Column: How finals bring friendliness
May 9, 2008
I have approximately two hours to write this column before I should return to what passes for normal in my life this week: studying furiously for four tests while working on the layout for my final journalism project, filling out the massive pile of job applications sitting on my desk and, um, crying.
The only thing that makes me feel better, as I pop the tab on another super-caffeinated soda and try to forget how much I want a nap, is that there are about 27,000 other people in very close proximity to me that know exactly how I feel.
If campus is like a little village, then campus during the last two weeks is like a little village that has just been told to prepare for a zombie attack.
A sense of deathly calm saturates the air.
People either buckle down like the hordes that now occupy the library and computer labs with stacks of notes and books, or they give up completely, as evidenced by the people at my apartment building who have 72 empty beer bottles — and counting — on their porch.
Some even turn to superstition.
I actually saw someone rub the David R. Francis statue’s nose for luck this week for the first time in my life, ruining my previously unchallenged theory that the university just commissioned his nose to be gold from the beginning so that those prospective student group leaders would have something else to talk about on the quad.
But even in the worst of zombie attacks — or finals — people always manage to make the most of bad situations and pull together.
People in my classes who don’t normally even speak to each other now chat and make jokes about upcoming exams.
The general population seems to get temporarily friendlier.
We lend each other notes and writing utensils, actually say something when we see someone on the sidewalk drop their keys and semi-cheerfully accept the fates that have been dealt to us for the next week and a half.
There’s a cliché but appropriate quote that circulates the world, showing up on greeting cards, Facebook.com bumper stickers, chain e-mails and lame opinion columns that goes, “We may not have it all together, but together we have it all.”
And it’s true here at MU, just like it is everywhere else. We may not have studied for that important test, interviewed enough sources for an A on that journalism project or gotten a call back for a lead on a summer job.
We may drink too much caffeine, or just drink too much.
We may take naps instead of getting eight hours of sleep, go out on odd nights of the week and make procrastinating an art form - but when we depend on the thought that we’re all in this together, we can and will make it through anything.
So drink, study or procrastinate, whatever your poison, but take refuge in the fact that 27,000 other people in close proximity know exactly what you’re going through.
Love,
Liz
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