1. The Realization
This is when you realize exactly how much sh*t you have to get done in such a short amount of time. After this, you hyperventilate for a few minutes, look up good bar-tending schools in the area, and cry.
2. The Planning
This stage comes not long after the crying. This is when you pull yourself together as best you can and try to plan out what work you are going to do on what days so that you have time for everything and won't be stuck studying until 5 a.m. on the night before your final.
3. The Crumbling of the Plan
This is the stage when all of your meticulous planning inevitably crumbles like a landslide meets an avalanche. It all starts when you open up Facebook just to check if you have any important notifications, you go on YouTube just to take a small break and watch the "Friends" Season 1 blooper reel, and then all of a sudden you've been procrastinating for five hours and you still have eight and a half million things to get done so you down your fourth coffee of the day at exactly 12 a.m. and pull an all-nighter and keep studying into the next day because sleep is for the weak anyway.
4. The Exam
So this is it. This is what you've spent 96-plus hours straight in the library for. All of the information you've crammed into your brain for the past week explodes all over the test. Sometimes you lose track of what you're even saying/doing, but you don't really care. At this point you just really want to get it over with.
5. The Celebration (sort of)
You fill out the last question on the test and, likely without even checking it over, you push out your chair, march triumphantly to the front of the room and place the packet of paper that is somehow worth 40 percent of your overall grade on the front desk, making brief eye contact with the professor, hoping that he/she will stand in solidarity with you and give you a passing grade, at the very least. Then you walk back to your dorm room feeling about 60 pounds lighter. You go to your room, lay down, maybe even pour yourself a glass of wine to celebrate
...that is, until you realize you still have three more finals to study for, and it pretty much takes all of your self-restraint to keep yourself from slamming your head repeatedly into the wall.
So, you open your laptop and start googling bartending schools again. And thus, the vicious finals cycle continues...
