It was reading day eve, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a--- rip, crunch, repeat, the sweet sound of m&m’s being devoured at the desk next to you. Everyone you know is either at lion or hiding at the library, chocolate is your only true, and constant friend. The only item willing to commiserate with you, other than Netflix (the forbidden fruit), is sugar. When the coffee is just not working its stimulating magic, hostess Twinkies and diet coke help to give you the extra jolt you need to continue the painstaking process of studying for that 9 a.m. final.               

My theory is each final you take correlates with each pound you gain. Bonus lbs. for more than one test in a day!! I learned the hard way that calories, do in fact count after dark. As the week wears on, and the energy continues to drain from your body, the stress starts to build up. As the stress builds, so does the pile of empty candy wrappers next to the desk.

Finals week is not for the meek, or the acne prone. Thanks to our incessant need to stuff our faces with whatever cookie is closest to us, we’re getting our Christmas presents early, zits! The overconsumption of nestle products, high in sugar content, does the most wonderful things for the complexion.

After we return from thanksgiving break, there is one week of regular school, then two weeks of hell. 14 days where you spend more time formulating the absolute lowest grade you can get on the final to still get an A (laughter ensues* if we’re being honest here we’re pulling for a B) in the class than actually studying for the test. Without these 14 days, the Freshman 15 would be an urban legend. These two weeks account for 70% of the weight we gain before we come back to our hometowns. Binge-eat studying for final, take final, binge drink trying to de-stress from said final, then repeat. All that binging has our systems scared.

The anxiety brought on our psyches by the mental torture of five finals, a project, and a ten-page paper and nowhere near enough time to prepare for all of them is incredible. It’s like a conspiracy theory that the institution of education has agreed to put on the twenty-something’s of America in order to keep Generation Y in check. Not only does the stress slowly push people into a shell of their former selves, the two weeks of binge-ing affects our physical appearance, as well as health. The lack of nutrition experienced inevitably causes you to fall to the enemy, the common cold. When a student catches a cold it is bitter sweet; this entitles us to a Nyquil knock out, but it does not entitle us to that ever-elusive extension.

At the end of this week, the being formerly known as you is in pieces. Your hair is a mess, you’ve eaten more candy than a fat kid on Halloween, and thanks to Reese’s your face is returning to the former glory of puberty. These so called tests of your knowledge are really just there to test how you handle stress before you enter the big bad world called life. However, in college there is an end in sight, the sweet* relief of finishing your last final and entering an entire month of little to no responsibility. All the cookies, candy, and cake that you consumed throughout finals week have built you up for the incredible sugar coma induced sleep that immediately follows finals week. The world can wait, but finals can’t, stop procrastinating and start studying.