By Anna Hsu, Staff Editor
- Eat food! Make sure to stress-eat and gorge yourself on carbohydrates. But you don’t want to fall into a food coma and wake up late for your exams, so make sure you balance it out with gallons of coffee and Red Bull! Make sure to avoid even the sight of fruits and vegetables, because CARBOHYDRATES AND FATS ARE ENERGY DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO, MOM. The lack of fiber will give you an excuse to take a nice long bathroom break during your exam! Even better, the eventual nutritional deficiency might result in health issues that will be your final saving grace from having to take it!
- Make sure you wait until the last freakiN DAY to write your essay, like I always do! The overwhelming stress will force you to at least bang out a horrific, unrevised first draft that will at least earn you credit. Remember, done is good!!!
- Take lots of breaks. In fact, take so many breaks that the ratio of minutes spent on work compared to breaks is around 1:10. How are you supposed to write that essay if you haven’t applied your face mask, sorted out your pencil case, cleaned every inch of your room, reached out to a long-lost friend, and obsessively completed every single puzzle in the Rhys Carpenter Computer Lab until your fingers are sore from rubbing the edges of those goddamn pieces? Short answer: you can’t!
- Sleep! But don’t get just regular sleep. You either want to oversleep by more than 6 hours or get almost no sleep at all! In addition, you’ll want to cuddle your textbooks in bed. You will of course convince yourself that you’ll read them in bed and then fall asleep the instant you’re forced to read more than a paragraph. If you sleep close to them, maybe the information will somehow diffuse through you and stay in your brain! It’s better than nothing!
- Do all of your work alone! “Writing Center”? More like SCHMWRITING Center, am I right? “Dean”? More like, uh, MEAN…adult who can’t help me! “Peer Mentor”? More like…people who don’t understand anything that I’m going through oh my God I have nobody I can turn to I have no friends and my peers all hate me and I will never achieve anything because I’m gonna fail this stupid exam. Haha!
- Don’t go to any review sessions, or ask your professor for any extra study materials! Doing any more work than necessary will just tire you out! Instead, convince yourself you’re studying by putting on Khan Academy videos in the background while you procrastinate by playing video games or scrolling endlessly through social media, or even better, attempting to cram the night before the final!
- In an exam room, if you’re feeling overwhelmed or you’re experiencing a mental block, stage an uprising and lead the students out from the campus. We’ll be sure to follow you in a show of absolute Bryn Mawr solidarity!
- Don’t worry if you do poorly on an exam. Bombard your professor with emails until they’re forced to change your grade! Threaten to sue them! Slander them on social media and RateMyProfessors! Remember, your professors may simply be testy. If you’re one of the unfortunate souls to be stuck with a professor who simply won’t change their antiquated and profoundly stupid ways of grading that will frikin’ ruIN YOUR LIFE, you’ll have to take the higher ground. Just reply to their email with an “ok boomer.” Simple, quick, and elegant – and you’re sure to get bonus karma points for later in life!
- If potential employers, graduate schools, etc. ask about your terrible grades, simply hit them with a “no u” and watch their sense of self absolutely shatter! There is absolutely no way to recover from this line. Warning: Only use the power of “no u” when absolutely necessary!
- PANIC and GIVE UP!!! There is no meaning to existence. We are all mortal, ephemeral beings and the majority of us will never achieve anything of substance. Life is determined by the standards of society imposed upon us and superficial indicators of success such as wealth and the number of Instagram followers one has. Pull a Thoreau and return to nature—except since we’re edgy Bryn Mawr/Haverford young adults, we have to amp it up a bit. Try going a little more animalistic by covering yourself with mud and integrating yourself into a flock of wild Canadian geese near the shores of the Susquehanna or something!
Please take care of yourselves (eat well, sleep enough, study hard), but most importantly, just try your best. Nobody can ask for more. College is hard, especially when there aren’t people to hold you accountable. If you need help, ask for it (within reason). We’ll get through this together.
Image credit: UCL
