Exam Week

Early Friday morning I climbed into my car after completing yet another near all-nighter. It was cold enough to see my breath in inside the car and I amused myself by blowing smoky puffs of breaths while lumbering towards campus to deliver my finished project.
I too am caught in the epidemic of sleep deprivation which had broken out on campus this week. Everywhere I could see signs of the plague: sweat shirts, ponytails, haggard faces, students carrying enormous coffee cups, and friends wearing the same outfit for the last three days. For the first time all semester, it’s hard to find an empty desk in the library.
Whether because of the winter nights, or the lack of distractions, I found the most productive corner on campus in the basement of the library, tucked against the furthest wall and blocked off from the rest of the library by towering shelves of book. As an added bonus, each of these desks was separated with a wooden shelf-like barrier creating an ideal cubby. There I was free to make annoyed faces and frustrated twitches as I worked to perfect this stubborn essay while hidden from puzzled onlookers.
Perhaps the first symptom of this disease is the procrastination over the Thanksgiving Break which led to a reality shock on Monday and the subsequent late nights and early mornings. Usually in the middle of exam week I wonder if it would just be better to scrap the paper and take the hit on my grade or whether I should change my major to something that doesn’t require work (like underwater basket weaving). There are so many better things I could be doing.
But I have finished, survived, just as I was telling myself I would at 5:30 this morning. The days before blend together into intervals between coffee and brief naps, but now, in the growing light of dawn, I am more than eager to turn in the monstrous project.
Yet for all the mental battles between sleep and stimulant, no reward can be as satisfying as finishing and knowing, weather you made the grade or not, that you have tried your hardest. Finish strong.