Sorry for the blog delay, folks! In a very meta-level manner, the posting gap actually exemplifies what I’d like to talk about: I got a little stressed. You see, last week, the horrifying, Tolkien-like creature known as finals visited Drake University. Rising out of the fires of Mordor, finals attacked our once peaceful campus and ruined everyone’s life for a week. And, yeah, I’m being a smidge dramatic. But, as the saying goes, ‘tis the season for creating needless drama. Thus, I present my personal 5 stages of finals:

Denial

The weekend before finals, I was feeling pretty good. I walked past Cowles library, scoffing at the students already freaking out over their textbooks. Me, I don’t really take tests. I just had to write papers, and how hard could that be, really?

Anger

Turns out it was really hard. As the week progressed, the list of tasks began to pile up and I began to resent the caliber of my liberal arts education. If only I hadn’t learned so much over the course of the semester there’d be nothing for me to write about!

Bargaining

But the fact remained I needed to get things done. Thus, I bought some chocolate. Okay, I bought a lot of chocolate. I also created a foolproof plan whereby for every page I wrote, I would get to eat a chocolate. One bag of chocolates and a lot of blank pages later, I still needed to get to work.

Depression

I guess the chocolate and lack of sleep backfired just a smidge. Lying on the couch at 2 a.m., my copious notes and blank word doc in front of me, the task seemed impossible. I simply would not survive finals week. With half of a Drake education, I would just have to make my way into the world and do what I was good at: eating chocolate and complaining.

Acceptance

Thursday of finals week was my glory day, my underdog returns to claim the championship moment. And, okay, I won’t be winning any championships for the writing I did on that day, but I did get all my papers done. With no more time left to delay, I settled in and wrote until I was done. And let me tell you, after all the (mostly self-imposed) horrors of the week, it felt really good to be done. I was proud of the work I had done and all that I had learned. And maybe we can all just forget that that level of achievement took two bags of chocolates.