You did it. You made it through your final exams. Congratulations, high five, good for you.
Except...
... Now comes the hard part.
You see, while the next few weeks may be class-free, homework-free, and dorm-free, they will be anything but stress-free. The holiday season is in full swing, which means that family gatherings are at an all-time high. And if you've ever been to any family function ever, then you know that there are two college-student related topics that take priority over any other potential conversation topic: your love life and your grades. Now, if you're in a super great and committed long-term relationship, all is fine and dandy for you. But if your love life is pretty much nonexistent, then you better be willing to talk about the only other aspect of your life that causes you feelings of inadequacy and stress: your major/minor/GPA/future. But don't worry, because before you even get to the point where you'll need to defend your liberal arts degree, you're going to have to make it through the dreaded question: "So, how did finals go?"
That's right. Your whole family wants to know about the worst week of your life. And you'll tell them. You'll smile through the pain and pretend you're not about to receive the lowest semester GPA of your academic career. You'll act like you are totally going to be able to get into the grad school you want to attend. You'll make it seem like employers will be begging to hire you post-graduation. And given your sad love life situation (which you didn't really think was all that sad until you realized the amount of pity looks you got when explaining that there's "Still no one special in your life?"), it's totally understandable that you want to compensate.
Let's not kid ourselves too much here, though, okay? It's bad to keep emotions bottled up inside of you. You don't have to tell your beloved relatives how poorly your sociology exam went, but it's probably best if you can at least admit to yourself that just because they're called "reading days" doesn't meant that it's the only time you should do your class readings for the semester. If nothing else, you can at least admit to yourself that the past week of you life did not go as "surprisingly well" as you'd like to claim.
Check off all of the following that relate to your exam-taking experience, and see for yourself how your finals really went:
1. You pulled at least one all-nighter.
2. You pulled multiple all-nighters.
3. After one too many all-nighters, you started seeing things.
4. And laughing for no reason.
5. And you got a little yell-y.
6. And threw a textbook.
7. Speaking of textbooks, you lost two of your rentals.
8. You studied all night for an exam only to realize that it wasn't the next day.
9. You didn't study for an exam only to realize that it was the next day.
10. You tripped while handing in your final.
11. You were the last one to finish your final.
12. By half an hour.
13. You cried during your final.
14. Your tears smeared the ink on your answers and that made you tear up more.
15. The person next to you saw you crying and gave you a weird look.
16. And that made you tear up more.
17. You tripped while turning in your exam.
18. You slept through your alarm on an exam day.
19. And only woke up because your dorm was on fire.
20. Because someone microwaved an apple.
21. And then you had to run and take your final in pajamas.
22. In the rain.
23. You professor used 20 minutes of your exam time to show a YouTube video.
24. That she made the class sing along to. You know, to "relieve tension."
25. You aced the final but it didn't raise your grade.
26. You took SO many written exams.
27. So many that you didn't realize you had started reading your responses out loud.
28. Until you noticed your professor staring you down.
29. You read 14 chapters of your textbook in one night.
30. You laughed when someone said, "I'm studying the exam, not the material."
31. Then started doing the same. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
32. You said "Well, at least I tried," after every exam/paper/project you handed in.
If you checked off even one of these, honestly, I feel for you. You had a rough week man, and you deserve a Netflix break and some snacks. But hey, you survived. Go you.
If you checked off most of these, we should probably get coffee sometime and talk about our similar strings of unfortunate events. Then again, if we were both in the same place then the building might collapse or something, so maybe not.
