You’ve been dragging yourself through a rough semester when a blessed realization hits you: Break arrives in three weeks!

But …

Before you can enjoy said vacation, you have a week of exams, and before you can rock your way through exams, you still have two weeks to soldier through.

And those two weeks are otherwise known as the “Two Most Stressful Weeks in the History of Your Life,” and truly, those weeks ruin your sanity in creative, anxiety-inducing ways.

Suddenly, three papers, four presentations, and one group project appear

Yeah, things are going well until you realize those distant due dates are looming closer and closer. And you can only ignore projects worth 15 percent of your grade for so long. Inevitably, there will be one terrible day when every single project is due, and on that day, you will not go into a catatonic state. At least, if you make good decisions now.

So log onto your library’s database, pull up PowerPoint, and start chipping away at your pile of projects.

It’s on the syllabus

Your teacher starts referencing the syllabus again, and in a much more dread-inducing way than during syllabus week. Now, whenever a classmate asks questions about due dates or exam info, your teacher says, “It’s on the syllabus.” And you’re pretty sure you crumpled that document up in your car months ago. Fortunately, God blessed the academic world with BlackBoard, and you can download your syllabus four months after you should’ve. Good luck figuring out what you need to study and turn in to pass the exam!

But I don’t want to

Sure, you could go ahead and write that five-page research paper … or, you could hang out in your Instagram’s Explore section for a few hours. And during the last two weeks before exams, social media, parties, and sleep sing with a siren song you can’t ignore. The allure of doing nothing is never stronger than when you have a whole semester riding on a project or exam, and as you put off studying for the third night in a row, you wonder what became of the scholar who used to highlight and organize and make flashcards.

If it ain’t broke, keep spending money

The end of the semester is the perfect storm of opportunities to go broke. Between graduation parties, the beginning of wedding season, and general “I need milkshakes because I’m stressed” moments, your bank account is running on empty. So as you peruse the electronic aisles of an online store and dream of your summer beach vacation, you drain your bank account with each bathing suit you drag into your cart. But really, with all the stress of the upcoming weeks, you deserve a reward.

At least, that’s how you justify it when you click on your fourth suit.

The two weeks before finals are incredibly stressful, incredibly busy, and incredibly important, but you can do it. Don’t give up and don’t slack off, and conquer the end of the semester like Beyoncé herself.