Students’ Views

I didn’t plan on coming home until Saturday, but it so happened that I learned my older brother Alec was going to be at work Friday evening, leaving his Xbox alone and abandoned by the cruelty of humanity. What was I to do? I couldn’t let humanity get a bad rap. So I stepped in and gave it all the love and attention it deserved. Played mostly Fable. Wicked game.

But I get ahead of myself. I’ll start again at the beginning of finals week. Monday comes around and I’m pretty proud of myself because I’ve read all twenty articles (each around fifteen pages each) about the dragonfly I’m using to write my paper-final in “Sensation and Perception.” So I decide to take a break from the weekend’s studying and go play Halo3 with my older brother Alec at home (Round Rock is only 15 minutes away). Tuesday, after writing 10 pages for a philosophy paper in two and a half hours, I call a friend to go eat lunch, and find out it’s her b-day (some friend I am, huh?) but I didn’t get her text message because I disabled the text service from my cell (you would too if each one cost you a quarter). So I spend the day helping her get her car fixed and going to work at College Forward, then going over to her house for dinner and her B-Day celebration. I didn’t plan on not doing anything for the Sensation and Perception paper, and I paid for it later in the week in blood.

That ‘later in the week’ starts Wednesday morning. I write about four or five pages on one article alone, it’s one of the two most critical articles. I was SO SICK of the dorsal eye of the dragonfly’s compound eye. But that wasn’t all. Wednesday night I write the section on the Ventral eye of the compound eye of the dragonfly, comprising six pages. Oooh do I hate the word ‘eye’ right now. I’m even slightly annoyed at ‘I’.

That’s it on Wednesday. I refuse to write anything else, less I die of spontaneous combustion of the brain (it’s the number one killer of college students during finals, seriously). But that doesn’t make the paper go away, now does it? Nope. So anyway, I begin to study for my final in Research Methods (one of the hardest courses offered at SU) and attend the review session that night. Then it’s bedtime.

Thursday is my first day with finals in it. I get up and at 8:30am sharp I take the Research Methods final, and I think I did pretty okay. Then I forgot what I did until the early afternoon, but I’m sure it wasn’t productive. In any case I don’t start on the Sensation and Perception paper until around 2:30pm. I write until dinnertime. I eat dinner. I come back and write some more. Well, keep in mind I have to refresh my memory on what the articles contain in them that I can use, and in this case I am deeply grateful for my highlighting and underlining the first time around I read them. After dinner I continue writing until, oh, 3:30am Friday morning. The paper comes out to 21 pages total, including cover page, abstract, and references.

Throughout Wednesday and Thursday I drink about six cups of chai tea, mostly chai tea latte (yay, for milk). It’s what kept me going when the going got tough. Coffee couldn’t have done it, the crash would’ve been too hard. And cokes don’t do anything for me. So yeah, I owe my surviving finals week (and my procrastination) to chai tea latte, just thought I’d give some credit where it’s due here.

Friday at 8:30am I go and take my Developmental Psychology final. But it’s just the last test, nothing accumulative, and all multiple choice. So I’m out in twenty minutes (I’ll be happy with a B-), and I sleep until around 11:00 am. I call my mother and find out she’s making machaca, which is scrambled egg with onion and dried beef. Delicious stuff. So, taking advantage of being close to home, I go eat breakfast with the family (my insides feel dry from all the caffeine and not enough water and sleep). After breakfast I head back to the dorm and it’s time to go turn in my Sensation paper and do my class presentation (1:30pm).

Man, after three hours of presentations and having to stay awake through them out of politeness on 2 two hour bouts of sleep, I’m dead tired. But I don’t go and sleep again in my dorm. I pack. And I pack. And I clean. Then I go home and unload everything in the car. took me about an hour and a half, but of furious packing and cleaning. Absolutely furious I say.

I end finals week by going out to eat dinner with my father at Pappadeaux, a seafood place. My father’s in town because he’s going to give me the 2003 beetle he owns, and I’m going to give him back the LS 400 Lexus ‘92. I’m looking at it outside the house right now and she’s a beauty. Going to save so much on gas it’s unimaginable (no more premium unleaded!). And it’s only been two days but I think I’m doing amazing driving stick. I mean, I drove by myself to Austin and Southwestern and all sorts of places on my second day with shift!

So finals ended and I made it through. I wish I could say that this is atypical of me, that I’m usually on top of it all. But hey, would you believe it if I told you?

My beetle looks just like this…