your assignments to get the grade you want. And remember that extra credit opportunity your professor talked about on the first day of class? Probably not, but I bet you’re looking into it now. Most days, you leave class having no idea what was covered because you were doing homework or studying for other classes. The weather is always cloudy with a 90 percent chance of mental breakdown, and you didn’t bring an umbrella for the tears. Your social life -- lol wait, what social life? Let’s face it, you have no life. You’ve become more of a homebody than you ever imagined possible. On top of all that, it’s time for you to meet with your academic advisor to assess where you stand right now and discuss all of the ‘futures.’ Future classes, future goals, future plans, future education, future career. Yeah, it’s time to think about all of the things you spend your most of your time avoiding. So when you do finally have your advisement meeting, instead of leaving feeling prepared and confident, you leave feeling like you’ve been run over with an 18-wheeler full of reality.

Through all of this madness, you’ve reached a breaking point. When you find yourself actually debating whether or not you can go a fifth day without showering, you’ve made it. The breaking point is characterized by an overwhelming sense of done. D.O.N.E. DONE. You’ve reached a level of stress so high that you actually don’t care anymore. This feeling can last anywhere from a few hours to a couple days, and then you return to reality once again. But during this time, you have devoted your efforts to avoiding your responsibilities… at least until an hour before something is due. You’ve found that you would rather stare at your wall for six hours than deal with anything else. Or, in my case, writing 500 or so words about being done seems to be the most productive way to spend my time. No doubt you’ll regret doing nothing when your hourglass of procrastination time runs out, but you’ve decided it’s worth the risk.

So, here’s to you for making it this far, kid. We’re all in this together, and I support you. Keep on keepin’ on. It's not easy, but we’re almost there. Stare at that wall, and then scramble to finish that essay right before it’s due. Finish this year as strong as you can, even if that means dragging yourself across the finish line at the end. You’ve got this.