Fast Facts about Finals Week (In To-Do List format, since that seems to be the structure of my life as of late)

1. The library starts to look more familiar than your living room. Not only that, but you can’t remember the last time you spent more than a couple hours any where else besides the library.
2. Even though you may be stuck there, the library is where everyone else is! So part of library time is wandering around and finding people to talk to. Studying + 2X socializing= a successful library experience.
3. There are only two activities to partake in during exam week: studying and procrastinating. (Socializing would be an example of procrastinating. Blogging about exams might also fall into that category). If you’re not studying, you’re procrastinating. If you’re not procrastinating (which is rare), you’re studying. They’re mutually exclusive.
4. Notice that I didn’t mention sleep in #3? That’s right, because it’s not a real thing.
5. Your entire life seems to be consumed by exams, and this includes social media. It’s like finals hijacks every form of online networking. You’re either Tweeting about how stressed you are, Instagraming how caffeinated you are, or Facebook posting how “DONE :) !!!”  you are. The choice tool for procrastination (to escape the torture that is exams) simply mocks you that you’re trapped. Forever.
6. You have never experienced the urge to murder someone unless you’ve talked to that one person who has “one take home final” so they’ll be going home today. Stay calm. You’re better than them.
7. This post is starting to seem liked a Buzzfeed article (insert funny gif [here]). Makes sense because once you get tired of scrolling through your FB feed that hasn’t changed in an hour, Buzzfeed is the best next thing.
8. There is a strict dress code for final exams: messy buns, sweatshirts, and yoga pants. People who actually try to look like real people obviously don’t have their priorities in order. *HOWEVER, this does not include makeup. Always wear makeup. No one wants to see your stress acne.
9. One of the most fascinating phenomena of finals week is how your body craves every sort of bad food that you can imagine. Want some pizza? Sure, right after my 5th bag of Swedish fish. Damn I could really go for some curly fries, maybe they should accompany my chocolate bar. It doesn’t matter if it’s fried, sweet, sugary, salty. You want it, need it, can’t get enough of it.
10. Along the lines of nutrition, we should talk about coffee. Coffee/caffeine= Jesus Christ of exams. It is your savior. I don’t care if you’re a self-proclaimed non-coffee drinker, you binge on caffeine during exams. When you find yourself asking how much coffee is too much, just remember: the limit does not exist.
11. You will inevitably get sick either pre, during, or post exams. You cannot escape it. Remember to keep your extra DayQuil from midterms because the worse feeling in the world is having a fever and writing a 10 page research paper.
12. There’s always that demoralizing final. The one that just takes your brain, shakes it up, and returns its mushy remains back into your head. I’m a barista so I see this first-hand. Those poor souls, dazed and confused, looking for their saving grace (#10) to give them back some semblance of hope. They’ll probably tweet about it later.
13. Almost always, there’s that point you reach sometime during the week. Maybe it comes with the delusional 1AM giggle fit, that somehow dissolves into laughing, sad tears… Or perhaps it’s that moment where you simply sink to the floor of your apartment because your soul feels crushed and you do not have the strength to stand…These may or may not be real life examples… Regardless of how you experience it, you experience it.  That point of denial and desperation. But…
14. Don’t lose hope! Because after that point, you feel energized. Determined. Motivated. You can see the light at the end of the tunnel. You’re almost there. All this hard work is going to pay off and you’ll be back on your couch at home.
15. And that leads to the best feeling of all. That DONE feeling. You feel like you’ve conquered the world. You breathe the biggest sigh of relief. One of the most rewarding feelings is throwing out all your notes from the semester and sinking into a lazy, sleep-deprived state of pure happiness. And that feeling makes this week all worth it.

Make the force be with you. You WILL conquer finals. All exams weeks end eventually. You go, Glen Co Co.

Here’s to finding a creative way to procrastinate & the amount of sleep I’m looking forward to in 4 days.

I’m not really a snow person. Ask anyone who knows me personally and they’ll tell you that I don’t do cold. But during the month of December (aka the best, most joyous month of the year), I don’t mind the white stuff. Hell, I even encourage it! It just adds to that cozy, magical, Christmassy feeling that I adore. Unfortunately though, I wasn’t feeling very much in the Christmas spirit today.

It’s finals week. I feel like that short statement should explain it all. It’s the week all college students dread, the time of year that you reach stress levels that you didn’t know existed, the closest thing to cruel and unusual punishment. I had spent the entire morning working on an ethics study guide (9 total hours and 11 single spaced pages) only to look out the window to see that campus had been transformed into a snow globe. My anxiety was high, my tolerance for everything else was low, and now I had to walk to the library to print study guides.

I bundled up as best I could and headed out. Within seconds, my fingers were numb, my Uggs were wet, and snowflakes were staying all over my nose and eyelashes. (And no, Julie Andrews, these are not a few of my favorite things). I almost fell on my butt 3 times as I sloshed around in the slush that had not yet been salted. Thankfully, I made it to my destination in one piece, albeit very very cold.

I printed, I bundled, and I tucked my study guides into my jacket. Back out into the snow. I felt slightly more accomplished and a tad less stressed having the physical papers in my hand. I thought of the hot chocolate I would make to reward myself for going out in a blizzard. (Well, light blizzard).

Half way back to my apartment, I had to stop to wait for a car to pass, and found myself just standing there for a minute. Everything was silent. When I was little, I used to wake up on snowy mornings and open the front door to listen to the silence. There’s such a distinct stillness and peacefulness of falling snow. I’ve always loved it. Against the street lights, snowflakes frantically swirled and drifted in and out of each other, while I listened the slight pitter-patter of them falling on my hood. Even though my yoga pants were being soaked through and I couldn’t feel my ears, I was calm. It turned out to be the best study break I’ve had all week.

Maybe I could get used to the snow. (Maybe.)

Here’s to a snowy surprise & surviving finals.

Every time I come home from school, no matter what time of year it is, I always have a standing brunch date. I’m extremely lucky because I still have three best friends from home. I know this is a college-kid exception, most people tend to lose touch or grow apart when they leave high school. But for some reason me and my three best friends (collectively referred to as “the girls” by my mom) can’t get enough of each other. Even though we’ve known each other for years now, I guess we’re in it for the long run.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like we all don’t have best friends at school. Quite the opposite actually. We all have our very separate lives when we’re away, full of other friends, boys, and a slew of other people that each of us will never meet. The girls and I barely talk during the semester, besides the occasional “miss you” text or Facebook picture “like.” But without fail, a couple days before we’re all get home, the group texts starts up again with our brunch plans.

We always go to the same place, a small little coffee shop on main street called Maria’s. Now, I’m a die hard Starbucks girl at heart (despite my recent struggles!), but ‘Bucks isn’t the right setting for our special brunch. Starbucks is for every other coffee date I have, while Maria’s is reserved just for the girls. (Plus, we usually don’t want to run into anyone we know when we’re home. Call us anti-social, but we just like each other more than anyone else haha)

I’m usually the first one to show up to grab one of the three small tables in the dorm-sized cafe. There’s always at least one other patron drinking their coffee while I wait and they always seem slightly startled when I jump up and squeal when one of my besties arrives. (We tend to make a scene each time one of us walks in. Sorry we’re not sorry.)

It seems like the conversation starts as soon as we hug hello and doesn’t stop until we’re saying good bye. It’s usually constant chatter about everything and anything. We fill in the blanks from where we last left off, reference events that we saw pictures of on Facebook, grill each other on the nitty gritty love-life details, and call each other out when someone is clearly not telling the whole story. Sometimes we bring up past memories, and other times we dream about the future. We laugh, we tear up, but for approximately three hours, no one else outside of our table exists. While the owner of Maria’s (most likely Maria herself) now knows pretty intimate details about our lives, sometimes I catch her smiling in our direction. I can only imagine what we look like from the outside: hopeful, giggly, happy, and young.

What amazes me the most is that we always seem to pick up where we left off. We can go months without talking, but somehow those brunch dates always feel the same. I think that’s because we’re honest with each other. We don’t feel the need to put on a front or pretend that our lives are “perfect” at school. We say it like it is, admit when we messed up, brag when we killed it. While we’ve all changed since high school, our friendship has grown with us in a pretty incredible way. When I joke around that they’ll be in my wedding party someday, deep down, I know they actually will be. (Even if we often argue over the color of bridesmaids’ dresses ;))

Here’s to “the girls” & coffee dates when we’re 30. Who says you can’t be friends forever?