Finals Week Fails:
By: Raynor Memorial Libraries
Tags: Study, Higher Education, Education, Finals Week, College

The Top Five Bestest Most Glorious Most Epic Ways to Fail Finals

By: Catherine Simmerer

1.Don’t sleep. That’s right, if you really want to bomb that o-chem final, be sure to spend the night before staying up all night long staring blankly at flash cards with names and formulas you don’t recognize. (Extra points if you wrote the flash cards so sloppily you can’t read your own writing). Better yet, forget about sleeping the entire week. You can just jump from your history final to your o-chem final to your sociology final without wasting any time over that “refresh and renew” REM nonsense. Sleep is for losers.

2. Don’t eat. Why pay for food when you can just graze on the care package your roommie’s Aunt Sue carefully compiled and sent her? Cheesy crackers and coffee is a meal, right? (Especially if they’re the whole grain crackers). You think better when your stomach is growling, anyway. Like Sherlock says, it’s a three-patch problem.

Don’t stress out about finals!

3. Don’t pace yourself. I mean, really, who needs twenty-four hours to sleep and eat and study before every exam? Instead, take those extra hours and throw that last-minute dorm disco party you’ve been promising yourself all semester (your neighbors will love you). Grab your bestie and take a spontaneous road trip to Chicago — Omaha — the Fiji Islands. If you were looking for a sign, this is it: yes, you can totally write your 15-page English paper and take-home Spanish exam the same night you’re cramming for the bio final. Fiji is calling.

4. Don’t ask for help. Confused about communications homework? Nervous about your nursing exam? Well, guess what, you’re the only one. The universe has configured itself so perfectly as to make sure every other person in your 50-person class has been infused with complete wisdom and knowledge, absorbing the intricacies of electrochemical thermodynamics with a snap of their fingers. So instead of checking in with a classmate, your professor, or a subject tutor, you should just keep re-reading that one paragraph over and over until your eyes bleed. No one else in the entire history of universities has ever needed help, so why should you?

Serious Note: Snag an appointment with the Ott Writing Center here OR a research appointment with a librarian here! Both happen in Raynor Library.

5. DO PANIC. Panic, I repeat, Panic! This is the End of the World as We Know It. It’s like the Zombie Apocalyse and Cliffs of Insanity and Hunger Games all rolled into one. Sure, you did fine on your last exam, and the prof liked your paper. Sure, you’ve already survived one — three? five? seven? semesters. But this one — this one you are going to Fail Epically. And the best way to do that is PANIC. Freeze like a deer in headlights and refuse to do any homework at all. Or better yet, lock yourself into a windowless airless little room and CRAM CRAM CRAM until you melt into a pile of panic.

Final Thoughts:

Whatever your methodology, be sure not to take things calmly and quietly, or recognize the knowledge you’ve already gained this semester, or realize that, in a week, your life will continue much the same as it always has. If you do that, you might actually do ok. You might actually succeed. And that’s not the way to Fail.

Catherine Simmerer is a time-traveling cookie ninja moonlighting as a PhD candidate in English at Marquette University.