Dead week is finally upon us, which means finals week is just around the corner. Even while I wasn't in college, I didn't know what dead week really meant. I heard variations that it was the week where everything was due, as far as term papers and major projects go, so everyone is stressed out. Some schools even make it a one-week study vacay where professors give them a proper time period to concentrate on finals.

Even with this being my third year in college, I don't think either of those definitions have applied to me. My definition of dead week comes from the fact that I feel dead: physically, mentally, and emotionally. The stress-filled month of April killed me.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who felt personally attacked by the month of April. I used to like the idea of April before this exhausting realization. I thought, "Oh the weather is starting to warm up, summer is almost here!" Lies, April was just one big tease. Actually, the whole month of April seemed to be like one giant April Fools Joke, and those April showers were actually tears from all the students who have cried over their exams.

Now what I mean by April killing me is the fact that it was by far the most stressful month. Sure there were times where I had a test in one week, along with some other extra activities to worry about, but that was the busy norm. April, however, was unlike any other time of the year. It was like every professor gathered around and set up some kind of evil game plan of how they could make us pull our hair out.

"Let's make every paper due the same week!"

"Oh, let's have our tests be one after the other, they wouldn't see it coming."

"Even better, let's assign another paper two weeks later."

Besides the academic stress, college is not just composed of school work. You have outside commitments to worry about. April tends to be the month where elections take place for student organizations, and initiations or formals take place for Greek organizations. And then on top of that, on the weekends, there were fun events that take place on campus, so instead of studying on the weekends, you had to relieve your built-up stress somehow.

Then Sunday came along, and you realized you didn't get anything done that you were supposed to, and then your school week is full of late nights, excessive coffee drinking, and procrastination.

Looking at my student planner in April in comparison to the rest of the school year has me question how I even survived the April madness. It wasn't until Justin Timberlake came into my way on April 30th reminding me:

There you have it folks, the light at the end of the tunnel. Finals week itself isn't going to be as bad as the cumulative torture that April brought. If finals were such a big deal, I feel like professors would have made more of an emphasis about how we should have prepared much sooner.

Looking at dead week, I really don't have much to do because I have already finished my papers and big tests, and most of my professors have only briefly mentioned the content of the final. Thankfully, summer break is almost here and, quite frankly, it's what's really going to bring me back to life after April.