It’s so hard to believe it’s that time of the year again. Exam season. It seems like just yesterday we were all in an intoxicated haze loving life at RAG week. If you’re in the same boat as me chances are your RAG week extended into Paddy’s day,various thirsty thursdays, then Raceday and so on. Basically you haven’t been in college properly since week 6, conveniently and blissfully ignoring the latter half of the semester. Sure be grand right?
Except now it’s week 13, you’ve a mountain of assignments and exams are looming. Chances are you are now experiencing the various stages of study meltdown. Rather than actually face everything I have to do in the limited time I have to do it, I’ve decided to further procrastinate by outlining these stages.
So here we go:
1. Self Hatred
The woe-is-me why am I such a waster stage. Was it really that hard to get up for that Friday 10am? If you had have just been good like you promised yourself at the start of the semester none of this would be happening. But it’s too late, you’ve missed too many lectures. You hate yourself, and you irrationally hate every smart do-gooder that isn’t experiencing this. (Here’s looking at you mature students). Next semester will be better..
2.Denial
Look maybe it won’t be that bad? Sure you’ve still a good two weeks, that’s plenty of time. If you lock yourself in to the library and literally go hell for leather it’s going to be so fine.. Yeah..you got this..
3. Procrastination
Write one line of essay, scroll twitter, facebook and instagram for hours. Write one line of essay, repeat. Time is ticking away and all the productive promises you made yourself are quickly vanishing. Ah sure you might as well clean the house so you have a nice relaxing environment to study in. Fast forward and it’s six hours later, the gaff is clean, you’ve rang mammy, watched 4 episodes of Game of Thrones, googled the meaning of life and thought really seriously about joining the circus. Sure look it’s too late to do anything now anyway, fresh start tomorrow morning 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
4.Anger
You’ve finally decided to tackle the unavoidable. Sulis is open and so are 12 weeks of power-points each containing a minimum of 45 slides each. Wtf when did they teach us this? You know you missed a few weeks but there was no way any of this shit was on the module outline. Why are you even in college anyway? All of this stuff is irrelevant, the education system is a joke. The country is a joke, everything is just a joke. Sure weren’t Steve Jobs and Bill Gates drop outs? Everything is so unfair.
5.Comfort Eating
A justifiable stage all on it’s own. Food releases happy endorphins which are beneficial for study purposes. Eating yourself into an absolute food coma is completely and totally necessary. Aside from the old bag on the till in dunnes, no one is judging you. Just don’t bring anything noisy and disgusting into the library. 🙂
6.Bargaining
You’ve reached a stage of desperation and deliriousness. You’ve started to bargain with the powers that be because you’ve realised just how thoroughly fucked you are. You’re begging God, Buddah, Allah, mother nature, every divine inspiration you can think of to just let you pass. You can’t disappoint the rents, you’ll be skinned alive. All the money they pumped into your third level education.. You know you haven’t been to mass since great aunt Mary’s funeral but you swear you’ll start going of a Sunday. You’ll give up drinking, you’ll volunteer, feck it you’ll even sell a kidney at this stage.
7.Feeling sorry for yourself
In between shlugs of energy drinks in the library silently sighing to yourself, wishing you were anywhere but the second floor silent zone. Life is bleak..hope is fading..weep on.
8.Panic
You thought you were too composed, calm and collected to reach this stage. Oh no you weren’t going to panic, you had complete control of the situation… Well my friend you’ve managed to waste away two weeks talking about studying and not actually doing it. You now have permission to enter full on panic mode. No amount of bargaining will save you now.
9. The All Nighter
Nothing for it now, just going to have to sacrifice sleep and become a night owl. It’s your own fault so better buy a six pack of red bull, sellotape your eyes open, and hope that scientific experts are wrong when they say late night cramming is futile..
10. Acceptance
You’ve gone through all the agonizing stages and you’re nearly at the finishing line. You’ve come to accept that what will be will be. You take a deep breath and enter the exam hall to meet your fate. (Nanny has lit the obligatory candle just in case).
Just Jess, Just blogging! 