Warm months of luxurious laziness form a luminescent beacon on the horizon, but a vile obstruction eclipses all but a glimmer of promised freedom. As the sun sets on the semester, the brutality of final exams establishes a craggy barricade from the fulfillment of long-deserved summer relaxation.
Since students have so much on their mind this time of year, like creating a detailed plan for summer debauchery, the requirement of continued academic focus is overly demanding. Although I understand the need for professors to culminate the ideas of their curriculum, you might have gotten a more accurate measure of my knowledge if you tested it two months ago when I almost gave a crap.
The situation is even worse this year, since students have an additional worry to distract them from exams. How do they expect us to study when we are busy establishing underground drug and prostitution networks so we can afford to go out after the city bans drink specials? If there's one thing we've learned this year, it's that \safety"" often comes at a price.
Even with the excitement over the approaching summer, most students find large portions of time during the weeks before finals to attempt the amazing feat of learning a semester's worth of knowledge, supplementing their cram-sessions by frantically chewing their nails and chomping down caffeine pills like they're coming out of a Yoda-shaped Pez dispenser.
On any given night, there are massive crowds of people in College Library who have been studying physics for so many consecutive hours that their eyes are as bloodshot as they would be on the way home from a Phish concert.
If you are at all like me, a trip to the library only increases the level of exam-related stress, especially when a fruitless evening serves as a powerful reminder that you have no idea how to study. I have spent many an unproductive hour cooped up in a cubicle staring at pages of illegible notes on meaningless subjects, wishing with all my heart that my handwriting didn't look like the work of a coked-up orangutan with no arms.
Let's say that, hypothetically, you were somehow able to learn all the necessary information from your course, even the material taught while you were zoning out in lecture writing alternate lyrics to the Beach Boys ""Sloop John B"" about how much you hate calculus. Even if you magically achieve perfection in studying, you can forget about doing well on your exam.
No matter how extensive your knowledge of the course may be, rest assured that your exam will consist of multiple-choice questions that have absolutely nothing to do with what you have learned.
Remarkably, professors have found salvation in the form of multiple-choice bubbles, finally discovering a way to pass on the undesirable task of grading exams to another error-prone, inanimate machine-one that doesn't have plans to play golf all afternoon.
I seem to have trouble with multiple-choice tests. While slaving over those irritating bubbles, I always begin to develop a large blister that begins to swallow my number-two pencil. After an hour of grueling work, I finally finish filling in my name and student number, after which point I am usually so fed up with the process that I decide on 'a' as the ""best possible answer"" to every single question.
Fortunately, the tranquil and stress-free days of summer will soon push the unpleasantness of exams to the realm of painful memory. Just try not to chew off too many of your fingernails, and give me a call if you're good at deciphering messy handwriting.
