Finals are strange. Think about it: I just spent the last few months writing in a notebook, reading every material shoved under my nose, and writing papers all in preparation so that I would know the material inside and out. I spent months sitting in one classroom with the same group of thirty-something people with the same professor standing at the front of the room, each week with some new concept to discuss.

Finals are strange, and now it's over. We had our final lecture and took the last test that is usually worth anywhere from 15 to 50 percent of my grade. In preparation for the test, I studied for hours, staying up well past midnight to memorize definitions and thesis so that I could repeat it back on a piece of paper. Whether I passed with flying colors or went down in flames, it's over. The class ended and I don't have to worry about it any longer.

Suddenly, my notebook feels like a show of the past months of my life. Hours sitting and writing in the graph paper notebook I bought by mistake once seemed so clear and empty, now filled from margin to margin with handwriting that ranges from neat and legible to chicken scratch that no bird could read and would be ashamed to be associated with.

I think about the hours I sat reading and trying to decipher philosophy, when I struggled through physics problems, or the days I worked to tell the difference between poetry by Browning, Wordsworth, and Keats. There were so many obstacles which seemed, at the time, to be impossible hurdles that I would never get over. A lot of times I said "I don't know how I'm going to manage to do this," became history, a past experience, a dim memory.

Finals are strange, because I spend most of the time in a state of half-awake, with more coffee running through my veins than blood. Finals are weird because it's the end of another smaller chapter, making months seem insignificant in passing, ended with a long paper that was written at 3 a.m., hyped up on Redbull and inspired by the approaching deadline, and tests that stress out to be point of nausea.

Finals are odd, and for what? Within a matter of hours, the test has come and gone, the paper was submitted, and there's nothing more to be done. Hours of studying, thousands of dollars, and months of classes for a grade to say whether or not I learned what was shown in a PowerPoint presentation or written in a textbook?

It's strange to think that it's over. Soon I'll forget the night I wrote the paper, swearing with each page that I gave up, that I didn't even care anymore while still trying my absolute best. Finals are pretty strange indeed.