Finals are hectic and stress-enduring for everyone, but they can be that in different ways for different people. As a creative writing major, my finals are different than most other majors' finals. I don't have as many tests or papers as other people have for finals. In reality, I have to work on a portfolio for finals. We creative writing majors have to pull different pieces from throughout the semester to create a portfolio of final drafts to present for our final in our workshop classes.

We rely greatly on the printer for our finals. We have to print out numerous pages for our portfolios. I always feel bad for the printer because we have to print around 50 pages for our finals. It almost always makes the printer overheat or run out of paper/ink. The sheer amount of printing is enough to make the printers break and sometimes they do. We also have to spend lots of money on the printing of our portfolios and anything else throughout the year. I always have to get extra printing money because of my print-heavy classes or else I would run out. I actually have run out in the past. My first semester I had to borrow printer money from a friend because I had forgotten to ask for more money on my card and I ran out just before finals.

We also have to read entire novels for finals. Sometimes we need to write essays about what we have read this semester and what we have learned from them. We read a lot of literary books and works throughout the semester so it is easy to forget what you have read, so you end up having to reread those entire books the week of finals.

We have to write stories and collect all of our revisions to present in our portfolios. That is a lot of paper and writing for finals. It can take several days to organize what you want to have in your portfolio and then it takes an extra couple of days to get everything done. We also have to write a self-reflection letter about our experience and how we feel we have benefited from the class. Writing that four page reflection can take some serious thought, it takes a little time to figure what you want to say about yourself as you critique how your writing has improved but also where it still needs to go.

Creative Writing majors have very different finals than any other major does. We end up having to do a lot more writing and printing, and less test-like exams.